Prospecting & Detecting
Dry Washing to Capture Fine Gold
November 2013 by Ray Mills
There may be lots of smaller gold I cannot hear with a detector, but it looks just fine in my pan once it is out of the crevice.
Dredging Therapy
The big moment finally arrived. With Norm suited up, I pulled the motor to life and felt instantly better. There’s really something relaxing about the sound of a dredge running—they don’t sound like anything else.
Return to Chicken, Alaska
I figured it would be quite conservative of me to shoot for about four ounces of gold instead of the twelve ounces I had found in 2013.
Refractory Gold Processing
After your excitement peaks when you first receive the high gold assay from the vein you just exposed, you ponder how you will extract and sell your gold. You will need to develop a flow sheet for your process to optimize your recovery and minimize your costs and permit requirements.
What Equipment Do I Need?
Getting started in prospecting often requires the purchase of some equipment, but one can spend as little as $10 and be finding gold or spend thousands and also be finding gold—yet you will probably have many more opportunities and possibilities with more and better equipment.
How to Stake Your Own Mining Claims—Part II
I’d like to offer some practical comments about staking and maintaining mining claims. Owning your own claim is the dream of many prospectors. I’ve made good money off my mining claims, both from the minerals I have found on them as well as from leasing out some of my claims to larger mining and exploration companies.
Who Says You Have to Own a Claim to Find Gold?
Most of us know making a profit as a small-scale miner is difficult; however, sometimes we combine luck with a little skill and bring home a few ounces of the yellow stuff.
It Pays to Know Your Bedrock
On our last trip, we brought ropes and went down the first waterfall forty vertical feet, only to be confronted by a second, sixty-foot-high, overhanging waterfall that emptied into a slot canyon.
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The Bawl Mill
• Ask the Experts
• One Potato, Two Potato...
• Proper Placer Sample Processing
• Strategic Metals—Part I
• Are There Any Good Prospects Left?
• Ophir—Possibly the Best Kept Secret in Alaska!
• Southern Oregon's Illinois River—A Lesson in Sharing
• Using Sucker Guns to Find Gold
• Making Adjustments to Catch Fine Gold
• The Subsurface Suction Dredge
• A Few Thoughts About Successful Nugget Hunting
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
