Prospecting & Detecting
Drywashing for Desert Gold—Part II
March 2021 by Dan Stanton
…whichever layer I’m getting the best gold, I’ll work that stratum. Some of the best gold in the desert is not always on the bedrock.
Swing and a Miss
A very good baseball hitter might get a hit roughly one time out of every three at-bats, but for prospectors often the results are much sparser and it may take many trips before the prospector hits a home run.
Discovering New Territory
This same concept is true of many of our modern-day rivers, and we have to find out where their gold originated if we can.
Detecting A Trashy Area
Some prospectors would have assumed it was another shotgun shell, but in this case it was 17.6-pennyweight nugget!
Gold Prospecting for Better or Worse: When a Gold Prospector Goes to a Diamond Mine
As a gold prospector for the past ten years, I thought that I had a fair understanding of the steps necessary to find gemstones.
Salted Mining Properties—How to Properly Evaluate a Claim
Sometimes there are good mining claims on the market available to purchase, but there are also folks out there who are willing to take your money under false pretenses. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that these wolves in sheep’s clothing are few and far between.
Selenium, Mercury and Suction Dredging—Studies Contradict CA State Water Resources Board
Federal and state regulatory agencies often cite mercury and methyl mercury in our waterways as a major factor for further restrictions on placer mining, and on suction gold dredge mining, in particular. However, these regulatory agencies are minimizing selenium and its neutralizing effects.
Summertime Gold Panning
I have smaller pans for cleaning black sand concentrates, big pans for taking large samples, pans with corners for pouring out materials, and pans with lots of special riffles. This variation is why I have so many pans—they each have their specialty.
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The Bawl Mill
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