Prospecting & Detecting
Fault Zones and Prospects
June 2011 by Don Robinson
As we walked back we were just reaching the point of where the faulting should be and there, covered with deep grass, was very faint evidence of an old road going up the mountainside! What was that old road doing there?Q&A With Detector Designer Dave Johnson
...it’s been a little known secret that one man was involved in designing many of the most respected very low frequency (VLF) nugget detectors on the market. Dave Johnson has designed gold-oriented detectors for Tesoro, Whites, Fisher and others for more than 25 years.
Take a Kid Detecting
I thought things started off okay until I realized I had forgotten some of my gear and had to return to the house. My troubled start was not helped when my boy came up to me a few minutes after my return to show me his first nugget of the day.
Pros and Cons of Big Detector Coils
Years later I returned with a new detector with a smaller coil and detector technology more sensitive to smaller nuggets. I found my first nugget within five minutes. I had a second five minutes after that.
Iowa Hill District
For the last two years we’ve held a hands-on prospectors training session in the Iowa Hill district of California’s Mother Lode country as a part of our Gold Prospecting and Mining Summit event. Because of this, I thought it might be good to take a look at the history, geology and opportunities that the Iowa Hill district still offers to the individual prospector.
Modesto, California Man Finds 18-Ounce Nugget
Oscar Espinoza considers himself an amateur gold prospector, but the gold nugget he recently found puts many seasoned prospectors to shame.
How to Evaluate Mineral Claims—What to Know Before You Buy
Even though they have put down thousands of dollars, the buyers often stop paying on their claims part way through the process after they realize they’ve been duped, but the company just sells it again to another buyer.
Resurrecting An Old Hard Rock Mine
There were nice sections of vein material at the end of several drifts, like they just stopped work one day and walked away.
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