Prospecting & Detecting
Gold Geochemistry: Where Does Gold Come From?
February 2021 by Chris Ralph
Prospectors often wonder why gold deposits in veins like it does. Why is one vein rich while another is barren, even though they are only a few hundred feet apart?
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.
Forty-Six Nuggets
This past summer, a two-week adventure in Alaska and other gold prospecting trips turned out to be some of my greatest life experiences.
VLF Detector Operating Modes
It is important to note that discrimination is a type of electronic filtering. The signal is analyzed, and depending on the discrimination setting, identified as either a target to be dug or a target to be ignored.
A Long Dry Spell
Just three weeks ago one of our prospecting team members decided to go back to this location on his own. He had a new detector and wanted to try it out some.
Detectors: Past, Present and Future
Detectors were invented long before I was born, but it was in the 1960s when they started to become an item popular enough to power a fledgling industry. The key development was miniature transistor technology replacing the old fashioned tube technology of the 1950s, making lightweight, affordable detectors possible.
Detecting Alone -- What to Look For
I figure there are a lot of new people out there who have the same question. I will try to give some answers that hopefully will give you more confidence in finding your own spots.
An Early Christmas Gift
The larger nuggets were all old channel gold, smooth and water-worn. I guessed that a few of them would push a bit under one-half-ounce apiece.
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The Bawl Mill
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