Prospecting & Detecting
Gold Prospecting for Better or Worse: Warm Buttocks and Frozen Assets
December 2021 by Bob Schall
Luckily, at about that time, I buddied up with a somewhat cantankerous, but very helpful, guy named Rod. He had become a local legend for his ability to consistently find gold.
Residual Placers: An Often Overlooked Gold Source
Because the forces of erosion and gravity tend to carry lighter materials like quartz away more easily, the heavy minerals like gold or silver will tend to be concentrated in the general area around the vein outcrop. These concentrations are what make residual placers so attractive.
A Father and Son Prospecting Adventure
As I write this, I am still on a rush from taking my 9-year-old son, Jeffrey, prospecting for the first time this past weekend. It’s not that he hasn’t been along on numerous outings before: this is the first time that just the two of us went out for a day of drywashing and detecting under the desert sun.
Study Confirms Mercury Levels Safe in California's Gold Country
While the Water Board documented the selenium levels in fish and noted they exceed the levels of mercury, they have yet to acknowledge the numerous scientific studies that show selenium effectively neutralizes the effects of mercury.
Excavator Testing Wet Placer Ground
The excavator or backhoe has become the tool of choice for testing placer ground. These machines are the best way to explore and sample a placer deposit if the ground is not too wet or frozen and bedrock is not beyond the reach of the machine.
What's Left Behind
I love to see old-timer workings while I am out detecting for gold. For one thing, it assures me that gold came from there. Second, it tells me gold should almost certainly still be there.
Using Countercurrent Material Flow to Improve Gold Recovery Efficiency
There is a material processing principle widely used in large milling operations to improve recovery that is poorly understood by most of the micro-mining and prospecting community...
Internet Forum Gold
I made my way up past where I left off and the wash was going to end in about 100 feet. It was then I got a sweet signal.
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• Residual Placers: An Often Overlooked Gold Source
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