Prospecting & Detecting
Good Assays and Bad
January 2012 by Chris Ralph
The high prices for gold and silver are exciting and certainly have revolutionized the prospecting and mining scene. New interest in gold and silver mining is springing up from every corner, from individual prospectors armed with gold pans to exploration and mining companies working to set up multimillion dollar commercial operations producing hundreds of thousands of ounces per year. The idea of getting riches from rocks is one that motivates a lot of folks all over the globe. It’s an exciting time, but this excitement brings out another side...Prospecting Knowledge -- Pass It On!
I had two of the guys go down into the creek and each one picked out a small island of bedrock. I had them detect their piece of bedrock and then gave a critique to all on how they did.
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.
Tips on Crevicing for Gold
When everything is still dry, one of my favorite methods of prospecting is using a straw to blow out small cracks and crevices that dot the exposed bedrock along a stream.
Jim Madden's Gold
Maybe we could find a few pieces of ore from that tunnel? It was worth a try. The old timers didn’t have that stamp mill for looks, so we set off to get some samples.
Using Structural Clues to Locate Buried Placer Channels
They must have assumed the paystreak was spotty and had been mined out, so they never mined as close to the side of the valley as they should have.
Detecting Nuggets—Overcoming New Challenges
Depth is not an issue unless the site is thoroughly cleaned of shallow trash, and it is far easier to isolate and remove targets using a small coil in a target rich location.
Detecting Clay Seams
Because the old timers were so good at locating the better paying deposits—most of them along clay seams in this particular area—it makes good sense to try and locate these clay lines at old mining sites.
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The Bawl Mill
• Southwest Alaska Gold Project Progresses
• Where to Find Gold in Indiana—Part II
• Who is a Qualified Person?
• Time Well Spent
• Reality of the Klondike
• NWMA Show
• River Dredging vs. Creek Dredging—Part II
• Pot Hole Gold
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
