Small Mining Operations
Lode or Placer: What Difference Does It Make?
September 2014 by Keith Bowen
This explains the large difference in particle sizes between placers and hydrothermal lode deposits, but also means that while the mining may be similar in some cases, the sampling and recovery techniques are usually quite different.
Who is a Qualified Person?
So you think you have an ore deposit? The work has been long and hard, but there are a few drill holes, lots of samples and assays. The data is in a reliable computer and there may be a mine at the end of the tunnel. What is the likelihood of a profitable operation? Can you raise capital for development or exploration?
Dredging Therapy
The big moment finally arrived. With Norm suited up, I pulled the motor to life and felt instantly better. There’s really something relaxing about the sound of a dredge running—they don’t sound like anything else.
The Basics of Crushing and Milling Operations
In processing gold, silver and other valuable ores, the minerals containing the values, such as metallic gold, silver-bearing sulfides or other minerals, must be freed from the surrounding host rock before those valuable minerals can be captured.
Finding Gold in Tailing Piles
Old mine workings and tailing piles can represent opportunities on many levels, from the chance to simply find a nugget on up to the commercial reworking of the old tailings for profit.
Nice Specimen Gold Recovered in Northern California
Each specimen is carefully examined to determine if it would be beneficial or not to use an acid treatment to reveal more of the gold.
Ask The Experts
• Making a noisy dredge more quiet
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.
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• Gully Prospecting and Mining
• Wilfley Tables—Repair, Rebuild & Set Up
• Designing and Evaluating Placer Gold Recovery Plants
• Finding Streams of Gold
• This is Why You Check Your Tailings
• New Rules to Impact the Lease/Buy Decision
• There's a First Time for Everyone
• Appeals Court OKs Permits for Upper Peninsula Mine
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
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