Prospecting & Detecting
Mining for Gemstones and Mineral Specimens
August 2013 by Jim Clanin
It is better in a gem and mineral mining operation that the driller, blaster and mucker be the same person in order to be able to predict placement of the desired mineral enriched pockets.
The Hill of Gold
I was amazed and surprised, and I took a moment to admire how beautiful this coarse chunk of gold was. It later weighed exactly one-half ounce.
Detecting Alluvial Bench Deposits -- Pt II
Walking around the gulch and exploring the upper drainage, picking up different rocks and inspecting them with a good loop, and looking them up in a field guide of rocks and minerals of your region will help you understand how the gold got there.
Revisiting the Rocker Box
The first location we worked was a small, dry ravine cutting through many mineralized zones in an area where some hard rock mining had taken place in the past.
Proper Assaying of Placer Samples
The whole purpose of sampling mineralized ground is to measure the values in a small volume of material that would be representative of a much larger volume of similar material. The key word is representative. Chemical and fire assaying will not accurately represent placer deposits by themselves.
Hard Rock Prospecting With Rusty
May 2016As we talked, Rusty stopped, backed up, bent down and began chipping at some rock in the road. He said he suspected there was a stringer right here that crossed the road.
Diamond Prospecting in Indiana
My first personal experience with placer diamonds was on a gold prospecting trip in Indiana about 8 years ago, when a fellow prospector was cleaning his gold concentrates.
Selenium, Mercury and Suction Dredging—Studies Contradict CA State Water Resources Board
Federal and state regulatory agencies often cite mercury and methyl mercury in our waterways as a major factor for further restrictions on placer mining, and on suction gold dredge mining, in particular. However, these regulatory agencies are minimizing selenium and its neutralizing effects.
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• Common Mistakes of the New Detectorist
• The Pearce Mineralized Area, Dragoon Mountains, Arizona—Part II
• Fighting and Winning Without a Lawyer
• The Essentials of Dry Washing
• Fortymile, Alaska Prospecting Adventure
• Court Says Emergency Rule in California Unjustified
• Sampling Placer Stockpiles
• Lower Prices Bring Layoffs
• Prospecting Research
• Buyer Beware! Counterfeit Metal Detectors
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
• Underground in the Original 16-1 Mine
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