Prospecting & Detecting
Prospecting After Winter Storms
June 2017 by Don Robinson
So, how much rain does it take to cause a major movement of gravels in a stream and redistribute the gold? The technical answer is enough water to move the bed load of the river.
A Model Mining Operation
After he excavates the ore down to bedrock, he goes over the bedrock with a metal detector to ensure he didn't leave any gold behind before he backfills the area.
Extracting & Smelting Your Gold
Unfortunately, not all the gold that we prospectors find is pretty, or appealing to the eyes. They are not all nice, bright, shiny nuggets with lots of character that carry high collector value.
How to Beat the Heat--and The Bedrock
The pit was a classic one—exposed shale bedrock with all the material being washed out one end of the pit. Within a few minutes I had a nice mellow signal that was in open ground.
Weathering, Erosion and Placers
The big interest to prospectors thinking about the effect of erosion is not what might happen long into the future, but what they might find in the rivers later this summer when the water levels go down.
Making Adjustments to Catch Fine Gold
This fine gold that is so common is probably the most notorious for eluding our riffles and mattings.
Old Patch, New Detector
I have been detecting the area on and off since I discovered it. Every time I bought a new detector it was the first place I went to.
The "Madonna Nugget"—A Weekend Hunt to Remember
I worked my way to a flat area along a ridge where I could see a quartz blowout. As I got within 100 feet of it, I started seeing rock that I knew to be associated with gold.
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The Bawl Mill
• Ask The Experts: What indicator rocks should I be looking for in northern Nevada?
• Ask The Experts: What to do with scheelite
• Ask The Experts: Small-scale drilling
• Quartzsite Gives Up Some Big Gold
• How to Stake Your Own Claim—Researching Mining Claims
• The Birthday Nugget Patch
• MMAC Update
• The Goldfield Mining District, Nevada—Part I
• Volume is the Key to Success
• Getting Started
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
