With successively lower temperatures as the water mixture cools, new sets of minerals are formed and many of those stable at a higher degree of heat became subject to alteration as the temperature progressively moved lower.

Starting small with quick profitability gives you a lot of financial elbow room plus real-world experience that can be used for final mill design.

…for a few hours, we fervently dug for gold. After we did a cleanup, I couldn’t believe the amount we got.

The right speed accumulates only the heavy materials and allows all of the lighter stuff to flow through. This optimum speed is dependent on the size of the gravel you need to move through the system.

All these decisions and more depend on the richness of a claim—something that is determined by sampling. But sampling isn’t cheap, and even collecting the samples can be more difficult than it appears on the surface.

Now it was time for the nerve-wracking part of the job: actually removing anything from the hanging wall we deemed to be in need of removal because it was either loose, could be loose, looked loose, or we felt it was just downright dangerous