Prospecting & Detecting
Sold: 87-Ounce Nugget
April 2016 by Scott Harn
A gold prospector in central Victoria, Australia stumbled across an 87-ounce gold nugget in early February 2015, after his wife told him to head outside to get some air. He had given up smoking a few weeks prior and was getting a bit “grumpy,” she told him.
Uncovering the Find of a Lifetime
• The 75-ounce Butte County nugget is the largest found in California since the 156-ounce Mojave nugget in the 1970s...
Take it to Bedrock
Picking the right spot to placer has to do with years of experience, and a little luck. The textbooks can tell you where it should be, but sometimes the rules just don’t seem to apply.
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.
Prospecting and Mining Old Mine Sites
In some places valuable ores can be found within the waste material of mine dumps, sorted ore piles, and detrital vein matter at the surface. Though many of these old mine sites can be an excellent source of gold, not all are created equal.
A Golden Summer
His take of gold was pretty close to what mine was—about a quarter of an ounce. We had just gleaned about half an ounce of gold in just twenty minutes.
Volume is the Key to Success
While recovery rates are important, they must necessarily be secondary to the volume of material processed. Running more material at lower recovery rates is generally preferable to increasing the efficiency of the system.
A Long Dry Spell
Just three weeks ago one of our prospecting team members decided to go back to this location on his own. He had a new detector and wanted to try it out some.
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