The 10-Ton Boulder: Expanding Grout Demolition
Imagine you have located a source of virgin placer ore containing immense gold value. Now imagine that there is a 10-ton monolith of extremely hard gneiss in between you and payday.
Simple Mine Surveying With Basic Hand Tools
…there is an easy way to create a reasonably accurate map without any fancy instruments.
Evaluating Gold Recovery with Mass Balance Calculations
Whether you are placer or hard rock gold mining, maximizing the efficiency of your recovery process is very important to success, and accurate testing is necessary to do so.
What Is Your Grade?
After paying for the mine fleet, mill capital, supplies, fuel, power and labor, at today’s metal prices, does this mine make a profit?
Reading A River: Understanding Erosion and Gold
Rivers are not just random and accidental; streams and other drainages are what they are because of the forces of erosion acting on the bedrock.
The Basics of Permitting and Bonding Your Mining Operation
With the recent surge of interest in gold projects, it’s about time to revisit a subject that strikes fear into the hearts of small-scale miners: Permits.
Using Countercurrent Material Flow to Improve Gold Recovery Efficiency
There is a material processing principle widely used in large milling operations to improve recovery that is poorly understood by most of the micro-mining and prospecting community...
Tips and Tricks: A Dredging Tip for Clearing the Tailings Pile
After a short time, the tailings pile can get very large, and can actually block the downstream end of the sluice box.
Hard Rock 101: Blasting With Kinepak Explosives
Fortunately, there are products on the market that can address these problems and make a small-scale mining operation feasible.
Hard Rock 101: Advanced Micro Blasting
They… create negligible fumes and much less fly rock than blasting. Below are some tips on maximizing your effectiveness with these tools.
Now Is The Time For Exploration
I’ve been following the precious metals for decades, and I haven’t seen a move this powerful in many years.
Why Assaying Placer Gold Deposits Doesn't Work
Let’s set up a thought experiment: Suppose you had some material that ran one ounce per ton gold, which is generally considered high grade to fantastic grade depending on the circumstances.
How Should I Work This Prospect?
How big is the deposit? Are there boulders you will need to move? Do you just want to recover the nuggets or do you think there is good fine gold that you will also want to capture?
Tips and Tricks: Preparing Your Dredge Engine for Storage
From this I inferred that engine 2 had a carburetor problem. In this article, I discuss the specific engine/carburetor problem, and the surprising solution to this problem.
More Tips on How to Find Gold with A Detector
When detecting an area that has been cleaned to bedrock and you have new trees growing, always make sure you get your coil as close as possible to the tree. Why?
What Do You Need For A Successful Micro-Scale Mine?
For simplicity, I will assume that you wish to make enough profit so that you can comfortably pay your bills using just the profits from the mine.
Using Favorable Rock Types to Find More Gold
The more experienced prospectors know these lesser known spots are the types of places where big finds are still made.
Reminder: Annual Claim Filings Due
Mining claimants who wish to retain their mining claims on Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service lands through the 2021 assessment year must pay a maintenance fee or file a maintenance fee waiver certificate on or before September 1…
Prospecting for Copper—What to Look for on the Outcrop
For the prospector, knowing what oxidized hydrothermal alteration looks like in the field is an important exploration tool.
Dredging Tips and Tricks: A Measure of Water Pump Efficiency
…as an academic argument, when mated to the appropriate engine, is the pump really moving water at the rate of 400 GPM?