Small Mining Operations

There are three basic power sources for rock drills—electricity, gasoline and compressed air. Before we go into big pneumatic drills, we’ll start with a quick rundown of each.

…my intent is to distribute this information in layman’s language so that even the “backyard/shade tree/mom & pop” fire assayers can benefit.

Since last year’s articles on explosives for mining, several people have asked for more information about becoming a licensed blaster.

How rich does a hard rock ore have to be for it to be worthwhile to process and extract the gold?

Fast forward to present day and the XRF has come of age. Pull the trigger on the hand-held device and you get a nearly instant assay of the surface of a rock.

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.

…there is an easy way to create a reasonably accurate map without any fancy instruments.

I’d start the day by crawling out of my dome tent, cooking up some Spam and eggs, and heating water for instant coffee on the Coleman stove.

…to see the huge differences between the gold production amounts of the Western States, let’s look at the gold production—both hard rock and placer—of these 13 states up to the present.

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.

After paying for the mine fleet, mill capital, supplies, fuel, power and labor, at today’s metal prices, does this mine make a profit?

Prospectors often wonder why gold deposits in veins like it does. Why is one vein rich while another is barren, even though they are only a few hundred feet apart?

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.

You find yourself with a bucketful of concentrates that you have accumulated over the season and consider the logical next step: to reduce the bucket of cons to a gold bar. Where do you begin?

There are times when being able to recognize a type of rock can make you a much more successful prospector.

One of the issues that prospectors run into when working to upscale from micro-scale hard rock testing to a greater production output, is that they often confuse individual devices or machines with systems.

Since we’ve already covered the basics of permitting a “Notice Level” mining operation, it’s time to talk actual mining.

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.

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...

Fortunately, there are products on the market that can address these problems and make a small-scale mining operation feasible.