Principles of Designing Your Mill Production System, Part II: Mill Design
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.
Tips and Tricks: How to Make Your Own Gold Bars Without Burning the Place Down
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?
Understanding Rock Formations: Petrology for Prospectors
There are times when being able to recognize a type of rock can make you a much more successful prospector.
Principles of Designing Your Mill Production System, Part I: Starting Up
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.
Specialized Equipment Available for Hire
Since we’ve already covered the basics of permitting a “Notice Level” mining operation, it’s time to talk actual mining.
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...
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.
Ancestral Yuba River Placer Gold Deposits
The small-scale miner has reasonable opportunity to exploit some of these small, rich placer gold deposits.
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.
From Iowa to Alaska—How I Became A Gold Miner
May 18, 2019, after 26 years, I had finally saved enough money. I bought my one-way ticket to Fairbanks, Alaska, and I started off by finding a new job…
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.
Subtle and Not So Subtle Dangers of Hard Rock Mining
I’ve been in enough mines to know better, and I mentally kicked myself several times. That was a close call…
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.
Hard Work Pays Off On Hard Rock
They worked their plan, bit by bit, and sure enough, after the blast, gold was detected… Over two pounds of beautiful crystalline gold was recovered in that stretch!
The Mysterious Telluride Minerals
…let’s dive in and take a closer look at these rich gold and silver-bearing minerals to find out what they are, where they form, and how to identify them.
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?