Caught Between A Hard Rock and A Rare Earth Place
The same day, while two of us were heading to Vancouver to attend the mining convention, two others from our team were headed to Nevada to begin loading the millsite equipment.
Sampling for Success—Part I
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.
Time to Stake Your Own Mining Claim
So let’s dive in and see what I can do to convince you that this is the year you should be out staking your own claims.
Determining The Optimal Crushing Size for Gravity Recovery
It’s not easy to figure out what is best without testing, and so a certain level of confusion has developed about how small the ore ought to be crushed.
To Foam or Not to Foam
George was considering filling his dredge floats with closed-cell foam, ensuring that there would be no area available within each float for flooding.
Sixteen to One Gold Mine: Going Underground - Pt II
We descended hunched over, down a long, steep, wooden staircase to the 1,000-level.
21st Century American Gold Rush: Rare Earth Elements
The burning question I needed answered was why didn’t the deposit ever get mined of at least one of the valuable minerals? A couple of reasons have come to light.
Sixteen to One Gold Mine: Unique Challenges and Potential Rewards - Pt I
Many of the Sixteen to One’s challenges arise from its unusual geology and the pocket characteristics of the ore deposits.
What About Palladium?
Palladium may well be an underexplored element and therefore an opportunity for prospectors and geologists. This is because they are often less than obvious and other than the native metals, a chemical analysis of samples is required to identify PGM-enriched rocks.
Montana Gold and Sapphires Revisited
I had a chance to visit the operation in person and talk with Neal. I was very impressed and I think our readers could learn a lot about building up a commercial placer operation from scratch…
A Third Generation Small-Scale Hardrock Revival
One of his friends had 700 feet of small-gauge mine track and a hundred-year-old track bender laying out in his back 40; plus he also wanted to join the team. Perfect.
The Summer of ‘81
When it was all setup and running, you had everything coming off the dredge riffles into the boil box. At the hole section, some of the water got sucked down and pulled a lot of black sand and over heavies…
The “Chuck It Out” Nugget
This was no ordinary nugget. It had not traveled very far from its nearby source, and that did mean a lot, as we were searching for the source of several such nuggets found during a gold rush that occurred in 1859.
High Sulfidation Epithermal Deposits
They tend to be big, coming in large to extremely large sizes. They can also be amazingly rich and produce huge amounts of very high-grade ore.
PLP Update
All 28 groups listed agree that Section 402 of the Clean Water Act does not apply and no dredge miner should be asking a state or federal agency for such a permit.
How to Refine Silver—Pt II
Silver recovery from low-level solutions is frequently done in a cell that has a cathode with 2 to 5 or more times the surface area as the anode.
Traders At JPMorgan Chase Indicted For Rigging Metal Prices
…the men sought to “inject false and misleading information about the genuine supply and demand for precious metals futures contracts into the markets, and to deceive other participants”…
My First Carolina Nugget
On my weekends off I spent many hours dredging the Second Broad River from Cane Creek Road up to the headwaters. I used a three-inch dredge with air and graduated to a five-inch with air.
How to Refine Silver—Pt I
Silver refining has been used from ancient times to change the characteristics of the metal. Early metallurgists refined silver by heating it a couple hundred degrees above its melting point and holding the metal at an elevated temperature for a period of time.
PLP Update: How to Restore The Rights of Suction Dredge Miners
A two-pronged approach is necessary to restore suction dredging; federal preemption needs to be established as addressed above via petition; and clarification from the EPA is needed to establish that no Section 402 permit is necessary when there is no “addition” of a pollutant.