Small Mining Operations

We descended hunched over, down a long, steep, wooden staircase to the 1,000-level.

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.

Many of the Sixteen to One’s challenges arise from its unusual geology and the pocket characteristics of the ore deposits.

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.

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…

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

…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”…

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.

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.

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.

It was time to prime the pump and start the engine! Dan’s priming method is to use a small, submersible, 12-volt pump. My priming method is to use a hand-operated diaphragm pump.

“The evidence is clear—mineral deposits alone are not enough to attract precious commodity investment dollars...”

Please note that new mining claims filed on or after September 1, 2019, will be subject to the new fee schedule.

Another little gem of equipment he built was a nifty sample splitter. In order to get accurate assays, you need to have really good, representative samples for the assayer to process.

Not long after this, I was camped out with the geologist beside the Similkameen River where he showed me the evidence that an ancient channel existed on our claim.