Prospecting & Detecting
Dry Washing to Capture Fine Gold
November 2013 by Ray Mills
There may be lots of smaller gold I cannot hear with a detector, but it looks just fine in my pan once it is out of the crevice.
Give That Club Claim A Chance
My first trip to the claim was the tip-off that there might be larger gold to be found. I brought my puffer drywasher and my dad to a local prospecting club outing that was held at the claim.Following the Clues
It took me awhile before I finally got a nice mellow signal. My nugget turned out to weigh in about two dwt (pennyweight). Over the next few hours, we all picked up a few more nuggets apiece.
Gold Detecting Strategies for Hydraulic Mines and Debris Flows
The old timers typically washed these areas down to bedrock, and some areas appear terraced. I would imagine this is because these hydraulic mines were generally where the miners found old Tertiary river channels on the sides of mountains that were gold-bearing.
A Model Mining Operation
After he excavates the ore down to bedrock, he goes over the bedrock with a metal detector to ensure he didn't leave any gold behind before he backfills the area.
Detectors Versus Pans
Mike scored the best with a total of one-half ounce of gold nuggets. Tom, Brian and Greg each had pieces in the one and a half pennyweight range. The rest of us had small gold and nothing like these three.
Extracting & Smelting Your Gold
Unfortunately, not all the gold that we prospectors find is pretty, or appealing to the eyes. They are not all nice, bright, shiny nuggets with lots of character that carry high collector value.
The Mineral Range Districts of Utah
Most of the commercial mineral deposits are on the south and southwest part of the range between Minersville and Milford, though small amounts of gold and silver have also been found in iron-rich outcrops in the basalt to the south of Milford.
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The Bawl Mill
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• One Potato, Two Potato...
• Proper Placer Sample Processing
• Strategic Metals—Part I
• Are There Any Good Prospects Left?
• Ophir—Possibly the Best Kept Secret in Alaska!
• Southern Oregon's Illinois River—A Lesson in Sharing
• Using Sucker Guns to Find Gold
• Making Adjustments to Catch Fine Gold
• The Subsurface Suction Dredge
• A Few Thoughts About Successful Nugget Hunting
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices







