Prospecting & Detecting
What Equipment Do I Need?
October 2014 by Chris Ralph
Getting started in prospecting often requires the purchase of some equipment, but one can spend as little as $10 and be finding gold or spend thousands and also be finding gold—yet you will probably have many more opportunities and possibilities with more and better equipment.
Prospecting The East Fork San Gabriel Canyon, Southern California
I have found gold more than 200 feet above the river. It was not unusual for nuggets of an ounce or more to be found in these deposits, but fine gold and flakes are much more common.
Placer Channel Sampling
Sampling gold placers can be rewarding, but remember to treat the samples so you are not high grading or low grading your results. Learn the rules and apply them so your samples are accurate.
Detecting A Trashy Area
Some prospectors would have assumed it was another shotgun shell, but in this case it was 17.6-pennyweight nugget!
Coprolite—A Prospector's Tale
Gold nuggets come in all forms, but I never expected that dinosaur nuggets would too, and at a decent price.
Tips and Tricks
Many suggestions had some pieces or parts that would work some of the time, but Dredger Dan’s suggestion was, in my humble opinion, the cleanest, cleverest, and most dependable.
Recent Prospecting in Plumas County
Plumas has been historically rich in gold because of its favorable geology. The Melones Fault trends north-south through the county and many rich gold-bearing districts lie along its course.
Fluorescent Mineral Prospecting
Ultraviolet light is divided into three levels, labeled A, B and C depending on the wavelength, with C having the shortest wavelength and the most energy.
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