I’d like to offer some practical comments about staking and maintaining mining claims. Owning your own claim is the dream of many prospectors. I’ve made good money off my mining claims, both from the minerals I have found on them as well as from leasing out some of my claims to larger mining and exploration companies.

"The practice of gleaning goes back thousands of years"

While recovery rates are important, they must necessarily be secondary to the volume of material processed. Running more material at lower recovery rates is generally preferable to increasing the efficiency of the system.

George was considering filling his dredge floats with closed-cell foam, ensuring that there would be no area available within each float for flooding.

The gold in this area can get quite large. Most of the pieces are about half a pennyweight on average.