The Alaska Gold Forums

Penetrometer; Another thought... I have been involved in exploration for GOLD as well as mining for a long time. One of the methods used in soil sampling is a penetrometer. It's basically a pipe, sometimes with a liner that is driven, usually by a machine into the ground. With it, you can get a vert...

Hi Slatco, For clarification, 1 ppm = 1 gram per metric tonne. Because one gram is defined as one cubic centimeter of water, that's 1 cubic meter of water or 2205 pounds (avdp) by weight. :) I presume your sample was a bulk sample taken over a wide area. I also presume you are planning on testing th...

Economy of scale: In 2009, after getting washed off East beach at Nome the prior year, I arrived at McGrath, in the interior of Alaska. I was waiting for my baggage as all of the other incoming passengers. I was keen to watch the locals as they observed me with that "Oh no! Not another one of those!...

Anomalous GOLD; Prospectors are faced with an awesome challenge to find GOLD. That's because we are looking for a needle in a hay stack even in areas with anomalous amounts of GOLD. Consider a prospective area to have one part per million - an amount 250 times more than the "relative abundance" of G...

Canadian Shield; The Canadian shield covering 8,000,000 square kilometers contains what is becoming the largest source of precious metals and diamonds on the planet! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield#:~:text=in%20the%20background.-,Geology,effect%20of%20post%2Dglacial%20rebound. There's ...

The chase is on; Where do we begin the chase? The short answer is; "with a discovery". The statement has been made that "every creek and river in Alaska has GOLD in it". Just for the sake of argument, let's assume it's true. From casual observation and listening to all of the discoveries gone bad an...

Prospecting or mining? Prospecting begins way before a shovel hits the dirt. Research needs to be done on areas known to have GOLD mineralization, Study of maps that show GOLD mining districts will be a guide. Not all mining districts are GOLD mining districts. :o The other option is "Wild cat" pros...

Two days later...

Gold reached a new high at 10:20 AM:

2191.70 USD

2954.19 CAD

- Geowizard

The tools are different: All good points. One of the adjustments for anyone new to hard rock mining is learning to use tools that are designed to apply force to break and crush rock. If they can crush rock, they require a high level of care. Not only is the GOLD different, the tools are different. I...

PickAxe, Excellent! There are many points of discussion that need to be addressed. Gold recovered by hard rock methods represents a different "species" of GOLD. :o This GOLD has not been subjected to the forces of erosion and "rumble tumble" of placer GOLD. Hard rock gold is recovered from a "fresh ...