Another thing to consider is that the actual "staking" of the claim is what makes it legal if followed up with the proper recording. It's the old "gold rush mentality"...first to stake the site is the owner.   A person has up to 90 days after the staking to file the paperwork (although I wouldn‘t recommend taking that long. Better to do it right away to prevent problems). So, in an area where claim markers are up, you may not see the claim at the BLM for 3 months. This is a real sticky issue and causes many problems as you can imagine, but it is the law.   If you find an area you want to claim and it has already been staked but is not recorded, you have to wait 91 days before putting up your stakes and removing the old ones, even if they've been there for years. Take a newspaper with the current date with you and take a photo of the old stakes with the date on the newspaper clearly in the photo as evidence that you waited the legal time and be prepared !   These things can get messy.  Also, the BLM and the County Recorder will take anyone's money.  They don't get involved in claim disputes and just because you filed and paid your fees won't protect you from claim jumpers until the judge rules in your favor.   ......... rf 

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04.19.06  AGP   Gold - Buy, Sell, or Hold?
The question is not as simple as “sell or hold”?!! The question should be, “what’s the bottom line if I sell”.
I was talking to someone who recently sold a few ounces to a big refiner.   You can find many good refinery companies in the ICMJ magazine.  He was sure he was making the right decision because they would pay him something like 97% of spot and only charged something like $35 for the assay.   Sounds good right?
The thing he forgot to mention is that all refiners pay their percentage AFTER their assay!!
So, if their assay comes in at say 80% gold, they will give you 97% of 80% and charge you an assay fee to tell you what their assay was.   They also keep all the associated minerals they find in the other 20% of your gold.
So, 97% of 80% = 77.6% and that means if spot gold is $615 an oz, you would actually be getting around $477 an oz. Now this is just an example, and your assay may come out better than that.  Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that any of the assayers would not give you a completely honest assay.   All I am saying is that when you send your gold off, you are putting it in their hands to trust completely, and you need to realize you won’t be getting 97% of $615 or (Spot).
So, what’s the answer? I don’t know if it’s time to sell right now or not.    I have decided to hold my gold for awhile longer. But if you decide to sell, try to get “Spot” or better for your gold.   What are the ways to do that?   If you only have a small quantity of fine gold, the tried and true method of printing up colorful, interesting “prospecting cards” with a little story of how it is genuine gold from a local area etc, etc. and sell it at swap meets or tourist locations.   Sell it in little one gram bags or bottles for a little over spot if you can, or as much as the market will bare.   If you have nuggets your best bet is to locate a “collector” willing to pay extra for “nugget value” because "that piece would just fit into his collection".   For that you will need exposure.   You can put it on eBay and hope for the best, or put it in a jewelry or prospecting store on consignment (if you trust the owner).   Another method of getting the most from your gold is to make it into jewelry to sell.   There are probably other ways to get the most from your gold and if anyone has other ideas on this subject, I would be real interested in hearing how you go about it.  I put this nugget into a simple coin bezel and probably doubled it's value.

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3.6.06  Drywashing
Today a friend and I were out drywashing with my Keene 12V DW.   I figured out a way to strap a backpack frame to it and was able to carry it to the washes we were working, but it weighs about 40lbs and that makes a pretty good load by itself.   So, it takes two people or two trips; one for the DW and one for everything else.   It can run a fairly steady stream of material if you classify it down to 1/8" first.   With 1/4" material the flow gate  will occasionally clog up.   It's a chore to pre-screen your material, but you will get better recovery that way and no plug-ups.   The oversize material I dry pan and visually check pretty fast. We were using a Vac Pac vacuum and crevice tools with buckets and screens so we only had the DW running about an hour all day. The rest of the time we spent digging material to run.   The battery is a 12V gel-cell BMW motorcycle battery and weighs about 7 or 8 lbs, but I haven't run it down in a days operation yet.  Read my article on DW'ers on my Beck Drywasher page.

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Nov 20.05 AGP

The most amazing coincidence happened this evening. The story starts a few weeks ago when I was detecting one afternoon……. I started finding some small round-ish iron balls with a slight reddish-rust color to them.   They weren’t very big. I’d say about twice the size of BB’s and they weren’t really round at all. They were more like spherical.   They were very magnetic and easily picked up by the detector and my magnet, but I’d never seen anything exactly like them before.   It was very irritating to keep finding these things and I cussed them every time I dug one out.   They definitely weren’t buckshot or metal slag.   I mentioned the find to several people, but it all seemed destined to be just another one of life’s mysteries that go unanswered.

Tonight as I watched a program on the History channel it all became clear.   There was a program on about Meteor Crater and why no Meteor was ever found.   As I watched they were talking about how the scientists started finding small “Nickel Iron Spheres”, and then they showed a pile of them on a table.   THERE WERE MY LITTLE IRON BALLS ON TV !!!!   I don’t know how the show ended because I was so amazed by what I had just seen I jumped up to see if I could retrieve any of them or if they had all been tossed out.   They were saying something about how the Meteoroid had hit with such force and heat that only tiny fragments of it survived. I wonder now if these fragments could have been blown several hundred miles south from Meteor Crater??   Not only were my little iron balls identified now… they were nickel/iron meteorites.   It’s amazing how the pieces of a puzzle fall together sometimes....rf

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Nov 9.05 AGP     Sampling today.

I am often asked about the best way to set up a sluice or poop tube or other piece of recovery equipment.   When I get into their concerns it usually turns out that they are concerned about not seeing any or much gold in the clean up and they think that there must be something wrong with the equipment or the way it’s set up.   Nine times out of ten it isn’t the equipment at all.   Usually they don’t see gold because they haven’t found any gold. What usually happens is this:

A person has heard that gold can be found in a certain stream so they take a couple buckets and go out to the creek.   They look for all of the famous “indicators” such as: black sand, inside bend, behind boulders etc.   When they find a good looking spot, they think to themselves, “this spot has to have gold”.   So, they start shoveling and screening into the buckets to take home and process in their sluice.   What’s wrong with this picture????

The answer is they skipped the most important step… testing !!!   I keep telling everyone that “your pan is your friend”.   It always amazes me that people will spend hours digging and screening dirt (sometimes in 100 degree weather) thinking that gold is in the dirt…. When 5 minutes with a pan would tell them to move on.   The most important thing a newbie can do to find gold is LEARN TO PAN and test the dirt.   If the stream isn’t running or there aren’t any pools around, take a wash tub and a couple 5 gallon containers of water so you can do your testing.   Even really good gold streams like Lynx  Creek will be very spotty.   You won’t find gold evenly distributed along it banks.   You will find long stretches of shoreline with little showing of gold at all and then spots where it will start to “pan out”.   Today I tested about a dozen spots in a 200 foot area and found gold in each spot.   However, what I was looking for was a match head, or 4 or 5 pinheads to a pan or 40-60 specks of flood gold.   This is my “minimum showing” to set up a sluice or screen and take home buckets…..your minimum might be different, but IF YOU DON’T PAN OUT GOLD IN THE FIELD, DON’T TAKE IT HOME WITH YOU!   It won’t magically appear just by taking it home or running it through a dredge or drywasher.

I was out sampling today, and all of a sudden I realized, “this is what I’m always telling people”. So, I stopped and got the camera out to show how I do it.   Now there is no right or wrong way, but I thought someone might be interested in seeing “one” way to do it.   Let me describe my tools.

Bottom row from the left:

Pan and snuffer bottle.   3 gallon bucket.   Flexible scoop cut from one gallon bleach bottle, and a ¼” screening bucket home made from stainless steel screen cut into a circle and melted into the bottom flange with a propane torch.   I have smaller screens, but these are the ones I had with me today. 

In the dig hole from the left: 3 prong garden fork. Large size Estwing rock hammer, and a plastic detector spoon.

Top of hole from the left: Heavy canvas tool bag with assorted wires, small brushes, trowel, tweezers, and a small chisel. Beside the bag lies a 3” round scrub brush with tough bristles.

I also carry in my backpack canvass sample bags, larger pick and shovel, and my vlf detector (optional). But, this will give you an idea of a basic test kit.   The process is pretty simple really.   When you find a spot you want to test, clear the rocks and grass away with the hand fork, break up the surface with the rock hammer, and rake or spoon the material into the bleach bottle scoop.   Then dump it into the screened bucket which is inside your regular bucket.   Sift the material through and you are ready to pan.   When you pan try and do every pan as if you were in a speed panning competition.   The idea here is not to retrieved every speck of gold, but to see if you have ANY gold!!!!   If not, you can move on.   That’s what testing is about.

I did find a nice match head today along with my fine gold, but if I show it someone is sure to say…….. “small gold’ “small gold” ha ha ha ha.   Most of my gold is small gold and I’m just as proud of it as if it were nuggets.   ..rf

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9.21.05   AGP

When you use nitric, the mercury goes into solution - the nitric reacts with the mercury to dissolve it (but nitric wont dissolve gold by itself).   You then have soluble mercury salts in the liquid - a very deadly poison and fine powdered gold on the bottom of the jar.   You can then pour off the liquid, and neutralize it with a bit of arm and hammer baking soda.   If you then put a copper penny in, the copper goes into solution and displaces the mercury, but the mercury amalgamates with the copper the same as it does with the gold and you have a hard to separate mix of the two.   If you put in iron, the mercury also reacts with the iron, and iron goes into solution while the mercury comes out, but iron and mercury will not mix.   The mercury drops off the iron on to the bottom of the jar. After a couple days, you can pull out the nails, and pour off the liquid.   The liquid will be brown and full of iron. There will be little droplets of mercury on the bottom of the jar with a black powder which is powdered mercury.   You can wash the mercury metal off with water and run it through a chamois cloth and clean mercury will come out.   You'll get back maybe 75 or 80% of the mercury you started with.   After that its ready to reuse.   Iron wont bond to mercury - that’s why iron is better - you don’t have to work to separate them.   All that said, I am now using the blue bowl instead of mercury to catch my fines.   However when I get gold stained with mercury, I rinse it in dilute nitric acid to dissolve the mercury stain.... Reno Chris

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10.21.04 Metal detecting for Meteorites is not legal on valid claims.

Ron: you are really making me work on this one I went back through this thread from the beginning and condensed what I think to be the most relevant points from each of us.   I know a person won't be convinced unless their morals match their objective.   I'm in this thread for the guys out there who may be thinking that you are giving them the "excuse they were looking for" to metal detect on a valid claim.   I'm here to say- IT AIN'T SO.   I think the most compelling statement of fact to set this question to rest is Chris's last statement, read it several times.   Remember this question has nothing to do with what you are looking for (meteorites or anything else), or whether you actually remove any minerals, or whether you leave the claim with them.   The legal question here is what you are doing on the claim (your intent).   If the legal question were what you were looking for a person could say they were looking for anything, such as: bottle caps, coins, buttons etc. and then metal detecting would be legal on all valid claims.   Ron, you say you are for the mining laws, but you want to detect on valid claims?   It seems to me you want to have it both ways.   I metal detect also, and I would love to be able to detect anywhere.   But I see this as a moral issue.    I guess each of us will have to make that decision himself.   That isn't how my "Uncle" taught me right from wrong.  .......rf

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The questions should not be whether to get an MXT, Gold Bug, or Goldmaster?  Nor should the question be whether to use a Mono, DD or specialty coil?

The question should be: in the ground I plan to be working, will the VLF  (very low frequency) I own leave me frustrated and wishing I had bought a P.I. (pulse induction) detector?   If you decide to get the VLF and find it isn't working for you in a particular location, you have two choices. You can either find another area with less mineralization in the soil where VLFs do better, or you can put out the bucks and get a PI. That about sums up this problem. ....rf

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08.04.04   Nuggetshooter

It's bad enough when you start going political around here, but when you go Liberal, well you're going to raise the hairs on the back of a few necks.   As far as funding goes, maybe you should consider the possibility of letting the people keep their money instead of taxing them and then handing it out as big brother sees fit to this important cause or that important cause.   The fact is that everyone has an "important cause" that they feel should justify having someone else pay for it (the taxpayer).   The game is tax the people and then squabble over who gets it by screaming the loudest.   I don't want any part of it, and until we get a flat tax, I'll take every tax break I can find to keep from paying for "other peoples important causes".   Just a word to the wise ........rf

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07.26.04

Just one final word on mineralization.   Of course every area has it to one degree or the other.   And no, I'm not talking about black sand although that can be a problem.   Picture this: you just put down a large chunk of cash for a new VLF machine and you are out in the field for the first time.   You listened to the salesman and bought one with automatic ground tracking (the latest thing in ground mineral cancellation).   You are now ready to start your search...except there seems to be a signal right under your coil.   You dig for awhile, but can't seem to locate the target.   So, you forget it and start to go again.   You take a step and swing the coil one time and notice four or five distinct target signals.   Now you're excited.  You think you stumbled into a nugget patch on your very first time out.   Wrong! What you've just discovered is hot ground.   You look up and for as far as the eye can see there is this same material and a deep depression starts to take a hold of you.   This is my story.   From 1970 to 1995 each time I bought a new detector I thought maybe this one will work.   I was disappointed each time.   When I got my hands on my first P.I., I fell to my knees and thanked God.   After reading this story, if you haven't ever felt like that, then you haven't experienced the frustration of heavy mineralization!

Most AZ goldfield material is made up of cobbles from the size of a grain of sand to large boulders.   Many will have a slightly different magnetic effect on your coil.   The problem is that in this area many of them will have wide swings in differences having either a positive or negative effect on the detector.   Negative hot rocks are not the problem because they make a "bonging" sound with most models of VLF's.   The problem is the positive hot rocks.   They contain a larger amount of iron than the others and will make a target sound.   Now there are a few methods of trying to ID these problem signals.   These methods vary with detector and operator.   However, the bottom line is that many times they just don't work and a lot of those hot rocks will have you chasing "ghost signals".   Compound that by the fact that in this area they are found every few inches or feet apart and large ones could be buried deep. A lot of guys think their machine will ID them, or they have the experience to handle them, and that may be true to a certain degree in their local area. But as a rule, these are misconceptions that won't work when you get into a heavily mineralized area.   And besides, that's not even the point.   Picture the newbie out there- he's not going to be able to handle even the negative signals.   And the experienced guy- well he's spending valuable time trying to ID them one at a time- remember we're talking about finding them every few inches sometimes.   Who needs that?   That new detector will end up in the hall closet collecting dust for sure.   Not all areas are this way; if they were I wouldn't be having such a hard time convincing some people.   Most of the Eastern U.S. and patches of the West are well suited for VLF technology.   Like I said before, it is very hard to convince someone of something they have never seen or experienced.   So yes, I'm saying if you plan to metal detect in central AZ you need a PI machine unless you just want to hunt coins in the park twice a year. .......rf

  Hot Weather Sniping Rig and how to use it!
  9.15.09
 

Here’s a photo of my dry weather sniping outfit. I’m not saying this is the only way to do it, but this is the way I’ve found to be the most productive in the summertime over the years. At the top of the pic is my full sized backpack. Everything will fit in the pack except the little puffer drywasher which I carry in one hand and the mini-12V vacuum which I usually carry in a 5 gal bucket in the other hand. The puffer is a Sam Radding puffer and I’ve taken the hopper off to make it lighter and more compact. I added a light spring and string to operate it. Going clockwise you’ll see my 4 classifiers (1/2",1/4",1/8", and 20mesh) and my blue pan which all nest together very well and fit inside the pack. Next is a very nice set of quality knee pads. I don’t care how good your knees are, if you are a snipper you’ll need these. Under that is my Coleman 12V vac. It’s small and light and I only use it after I’ve swept the bedrock clean to extend the battery. Going left from there is a one gallon canvas sample bag and my sweatband. Some guys pay big bucks for sweatbands. I’ve found that if you take and old T-shirt and cut the bottom 1" or so off before you throw it out, that will make a perfect headband. Cut it and make one long piece. Now double it and it will fit around your head. Take the ends and stick them through the loop and tuck them under. It has just the right amount of stretch to stay put without binding.   Moving to the middle row on the left is the hose to my vac (I’ve also got a smaller nozzle for it) and then my main tool – the scoop (replaces a shovel). It’s cut from a one gallon plastic bottle. A heavy duty bottle is best. I get lemonade syrup at Costco in these bottles and they’re just right….strong and light and flexible..perfect!   Last is a heavy duty canvas tool bag for the crevice tools…the rock hammer (replaces a big pick on most trips), sturdy brush, 3 prong hand rake, smaller scoop, assorted brushes-wires-tweezers. The gray box is a 12V gel-cel motorcycle battery. There ya’ have it.
 

Here’s the process: 

Hike the dry creek beds and washes and look for a likely spot. Unload yourself and take everything out of the pack. Stack the classifiers on top of your bucket (not the 20 mesh). Now break up some dirt off bedrock with the hammer and rake and scoop it into the top classifier. Shake it all down through the screens Take your screens apart and visually check for nuggets and toss the rocks. I like the black Keene screens because you can “dry pan” them in the air and save only the last bit to check visually.  When you’ve got a gallon or two of 1/8" in the bucket you’re ready to drywash the sample. I simply hold the DW down with my left foot as I feed the material with my large scoop and pull the string with my finger. It only takes about 5 minutes to run a couple gallons. Dump the material from the riffles of the DW into your pan. Next dump all material from the pan into the big Scoop. Now use the 20mesh screen and screen the material back into your pan. At this point you will have +20mesh still in the screen and -20mesh in your pan. You could dry pan that material at this point, but it’s usually such a small amount I just transfer it to the big scoop again and dump it in the canvas sample bag to carry out. Now put the +20 mesh stuff into your pan and shake it into the corner. Using a few shakes and taps, spread it out and take a look for pickers. You can use your finger to dig through this a little to help the process. The gold in the pic is from yesterday. I tested four areas with a skunk before I found the paystreak.  This cleanup was from less than 2 gallons of screened material off bedrock. I think I’ll be going back with bigger equipment. That’s what sniping is all about.