Other Mining Tools

There are a lot of other mining tools that can make the recovery of gold a lot easier and more efficient. Buying them is an option as well as building them. There are some that are expensive to buy and to build. In the cases where a certain mining tool is expensive, the prospector will most likely need to do more mining in order to justify the acquisition. There are also other types of tools that are not complicated and can either be bought at a cheaper price of be built as well. Whether the active amateur wants or even needs it, some of the tools that are available depend entirely on what the person is interested in getting into and the amount of time he is going to be spending on prospecting.

Retort and Condenser
A retort is a device that mercury is heating in to where it vaporizes and it leaves a residue of gold to get further refined. The condenser takes care of bringing the mercury back to its original state.

Rotary Mill
A rotary mill is utilized for reducing hard rock ore down to a fine mesh so that it can then get panned or sluiced. Commercially they are used in huge sizes, however they can be found in smaller and portable sizes. If you are a weekend prospector that has run into a good smaller lode deposit and you want to work on it, you will be interested in finding a lot of portable mills that are advertised on internet sites, magazines etc. in most cases rotary mills weigh around one hundred and sixty to two hundred pounds and can be used with a hand crank. They have the ability of crushing ore to around 200 mesh, which is perfect for the pan or sluice.

Mortar
Having a cast iron mortar and pestle is a convenient thing for lode prospectors to have. Mortars can be found in different sizes and are used to crush ore, which is then panned. In prospecting, the ones that are anywhere from six to ten pounds are better to use. The ones that are bigger, such as the ones that weigh up to one hundred pounds are often times used to work smaller deposits by hand. When in operation, quartz or country rock is put inside the mortar where it is then crushed by a cast iron pestle. This is not an easy job to do by hand, but the ore can easily be crushed to 100 or 200 mesh, and this obviously makes the job of panning it easier.

Sorting Screen
Often times prospectors use sorting screen to classify material before they pan or sluice it. A sorting screen can be easily built from wooden frames and from which a quarter or half an inch screen is nailed onto. These are usually used in panning or in smaller types of operations. If a good amount of material needs to be classified, it is a better idea to build or get a grizzly that is made out of more sturdy material since the screen of these will not hold up when the material is very heavy especially when bigger rocks are inside of it.

Sieves
One other very important piece of equipment that is used for prospecting is a panning sieve. The sieve is used to be placed over the pan and is able to screen and classify the bigger cobbles and this helps to make the whole process simpler. The gold pan sieves are more accepted with the medium size pans and they can be found in almost any prospecting store that sells equipment for recovering gold.

There are also geochemical sieves that come in different meshes and are not expensive. These can be very useful to commercial assayers, and a weekend prospector can use them for sorting gold in into different finenesses.

Picks
A pick is an essential item for placer or lode prospectors as well as for the dredge operator. You will at least need the small portable ones that break down and can be carried on a belt for example. There are a lot of stores that have these available and these are very useful for prospecting trips in which a lot of walking is going to be done. Picks are part of the essential tools that all serious prospectors should have. In occasions when you need to work in bedrock crevices, a pick chisel crevicer is the perfect tool for it. It is not easy to break down heavy bedrock with a trowel or a mayhoe. Keep in mind though that this is not a lightweight tool and it should only be carried when you have found an area that you are going to be working on in bedrock that is not decomposed. Decomposed rock is easier to break down with tools that are not as heavy. You may also want to consider getting a little crevice tool as well because these are very helpful for when you want to dig out or pull out teensy pieces of gold.

Shovel
A miner that does not have a shovel is like a dog without a bone. Besides a pan and a pick, a shovel is one of the most basic tools for every type of prospecting or mining, whether it is placer or lode. A shovel is very necessary and will help the prospector be able to dig up dirt into his pan. There are a couple of basic types, one of these has an extended handle and the other has a smaller handle. The long handled one will help you not to break your back; on the other hand the shorter one is more suitable when it comes to moving around and carrying it. It is also suggested you have a hand garden trowel with you as it will help you be able to get to those places that are difficult to get to.

Tweezers
Incredible as it may sound, tweezers are actually also part of some of the most basic items for panning. While you can use any kind of tweezers, such as the ones that women used to pull out their eyebrows, the ideal is to obtain the longer commercial ones. These kinds of tweezers are made for different types of industries, however some of the best ones are the ones made for jewelers. These are around six inches in length and can be found in nearly all rock shops that also have this type of equipment. Some people like to file down the ends to around one sixteenth of an inch wide and like the insides to be very flat as they say it is easier to use this way.

It is very common when panning, crevicing etc, or when a person is just classifying sand, to find flecks of gold. These are a lot easier to remove if you have the use of some good tweezers and make sure you have a bottle so you can place the flecks inside of it.