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+--- Thread: Has anyone here done any gold panning? (/showthread.php?tid=2252)
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RE: Has anyone here done any gold panning? - Michigan Swamp Buck - 03-28-2025
Realizing that the State of Michigan and even the Federal Government will certainly deny any permits and licenses I would need to do commercial mining, I have thought about how it might be done.
The standard open pit mine method is where you dig a big hole with heavy equipment and load the material into an industrial-sized sluice. That would seem to be the go-to method for a commercial mining operation. However, the reports I was reading where they had the local depth of the bedrock information were from test drilling operations. They identified all the soil horizon layers and their depths to the bedrock with drilling samples. This reminded me of when I watched the crew drill my home water well when they brought up mostly sand and a little clay as they went down to 100 feet.
So, drilling a series of wells would be far more feasible, esp. if these are merely to "test for minerals". I imagine you could force water down, bring up the material as a slurry, and then refill the well with the processed sand from the sluice to prevent sinkholes. A slant drilling operation would cover the most area.
Of course, any large-scale mining project would destroy the natural flow of the watershed from my property down to the big swamp and river beyond. This would include the water flow below the surface of the swamp. So I'm merely speculating about the "what if I could" ideas of a commercial mining operation on the property.