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ha ha we got people who do that here but I would no sooner use a gravimeter than that. But for this type of deposit, I doubt your method. Unless you just want to find underground water sources and hope the gold got liberated there

Thanx hey. We all have to start somewhere. Experience is the best teacher, perhaps if my fingers get burnt a bit i will be wiser. at least the cattle will have water to drink wen we pump it out

I hear your logic hey. But its sink or swim with one shaft. when i say $20k shaft i mean including compressor, jack hammer, water pump e.t.c, they are once off capital equipment. a second shaft wouldnt even cost 5k. The idea is to avoid spending $48k with no guarrantees of returns. Here coring is usually done by bigger companies that are better resourced. From my observations so far, most of the miners who have sunk shafts nearby have come out good. Of course the risk of not getting anything is always there and real. i have already bought a compressor within the 20k budget

Thanx will read the book. i hear you but at this point other exploration methods are tricky. like i said top 7m is just mudstone, soil samples wouldnt really come out with much. they would probably be contaminated with gangue and ore from shafts dug nearby. trenching 7m is also tricky Diamond core drilling would be the best method but i feel the cost is prohibitive for a small scale miner. $48,000 is really a lot, infact its enough to dig 2 or 3 shafts. Labour is cheap and abundant in Zimbabwe, experienced labour for that matter. You wouldnt believe it but some labourers actually quoted me $2,000 to dig a shaft 50m deep. Of course you have to feed them and provide explosives for blasting.

I am starting a new gold mining project in Zimbabwe. I have contacted a Geologist and Geophysicist who did a Magnetic Survey on the target area. He also did a Resistivity and I.P. Survey. No other method was used and one has to dig 8 meters into mudstone to get to rocks of any kind as there are no out-crops. There are people mining near the area and his interpretations were also based on information he got from shafts dug by the other people nearby. He tells me to be more sure it would be prudent to diamond-core-drill ten 60 meter holes along the target area which would cost US$48,000 at US$80/meter. If I sink one 60-meter shaft in one of the positions identified by the surveys, it would cost me less than $20,000 to do so including buying the equipment and paying laborers. As an artisanal miner would it not make sense for me just sink a shaft and hope, because generally, people mining within 200-meter radius of this area are getting very high yields of gold, more than 100g/ton sometimes? The hope would be the reef is basically the same as it is the same greenstone belt. I have attached a report with pictures and diagrams that further explain the results. How much can I rely on the three methods of survey results? Gold Fan Report 10.12.2016.pdf