On Makro Gold Racer, Can Discrimination Allow 50%+ Digs On Gold?

[Dana-SierraBlaster]

Have been lurking here for about a year. Just signed up.  Heard of gold racer from Rick Solinski who is the cameraman above with Scott Chiara finding a tiny piece of gold. 

 

Steve, thanks for you superb reviews!  We met at the Reno GPAA show 3 years ago when we announced the SierraBlaster, you enjoyed the video of the 13 foot boulder blast. 

The above video convinces me that gold racer can find the small sizes.   The next question does the gold racer have the ability to eliminate most non-gold digs if the user is willing to walkover lets say 1/3 of the gold targets?   I prospect in Yuba/Feather area on gravel bars, canyon walls and hydraulic pits.  In all metal its going to be maybe 98% non-gold targets. 

On gravel bars primary purpose would be to find the pay streak and mark it, as 2 flakes and 5-15 colors is fairly typical on the top in a pan, and hope for a quartzie.  Have seen a 1.5 oz quartzie with 1/3rd oz gold go right thru a sluice, many are left behind.  And want to check sluice tailing every few hours too.

1.  If am willing to bypass 1/3 of the gold do you, or anyone else here, think one can dig over 50% gold with the gold racer in a 98% non-gold target area?

2.  When you get 50-70 readings what percent end up being gold in your experiences?

3. Crevice verification:  Why scrape em or blast them (the plan with SierraBlaster) if there is no gold in them?  Are bedrock crevices any different in terms of depth/discrimination than dirt/gravel?

 

Thanks in advance, Dana

 

[Steve Herschbach]

Hi Dana,

I just think the Sierra Blaster is the greatest product!

Any good VLF can give you a very decent elimination of ferrous targets, like 90% plus. However, you will still dig bullets, bullet fragments, shell casings, fishing sinkers along some creeks, aluminum items, brass buttons and rivets, etc. It is therefore impossible to put numbers or percentages on this sort of thing. I have been places where every non-ferrous target is gold, but I have been to far more locations where I end the day with nothing but bullets and shell casings.

Detection depth is not really affected by crevices per se, but gold in crevices is often on edge making it harder to detect.

The good news? I am not sure why you would even consider passing up 1/3 of the gold. The difference between running in all metal and running in discrimination mode is pretty minimal on the newer machines. In fact, the Gold Racer hits a bit harder in disc mode than in all metal. The main difference is all metal gives a wider, broader response whereas disc modes need you to be a bit better centered over the target, so when running in disc it is very important to keep your sweeps tight.

[Dana-SierraBlaster]

Hi Steve,  Thanks for answer!.  In Nevada I hit a lot of copper bullets and brass casings, in Yuba area more lead and occasional aluminum (outside of the plentiful iron).  The area has seen few humans since jacketed bullets came along (remote), but lots of lead in river and not fishing weights, maybe bullets but shaped like nuggets, been beaten by river.  Ah some copper wire (blasting wire from mines) and Levi copper rivets, took me a while to figure what those were.

Guess need to test it out to know for sure.  Scott says he thinks gold racer has best discrimination he has ever seen.  When you mention the non-gold stuff above, is that digging things outside of 50-70 range?

If you only dug 50-70 do you find a lot of non-gold?

 

Thanks again, great site, Dana

 

[Steve Herschbach]

Oops, I thought you meant 50 - 70 targets, not digging targets that only fall in the 50 - 70 target id range.

There is no "gold range" per se. The ferrous/non-ferrous split in theory occurs at 40 but on my Gold Racer most common ferrous targets hit hard at about 21. Anything higher than that gets my interest depending on the situation. Target VDI numbers are a combination of how conductive a target is and how large it is. If the area only had small gold it is fully possible all the gold would read in the 35 - 50 range. Digging only the 50-70 range could miss all the gold but fill your pockets with lead and brass. In other locations with larger gold most of it might fall into the 50 - 70 range and if lead and brass were absent you could dig just nuggets.

A detector does not know what metal is under the coil. It cannot tell gold from other non-ferrous metals. There is nothing magical about the 50 - 70 range. It just means medium largish non-ferrous metal. What the percentages work out to is fully dependent on the size and mix of targets in the ground and that varies in every location. The rule when nugget detecting is dig all targets, and at a minimum dig all non-ferrous targets.

There are some tricks, like if you get into a ton of 22 shell casings you can determine the VDI number they generate and ignore just those readings. There will be nuggets that read the same as a 22 shell casing and they will be missed. However, the casings are all identical and the nuggets will all be different so odds are you can skip all the shell casings but still get some gold.

Tell you what, tomorrow I will run some gold and some non-ferrous trash under my Gold Racer and post a picture to show you what I mean.

Some Gold Nugget VDI Numbers

[Dana-SierraBlaster]

Steve, Wonderful.  And your post alone really helps.  If I am trying to map the pay streak on a bar, 35-50 can do the mapping of the pay steak, without digging, and the comparative richness of the streak.  Then if see something 50-70 or 80, dig it as may be a quartzie. 

We used to do a grid sampling by panning, 10' grid.  It really worked and found some hot spots, but mapping even 50x100 zone takes some time with a pan.  With the gold racer finding small flakes with full size coil, think could do it much faster and with many more samples as its continuous, not 10' jumps.  And maybe get lucky and hit one of those quartzies in the process.

 

Look forward to your results, Dana

[LipCa]

8 hours ago, Dana-SierraBlaster said:

Steve, Wonderful.  And your post alone really helps.  If I am trying to map the pay streak on a bar, 35-50 can do the mapping of the pay steak, without digging, and the comparative richness of the streak.  Then if see something 50-70 or 80, dig it as may be a quartzie. 

We used to do a grid sampling by panning, 10' grid.  It really worked and found some hot spots, but mapping even 50x100 zone takes some time with a pan.  With the gold racer finding small flakes with full size coil, think could do it much faster and with many more samples as its continuous, not 10' jumps.  And maybe get lucky and hit one of those quartzies in the process.

 

Look forward to your results, Dana

I didn't get that from Steve's link.

I don't think a "35-50" range will locate a pay streak??  Especially "finding small flakes with a full size coil".

It will not locate many small flakes in that range. and then not at much depth.

If you look at Steve's pictures, the small flakes have readings well under 35.

It would have to be REALLY RICH....

 

 

[Dana-SierraBlaster]

2 minutes ago, LipCa said:

I didn't get that from Steve's link.

I don't think a "35-50" range will locate a pay streak??  Especially "finding small flakes with a full size coil".

It will not locate many small flakes in that range. and then not at much depth.

If you look at Steve's pictures, the small flakes have readings well under 35.

It would have to be REALLY RICH....

 

 

Hi LipCa,    In terms of finding the pay streak iron is a good indicator too, so guess for doing that casting a wide net makes sense.  There is a fair amount of gold pieces the size that Chiara found in video, right up on top, top 2-3" and in grass, and 10' away sideways to stream nada, not even a color. So guessing the gold racer can actually find the pay streak based on gold alone. The average detector would not see them.  Have waved a sample bottle of fine gold past detector coils and no signal.    Thanks for your comments, I am not an expert at all on detectors. 

[LipCa]

Sounds rich

[schiara]

Steve exceptional write up. I totally agree that nugget shape plays a part in where the VDI numbers on the Gold Racer. As well as the distance from coil on small gold, they seem to have better tone the closer to the coil, and swing speed helps also. I have lowered my tone break from the default 40 to 25, and although I will be missing some smaller gold it saves me a ton of digging iron. But what I have noticed is the smaller nuggets tend to have a half and half sound, so I will dig them. but the solid low tones I leave alone.

[Dana-SierraBlaster]

Hi Scott (I presume),  Impressive video.   How much smaller than that piece can your gold racer see?

BTW I did find my jacket after WMA meeting, still serviceable, but a raccoon or something chewed on it a bit.

Have read the manual, the pinpoint thing sounds interesting.   Have you used it?  Is it accurate?

Regards, Dana