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How much does Mick charge for the modification?

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/hbcH51pPMzjRt8dJ/?mibextid=WC7FNe looks like it will be submersible, possibly competing with the Nokta Score and Double Score. Figures, after I just bought an Xterra Pro.

Your Large Cent looks to be in nice condition. Those are some pretty woods that you are hunting in. Glad you made a new friend.

That small Evo coils looks great on it!

Was going out a few times a year but now they are running people off and threatening to confiscate detectors, quads, trucks & jail time. Especially now with the Ukraine war and new weapons development/testing going on. The new longer range Excalibur artillery shell targets are pretty close to the southern prospecting areas.

The first day tied in with Simon's subject in another thread. The other days need more comments about where and what to be interesting. I'm more focused now on getting to my Rye Patch trip.

Hi Chris, There are good goldfields out near Randsburg that you can get to in a passenger car. Check out a book by Jim Straight. Lots of good info on the Mojave arae. He was from the IE also. Happy hunting

The downside to the lack of tourists is they're not there to drop finds for Erik to find. When I went to Magnetic Island it was cheaper to fly overseas than to Townsville from Brisbane and catch the ferry across even though it's in the same state, so it doesn't really help the situation. I'm in NZ and we get more Aussies come to Queenstown than go to Magnetic Island by a significant margin, and our growth of Aussie tourists is increasing not slowing, so it's not the "cost of living crisis" causing it. Aussies continuing to flock to resort | Otago Daily Times Online News (odt.co.nz) Erik maybe needs to jump on the ferry and detect in Townsville a bit more with the bigger population there has to be more finds available. The downside is not much swimming in summer at the beaches because of the stingers, and crocodiles 🙂

Yes I was running large gold. I didn't have a lot of time when I did the gold test. 8" commander coil was calibrated for the E1500 when I took it out to do the gold test. You guys that actually have one and can experiment with all the different coils will have to tell the rest if us what works best. From what you're saying, the 9" Elite would have probably have done better on the small gold. I'll just leave it at that. I personally was more interested in seeing how the E1500 would work for coins and relics. Based on what I experienced, if it ever comes available in the US I'd most likely grab one for relic hunting.

Looks impressive through a microscope. Too bad I can hardly see it with naked eyes 😄

https://sites.tufts.edu/fellsgeology/files/2021/08/Chap7StructuralGeology.pdf part of the full document found here: https://sites.tufts.edu/fellsgeology/introduction-to-geology/

I have never seen a type of fissure in Jasper like this. The yellowish part that is surrounded by white still has the same appearance as the rest of the huge 61 Pound boulder. The look of an igneous rock with vesicles, that were filled with chalcedony. What could cause this Fissure or breakage? (They are more prominent in the photos, but it's there) Maybe it formed in a vein and somehow caused it. This was found in lowa in a farm field where you can find nice Jasper pieces and even glacial erratics, big or small. I also wonder if it is a glacial erratic because of all of the scratches on it. However, the scratches aren't all moving parallel (glacial striations), but I also read that they don't need too. Geology has been MUCH harder for me to learn than I expected. Is this a glacial erratic and perhaps that contributed to the fissures? If not, could someone maybe help me understand this? It's looks like part of the same Igneous vesicle rock just broke off slightly. The fissure and breakage isn't large especially in comparison to the stone, but it's present I don't see any crystals on close examination with a flashlight anywhere and the white parts don't look like crystals. When zoomed in on the photo they sort of do, but not to my The fissures/ breakage have pyrite in them. Its as if a small part of the rock slightly cracked off where the silica content was not as high. I am lacking in understanding to figure this out myself. Hope to hear from y'all!

Yes, that seems to be how it is these days. Unfortunately. Pays to love the outdoors & the adventures. Gold or no gold. D4G

It's pretty good how the Target ID performs on coins etc even at depth, here it is far more stable and accurate than the Manticore and Equinox. I assume you were in the large gold setting when looking for these bigger targets, it adds quite a bit of depth. What made you choose an 8" mono for the gold depth tests? The Algo really benefits from spiral coils, I'd not choose a coil like the Sadie or 8" Commander to be coils of choice for small gold, my 10" full spiral X-coil makes the Sadie look terrible. I think that Coiltek 9" Elite is a semi spiral of some kind, I've never seen inside it but have been told it wouldn't be viable to make it a full spiral in that size. I've never used that coil, although I'd like to compare it to my 10". A lot of reports are the 12x8" NF EVO can be a bit noisy and the 14x9" EVO is the better choice but the detector is really only as good as the coil on it so finding the best optimal coil for the task is vital. I'd certainly pick that 9" Elite over the Sadie though for small gold just because of how much better it performs with Spirals. And for the benefit of new users to the detector some tips. It's very important to have a calibrated coil, especially if hunting in Ultra fine gold mode, I've forgotten a few times to calibrate as I change coils a lot in messing around and in ultra fine especially the difference is noticeable. The next is the threshold, you're notice the little signal lines bouncing around under the threshold, set the threshold too high and you'll lose faint signals, however having it higher like that helps with high EMI areas as you can keep the EMI from peaking above the threshold so it will run silent even in higher EMI areas, the lower you can get that threshold while remaining stable the better the small gold and faint deep signal target performance is. I couldn't overly tell how high you had it set in the video but it did look pretty high. First, it's vital for tiny gold hunting to be in the best frequency range to keep the EMI down, the Auto frequency scan works very well, but it's wise to experiment by using the manual chart and just testing the other very low frequency slots to see if they're better. This is the frequency screen, and the selected frequency is the white one on the left, in this image the other good ones are slightly worse than that one but in the real world often there are quite a few that are very close being as low as the auto selected one, so you can manually select them and check, sometimes they will be the better selection. Now the reason you want that EMI to be as low as possible is the threshold. As you can see in this image. You'll see in this screen the Detection threshold, any target that comes in under that line with the real time scrolling signal is silent, above that line is a signal. It's a cut off for noise, so when you've got your EMI as good as it can be you can lower that threshold line allowing faint deep or small targets to break through the threshold. This is why like all detectors the sensitivity you're in matters, you can in fact find faint tiny gold targets better in some cases in a lower sensitivity than a higher one by having your detector tuned properly in this regard. Some people may go and up that threshold to make the detector run even smoother, but if doing so they'll lose faint deep and tiny gold signals. The lower you can run the detector's threshold line the better and lower than default is better too. The other thing you can do is hunt in pinpoint mode in heavy trash areas, just turn pinpoint on and leave it there, you'll have to re-tune occasionally as it can get thrown out but it speeds up the process a lot. Pinpoint mode gets a bit less depth but when hunting in pinpoint mode you can actually turn up the gain a bit higher than in normal mode to compensate a bit for it. I wouldn't recommend hunting in pinpoint mode in cleaner ground, just heavy trash areas to speed up the process. Just remember to swing slowly for best results.

Sniffed out an 1833 Matron today along with some flat buttons, lead and pewter bits. Also a what looks like a shoe buckle fragment and what I think is a squished tin whistle mouthpiece (upper left). I was also visited by a dragonfly. It had actually landed on my finds pouch and stayed with me a bit before I put it on a branch. Lodge.

Nice. So the photo journey for us begins. D4G

I spent a chunk of Saturday morning calling and visiting local gun shops. The first location that knew something of Civil War bullets also pointed out the “wadcutters” as newer bullets (but I don’t know how much newer). He was of the opinion the rest of the bullets were a mix of newer and older, but he wasn’t interested in looking through them to see which was which. The second location pulled out a small pile of bullets with an extra ring incised around the nose cone and said those are indicative of newer bullets (again, I don’t know how much newer). He said for the rest of the bullets he was 70% certain they were either from the Civil War or from the same weapons in the years following the Civil War. However, he also said his primary area of expertise was more World War I forward, and I should probably check with more experts as each expert would have his own opinion. In the attached photos, the larger batch of bullets is the group the second person was 70% certain were older. The two in the bottom row and the one by itself at the very bottom are the three that might be pistol bullets. The one by itself also has the extra ring cut in the nose and might be newer. Of those three, the one with the extra ring is the only one with obvious rifling marks. The picture of 14 bullets is the group which the second shop thought may be newer. In the picture of five bullets (included in the 14), I tried to get close enough to show the extra ring cut around the nose cone (indication of newer bullet per the second gun shop). There is one more local gun shop which may reportedly be of help. However, he won’t be open until Monday.

One downside of the XP brand is service. I have 2 XP's and while the detectors are pretty bombproof they seem to have many cables and do dads that are subpar (break easy/items to lose). I also own Minelab and cant say enough good things about their customer support. They are always a phone call away. Pretty much around the clock. If USA is closed then I just call Australia. With all that said, If you gave me just one detector.... XP Deus 2 w/11" coil. Hands down.

I’m not surprised I wasn’t finding other items for two reasons: first off I was honed in on the bullet range. There were lots of tin cans, pop cans, pull tab can lids, etc., so I wasn’t digging most of the larger items with the exception of a couple that seem to stand out (like the ointment tin). The second reason is this was not part of the camp, but was separated from the camp by a waterway. Be that as it may, somebody did find what they thought was part of a button, and somebody found a large rectangular single piece buckle (?) roughly the size of a 3 x 5 card with a slot cut on both ends. There were no apparent markings on that in the field.

If I am understanding correctly, the “Lands“ in the barrel would translate to grooves in the bullet. For the following, I am referring to grooves in the bullets which would be lands in the barrel. I apologize if I’m not referring to this correctly. There doesn’t seem to be any consistency between the bullets. Some bullets have grooves about 3/32” wide, others seem to have grooves about 5/16” wide, some just have grooves which are literally just a scratch down the side. Some of them do not appear to have any grooves whatsoever. On some of the bullets with more regular grooves, they appear to be spaced 1/4 inch apart with about eight of them per bullet. Some bullets seem to have irregular spacing with two groves 1/4” apart followed by a gap of 3/8”. I don’t have a caliper, so my best guess is most of these are between 9/16 and 10/16 inch and diameter. Some of them are hard to measure since they are no longer round. On the three smaller (pistol?) bullets with equally sized smaller rings, there does not appear to be any rifling marks on two, and very small “scratch“ lines on the third one (the one with an extra ring around the nose cone which may indicate a newer bullet). Would pistols have been rifled?

I'll add a few thoughts about my experience with the E1500. But I first want to thank Steve for lending it to me for a week to do some testing with it. After I tested it, we meet up in Nevada where Steve pulled the nugget. So yea, it will find gold. When I got the E1500, I tried it a few different places, including the park, relic hunting and some testing on small gold nuggets. First go around was at a local park that dates back to the late 1800's. I was hoping to get over a deep nickel or silver dime. I dug several targets that I thought possibly could be nickels based on the target ID, all of which turned out to be Pull tabs or shreds of aluminum. I never could get over a target that had an ID similar to a penny or dime, so I finally resorted to using the Manticore to find a deep target that I thought was either a penny or a dime. The target ID was very jumpy on the Manticore, which indicated it was close to It's depth limits. Then I grabbed the E1500 and went over the same target. It sounded good. Giving a low tone, but the target ID came in at 99. Now my dirt is very mineralized. And so in that regard, I think the Manticore and the E1500 we're at edge of detection. The target turned out to be a wheat penny at eight inches. The next thing I tried was relic hunting I took it to a few places. The first place I took it to was a field that is mainly full of bullets, occasionally you'll find a button and some other items, but for the most part it’s all CivilWar era bullets. There's very little iron in this field. So I thought it'd be a good first test for the E1500 and its target ID. You can watch the video in the first post to see how that went. Next up was a field a few blocks away where the fort was located. This filled has everything from square nails to buttons to bullets to coins. A lot more challenging for the E1500 and like all PI's struggled with the dense trash. I found out very quickly that testing every signal in the pinpoint mode to get an idea of what's under the coil is very time consuming. In addition, like Steve has stated in past posts, there's lots of iron targets that ID all over the PI target ID spectrum. It dug a few U shaped fence past nails that have the same ID as a bullet. Finally I buried some small gold nuggets in the very mineralized dirt near my house and used 4 detectors to compare signals. This dirt maxes out the mineral scale on the Dues 2. Below are the results. Gold nuggets used .03 about 1.5" deep .063 about 1.5" deep .15 about 3" deep .22 about 3.5" deep Results in order from top down Manticore M8 coil YES YES NO NO GPX 6000 5X9 YES ALL AXIOM 7X11 DD NO NO NO YES E1500 8" MONO NO NO NO NO So not the greatest results overall in all the testing I did with the E1500 compared to other VLF and PI'S on the market. However, for the price I still feel like it would be a good first move for anyone wanting to buy their first pulse induction metal detector.

Hi all, I was trying to search for gold on the slope with Nokta Legend today. With Gold mode, single frequency 40 khz. Discrim mode "G" (1-2 closed) Threshold is also included. I did not find anything, except for fragments of rusty iron and nails with coins. Who tried to search with Nokta legend? Share your experience, what VDI of gold should be and at what size?

The first day of touring New Zealand we went to Waihi. On the way there we went through an old gold district. It was quite stunning for the first day. https://photos.app.goo.gl/g5Qy7MBLNufuRReX8

Well now that is a mistake! Nothing like cutting your own throat for a buck. It was also a mistake to take the Gpx4500 & Gpx5000 out of the line up.

We used to use TP as flagging tied to a bush at each end of our transect walks when griddling for archaeological surface surveys, you can easily see it from the opposite end of your grid to help you keep walking each transect leg in a straight line. It also doesn’t stay long in the environment if you miss picking them up afterwards.