Jp’s Gold Thread

[flakmagnet]

Merry Christmas JP, fun to read of your adventures.

[Gold Catcher]

Congratulations, JP! It is always an inspiration to read/see your reports. Merry Christmas!

[mn90403]

2 hours ago, Jonathan Porter said:

Thunderstorms and unstable weather have been an issue atmospherically for the past few months, but the ground has been bone dry which is good in the more conductive ground types around Clermont. I always try to hit the ground early while the atmosphere is at its most stable, the GPZ is very good for Sferic type noise so is pretty quiet until things really start to heat up. 

In conductive variable ground the signal increases with the moisture, so what was a faint murmur when dry and easily managed by the Semi-Auto G balance become more defined and positive when wet or damp, making it hard to listen for edge of detection signal responses.

JP

Thanks for your response.  As I was reading it I realized that we are often times told that wet ground may help in the detection of nuggets let's say in Arizona.  Sometimes detectorists rush out to detect the wet ground also.

Now that may or may not be the case (as with dry ground) but if it puts our minds into the right frame to listen then we will find more than if we think we are looking at difficult ground.  I'm somewhat convinced we all have experienced 'good finds' at the beginning of a session when we are fresh and everything sounds good rather than with a sour eye at the end of the day.

The grass is not always greener!  We have to make lemonade in detecting until the magical days that match our skills and luck.

Mitchel

 

[Gold Catcher]

47 minutes ago, mn90403 said:

I'm somewhat convinced we all have experienced 'good finds' at the beginning of a session when we are fresh and everything sounds good rather than with a sour eye at the end of the day.

I know it sounds odd, but my best finds have been usually towards the end of the day. Could be purely coincidental. 🙂 

[Jonathan Porter]

I’ve been powering on with my detecting leading up to Christmas because I knew it was going to rain, the rain is welcome because we are in drought and because it will cool things off, but it also brings the humidity and the grass, both big time negatives. But worse the moisture also brings false signals and threshold variableness, so listening for those edge of detection targets go out the window big time IN THE AREAS I detect. I shout this and make it bold because not all nuggety gold fields are like this, it depends on the saturation and conductivity levels relative to the mineralisation.

Conductive ground is a little different to salt or alkali ground, salt signals are uncomplicated and are directly dependant on the speed of the sweep (Motion), salt can be in areas that are quiet low in mineralisation whereas conductive ground tends to be in the more variable mineralised areas. In my ground here in Clermont the salt signal is less dominant and the conductive signal more dominant. Conductive signals have a varying effect on auto GB systems, but in essence they drag the G balance away from optimum, often causing a target like signal that is then not present on the 2nd pass of the coil. A good operator works this out quickly and pumps the coil often (controlled movements) to bring the GB back to accuracy as sweeping will only give an averaging of the ground signal.

Salt and Conductive signals are directly proportional to the amount of moisture present, so the drier the ground the better the result for detecting purposes. In dry conditions the auto GB tends to remain reasonably constant with little variation whereas when moisture laden the GB will be all over the place as the tracker tries to keep up with the movement of the coil. In these types of ground a tracking X is also fraught with peril as the poor X tracker gets confused by the salt and conductive signals and ends up completely out of balance relative to the temperature of the electronics, in this scenario things can get even worse because the G balance then tries to compensate for the bad X, fatally pushing each other further and further away from optimal, hence why I always advocate using Semi-Auto and not Auto!!

Now that we have had rain I will put my larger coils away for a while and enjoy the benefits of the new smaller NF coil, smaller coils react less to salt/conductive and saturation and also run quieter when EMI is around, perfect for hot, damp, sticky, thundery summer time conditions, it is so nice to now have this choice in the warmer wetter months.😇 Being a DOD the reactive damp conductive hot spot signals will be less invasive, so chasing those false target like signals after rain will be less of a problem. 

Just prior to Christmas I had a couple of trainings sessions for new customers, being summer the training usually starts early in the morning to avoid the heat. Because of this if I want to go detecting after the session I’m starting when the heat has built up which negates the incentive to go for long walks. I don’t mind starting off in the cool of the day and slowly ramp up to uncomfortableness but starting off uncomfortable is a big YUK from me. 🤒 One morning a week or so before Xmas was just like this, early start, two 1/2 hours of training then what do I do with the rest of my day? I know I’ll go hit some deep ground and spend a few hours going slow till its too hot in the hopes of a deep one, if I don’t find anything no harm no foul... simples. 🥴

This type of detecting is fun but takes patience and a willingness to go without, there are usually no targets or one good one but more often than not nothing. I love it because its challenging and can be rewarding as you really need to get in tune with your detector. I had two hours to strut my stuff with an extra hour if things started to sparkle. Low and slow is the order of the day, a wide swing but not too wide with a good range of motion relative to the depth of the ground. I like to target ground that is in excess of 14 inches depth because anything shallower the gold has been taken already by less experienced operators. EMI was a little problematic and also the bush flies were annoying (a sure sign rain was on the way). 

I ended up doing a fair few mornings like this and enjoyed the removal of the need to find something, its very liberating when your expectations are low. There was no need to find anything because that’s the nature of this type of detecting, its either something good or nothing at all. This particular morning I didn’t hit the ground for my ‘alone time’ until well after 9 so things were getting juicy heat wise. However my head was in the right place and things were uncomplicated, I let all the cares of 2020 slip away into the soft background hum of my GPZ, focusing on controlled breathing and the smooth rhythm of motion. I do not commit to digging anything for at least 45 minutes to avoid elevating my heart rate which impacts on my hearing, I am mentally mapping every repeatable ground variation as I work an area no more than 100 square meters. 

Finally after an hour everything came into place and I received a repeatable unmistakable response beside an ant bed, going through the three Gold Type modes confirmed the signal was still there in varying degrees, with Extra Deep being the worst for signal response suggesting the target was less than say 5 ounces. Although it was quite a good signal in High Yield the go to Gold Mode was actually General with a good solid hit over the full range of motion. So now I had a clue as to the size and depth relative to the conductivity of the target. This area has produce a few specimens for me over the years and typically specimens sound off better in High Yield unless they have a decent amount of gold enclosed, this realisation got the hair going up on the back of my neck in spite of the sweat doing its utmost to glue it down. Could it be a good sized solid nugget?😬

I looked at my watch and realised my time till the heat got too intense was not far off, so it was time to commit to digging and and subsequent elevated heart rate, if it turned out to be ground noise the session was not far from over anyway. The ground was like concrete, and I was only able to remove 6 or so inches before the hard packed clays and wash caused sparks to fly, another positive to suggest the ground was virgin but also meant hard work to recover my hopefully golden prize. Because I’d planned the session I had my shovel and crow bar in the back of my vehicle but before I went and got them I checked the signal again in all Gold Modes and was convinced by the overall improvement there was a decent signal extremely deep under my coil. General/Difficult was still king so that delicious tingling feeling at the nape of my neck was still vying with the stream of sweat!!

An hour later lots of sweat and blisters had me down 20+ inches and finding the need for my pinpointer, the signal was booming in on the GPZ so I knew I was centred in the hole. I was now into green puggy clays with chunks of quartz and ironstone locked in, there was no way this was anything but gold. It took a fair bit of crowbar work to finally get the pinpointer within range, turning myself inside out trying to reach into the hole was hard work in the heat but finally I got the pinpointer to lock onto the signal. More controlled bar work had a screaming target about the size of a hockey puck dead centre in the hole, one more mighty blow to one side and a levering of the bar dislodged a clump of clay with a solid object wedged tight within its grasp. 26 to 28 measured inches (its hard to fully ascertain the full actual original detected height based on surface debris ect) and I had in my hand a heavy clump off clay with something enclosed. The pictures tell the rest of the story. 😎🥳

 

 

Out of interest for those forum members who like to dabble in specific gravity tests ect:

Weight in air: 125.8 grams
Weight in water: 100.3 grams

Once a few people have had a crack at the gold content I’ll post up the pic of the recovered melted gold button on the scales.

No guesses please, only post up results from using a proper SG equation.

JP

 

[mn90403]

_{68.4 g of Gold!  WTG JP}

_{What a great read.  You loaded up for big nuggets and you did it.}

[Jonathan Porter]

27 minutes ago, mn90403 said:

_{68.4 g of Gold!  WTG JP}

Mind sharing your equation? I’ll hold off on giving the result to give others a chance to have a go. 

 

Edit: Got your PM thanks. 

[Gold Catcher]

I come up with 32.2 g max possible gold content....🤔

[Gold Catcher]

Archimedis Principle

Mass of object - apparent mass when submerged = density of water x volume of object

125.8g - 100.3 g = 1.0 g/cm3 * volume object

> Volume object = 25.5 cm3

Density: mass of object/volume of object

>Density: 125.8 g / 25.5 cm3 = 4.93 g / cm3

Density gold: 19.3 g / cm3

Max gold content: (Density object/density gold) x weight object

> Max gold content: (4.93 / 19.3)* 125.8 g = 0.26*125.8 = 32.13

 

???

[Jonathan Porter]

I have an extremely simple equation but it’s only really accurate on pure quartz only specimen gold.

Weight in water x 3.1
Weight in air x 1.9

Weight in Water minus Weight in Air = approx gold content

So WIA 125 grams x 1.9 = 237.5

WIW 100.5 grams x 3.1 = 310.93

310.93 - 237.5 = 73.43 grams approx