Using A Detector To Isolate Mineralization

[NorthofNorth]

Hey folks, new to the forum here.

I am working and playing in the state of Alaska, and live in a decent gold bearing area, but it’s mostly flour gold from glacial dust.... geologically speaking it’s pretty young soil with lower levels of mineralization  (I was told). The area was never thoroughly mined, because of the difficulties encountered extracting this fine stuff with old methods.

Anyway, I have been picking some old-timer’s brains on how to get started, and he suggested this method for this fine stuff.... he liked to locate the mineralization zones with a detector, then dredge or sluice that. That way he would only process the more concentrated material. There are the occasional nuggets, but very scarce compared to the flour. 

is this a realistic method for doing a little weekend prospecting? I have been looking into detectors (the last one I had was 15 or 18 years ago and it was a very basic bounty hunter great for a kid, but....) seemingly most detectors are trying to tune out the mineralization, and I am searching for it. I was looking at the gold monster 1000, and equinox, but can’t decide if their advanced discrimination would help or hinder my goals. 

Any thoughts on this technique, and what machines to consider to achieve the goal? Of course I’d like something that could treasure hunt, and do everything else great too, but I know that’s not usually how this stuff works.

Thanks for your time and patience. In the meantime I am going to be educating myself on the forum. Trying to soak up all this knowledge.

[Steve Herschbach]

Welcome to the forum!

This ability was touted a lot back in the BFO days and still comes up now and then. In my opinion the method is extremely limited due to the limited depth. I can move faster and read changing ground better with my eyes than a metal detector just by noting changes in color and ground matrix composition. More info....

https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/4015-using-the-gmt-to-find-black-sand-paystreaks/

https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/1599-gb-numbers-mineralization/

 

[MSC]

Welcome NorthofNorth, Chris Ralph has many good suggestions on his Youtube site dealing with the kind of questions you are asking about, check it out. 

[Goldseeker5000]

NorthofNorth, I was going to try this earlier this summer to try and map out the mineralized boundaries of a orange clay layer, part of a contact zone, but never got around to doing it thanks to my Achilles Tendonosis. I was going to use my Minelab X-terra 705 because it has pinpoint sizing. I was going to crank up the sensitivity to max while in pinpoint sizing and try to find the boundaries of the clay layer. It seems plausible if it is shallow enough but I never got around to it. The 705 can find the edge of a target and keeps a continuous tone until it reaches the end of the target. I have located the exact beginning and end of iron pipe in the ground for a gentleman a few years back. I was able to show him the exact direction of the pipe and length. I was going to use surveyor flags to stick in the ground to map the detected area.

[lone wanderer]

My old Whites 5000D a 1980 model Coinmaster with a 16 inch coil was very good at signalling the mineralisation and it never shut up and good enough at signalling gold nuggets even down to 7 grams at 3 to 4 inches and 2 ozs at 6 inches.Here we have mostly very high mineralisation.Unfortunately someone stole mine when we were moving house and it was the only detector I found large nuggets with because they were there and now its been all hammered.