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Part 2 - Dig, Shovel, Rake & Metal Detecting For Gold Nuggets - Video


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I like your last comment Rob as it shows so many more options at a better budgeted approach.

Glad you are coming around to the GPX-6000.  I knew you would, as it's hard to push a 7000 sale to a new customer when we know the 6000 finds more of what's left out there.

Great vids.

 

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1 hour ago, Rob Allison said:

Many think you need to invest thousands of dollars to find nuggets, when actually if you have a plan and some areas in mind, you might just surprise yourself.  

   Great advice.   Thanks for the video. 

 

 

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This dig, detect, rake method is what I call the layering technique or layering method, and yes it can work virtually anywhere. I was up at Libby Creek in Montana and detecting on the hill many years ago and the excavator operator kept telling me you can't detect there because I would be in the way. I moved and was was again told you can't detect there. A third time moving and I was again told you can't detect there. I got annoyed at this, looked around and saw a spot on the slope edge of the road leading up to where the club was digging material out of a hole for the trommels to run, and asked him is this spot ok, or do I need to move from here too? He said that spot is ok. I picked a spot of the slope and gridded off a 6 foot wide by 7 foot long  spot and started detecting slowly and when I had it covered, I raked a layer back towards the bottom. I repeated this process about 7 times and finally got a signal and it was a small nugget. So, yes you can apply this anywhere. It works! I speak heavily of this strategy in my book.

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Hey Goldseeker5000 and all,

   Thanks for all the continued comments.  

This method, whatever you want to call it, can be used in many locations like you mentioned.  At one point in my metal detecting for gold phase, I concentrated in mine dumps.  The same method is used, but mostly just raking as that tailings are normally on a slope and gravity can be a real help.  Using this method on mine dump can be rewarding, but you have to understand how they dumped the material and what is where.  Majority of all mine dumps is waste rock, wall rock/country rock and low grade ore.  Normally the best, high grade ore would be placed into high grade piles, not tossed into the dumps.  However, when they would hand steel or blast and muck the ore into carts or whatever they used to moved the material at that site, high grade ore could be missed in with waste rock.  Normally, they would dump the material in layers, so if you get into a good layer, which is normally where there was some high grade stuff missed with waste, you can do well.  

I would only target "free milling, coarse gold" locations.  I didn't mess much with sulphide ores or complex ores that required chemicals, but rather in locations where it was above the zone of oxidation and Mother nature done most of the work for you (physical and chemical weathering) and left the good stuff behind, GOLD. 

Most of these locations were shallow, free mining gold mines, primary commodity being Gold, secondary could be Silver, Copper or whatever in any order.  Keep in mind, some good gold mines gold listed in the databases as Silver or Copper as Primary and Gold like the secondary or third listing.  

High end VLF's normally 50-71khz worked best.  This is where the Fisher Gold Bug 2 really stood out in my opinion, the ability to find very small particles of gold within quartz, ironstone and ore.  

One of the last ventures on a dump was one of my best, finding many pounds of small gold laced ore right on the outer, surface of the dump.  I'm thinking they got sloppy or something happened.  All I had to do is detect the surface and rake a few inches to stay within the best layer, once I got beyond that, it was nil.  I did find another layer on the other side of the dump that was about a foot or so deep, but much smaller and didn't last very long.  

Hope this helps a bit,

Rob

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Hey Guys,

  I don't want to get too far away from the placering mostly in a gulch, but a few bits of advice for any new mine dump hunters-

  • If the dump is a good slope, it's always best to dig a small shelf below the target area, as I have chased targets all the way down the hill, even lost a few.  
  • Only dig a tiny bit at a time, small targets and fragments of gold will easily fall down deeper into the dump, so try not to get too crazy when you dig.  I've dropped small fragments of gold, very crystalline out of my hand and never recovered them due to it working deeper into the dumps rocks.
  • I normally always started at the bottom of the dump, as a lot of times Gravity and Mother Nature has worked some of the best gold down near the bottom edge, kind of like dredge tailing piles (top and bottoms seem to be best).  

Just a few pointers from experience and lost gold. :blush:

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