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My First 2023 Flakes


phrunt

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Very nice nuggets for your hard work, I hope that you had fun on the hunt and learned more about the detectors and coils. That way it will be easier to take the right equipment the first time and find more on your next hunt.

Good luck and stay safe out there.

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Very nice, Phrunt. For me, general/difficult is the way to go, not normal, when hotrocks are an issue.

GC

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Your area sounds geologically similar to a few areas I'm working up in the Rocky Mountains. Yours appears to be an old conglomerate or in some cases what we call paleoplacers, which what I search for here too. Like your place, I find pretty much all flat nuggets, and pieces over 1 gram are rare. 

The hotrocks in your photo appear to be something closer to basalt, but there are a lot of rocks in that series that can be hard to ID specifically as they blend into each other. They are generally high iron, but some can be conductive as well - the ones with both properties are extremely difficult to balance out with 6's and 7's (curious how the Axiom does here). If it's an old paleoplacer (or a modern placer), the drainages could have brought a number of different types of hotrocks from a number of different areas.

 

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I will try the GPZ again and see how it goes in Gen/difficult as I’ve never tried that.  Today is too hot for the hike uphill at 30 Celsius so I will try tonight if it cools down.  The bits look like someone flattened them with a hammer.

it’s a 2 hour drive each way to go home to get my 5000 so I don’t want to do that I’d rather put up with what I’ve got and bring the 5000 next time if it passes with my test hot rock samples at home.   
 

I think there is still a bit of gold in this area due to the difficulty people have had with hot rocks.

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nice work Simon, and what else you you rather be doing anyway. 😊

cheers dave

 

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I went early in the morning before it got too hot this time with the GPZ and 8 inch coil, I must say with my sore arm at the moment the GPZ with 8 inch was far easier to swing than the 6000 with the DD, it felt lighter too even though it may not be.

The GPZ seemed to halve the hot rocks the 6000 was getting but is still a pain to use, I found myself digging faint sharp targets that were quite deep that ended up being little hot rocks far deeper than the 6000 was getting them, I also picked up plenty of pellets the DD missed, even right next to or in the dug out piles from its recoveries.  
 

I tried general/difficult and it quietened many hot rocks down but had me digging more as they became faint signals, this could just be the 8 inch coils crazy sensitivity.  I of course tried balancing over them which calmed them right down but couldn’t get rid of the worst types.

It appears I did a good job with the 6000 though as even though I found many more pellets I found no gold in the 2 hours I stayed until the heat chased me out.

The ground is full of black sand yet normal is fine on both detectors if it wasn’t for the hot rocks.

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I was hoping the smaller size might give me an advantage but no gold was to be found.

Next time I’ll try the 5000.

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1 hour ago, phrunt said:

I tried general/difficult and it quietened many hot rocks down but had me digging more as they became faint signals, this could just be the 8 inch coils crazy sensitivity.  I of course tried balancing over them which calmed them right down but couldn’t get rid of the worst types.

Yeah it does not get rid of the worst ones, but it cuts out about 80% of what the 6k is hearing. I have only tried that with the NF12 and I can still detect small "flakes" attached to hot rocks that are otherwise quiet (general/diff/semi GB -balanced on ferrite, gain 15, filters off). The same hot rocks would be screaming with the 6k and the attached gold would not be heard. I am sure the type of coil will play a big role in this experiment, and I can imagine the 8 inch XC is much hotter than the NF12. Thanks for following up.

GC

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Thanks Goldcatcher, yep it cut out a large amount of hot rocks that the 6000 can’t, and made the others quieter signals but not perfect, hopefully the 5000 does better or I’d need an Axiom 😁

The 8 inch is significantly more sensitive than the NF 12 inch, I guess size dictate’s that more than anything.

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