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Tejon Coil Recommendation


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Hello all,

Longtime lurker, first time poster as they say.  I've been coin detecting for about 2.5 years and now want to try gold detecting.  Although I consider myself a decent detectorist when it comes to coins, I have no experience detecting gold.  I don't even know if there is gold in my area...but I'm going to give it my best shot to find out.  That being said, I don't want to go out and buy a dedicated gold machine right now.  I would like to try what I have, see if it looks promising and then maybe get a GoldBug II.

I tested 6 of my 9 machines on small pieces of lead down to 0.2 grams and the Tejon gave the best air test results (as expected as it is the highest freq. machine I have).  I was using the stock 8x9 concentric coil.  My question is - what would be the best small nugget coil for the Tejon?  My ground is 'hot' as my AT Pro normally ground balances at 94, so I think a double DD or 'widescan' would be best.  I am looking at the 5.75" widescan and the 10" elliptical widescan.  Would the 5.75" be significantly better than the 10" on small nuggets?  Should I be looking at the NEL coils also?

Thanks in advance for any insight or help you can give.  I'm anxious to try my hand at gold detecting and want to get the best coil for the Tejon to give it a shot.

 

Jon

 

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Welcome to the forum Jon!

The Tesoro Tejon can be a very capable nugget detector - my buddy George had one and I saw it find nuggets. The size of the nuggets you expect (from research) helps choose the coil size, the smaller the gold the smaller the coil. In general though it is hard to go wrong with a 10" x 5" DD (widescan) coil, which is why so many nugget detectors come with one. Not knowing anything else that is my recommendation.

tesoro-elliptical-widescan-dd-coil-tejon-lobo.jpg

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Thank you Steve, I was hoping you would make a suggestion.  I really have no idea how large of nuggets to expect (or if any at all for that matter).  I didn't have any nuggets to test with but I thought the stock coil results were impressive for such small pieces of lead.  I will post my results when I get a chance.

 

I live on the southern extent of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.  I do know there has been gold found in the rivers headwatered in the Olympics.  Again, I don't know how large, but I assume very fine gold.  I'll try to do some research to find out.  I'm resisting the temptation to go out and buy a dedicated nugget detector since it all may be for nothing.  Can't wait to get out and give it a try though!

 

Jon

 

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Well, I think your strategy is a fine one. I could do all right with the Tejon personally. Hunt in all metal if you can. Only go to disc mode if hot rocks and nails are unbearable, and use absolute minimum disc required to just barely knock them out (tics and clicks instead of pure rejection). Don't be afraid to lower gain in bad ground to get stable performance. Main thing to remember is the Tejon has a touchy ground balance control, so stay on top of it being sure ground balance is correct.

Anything you can report back would be great. Good luck!

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Thanks Steve.  

No doubt the GB is touchy on the Tejon.  Too touchy in fact.  It would be a lot easier if there were two controls - course and fine.

I have been reading what you have posted on the Gold Racer.  If and when I do make the jump to a dedicated gold machine, it will probably be between the Gold Racer and the Goldbug 2.  I'm wondering how the difference in frequency translates to real world results though.  I come from a ham radio background and know that 15kc in radio spectrum bandwidth is nothing.  But I'm not so familiar with frequency variance in detectors.  I did notice a profound difference when testing the Tejon (17.5kc) vs the Omega 8000 (7.7kc) on my small pieces of lead though.  

So how well will the 71kc GoldBug 2 detect smaller gold than the 56kc Gold Racer?  And how small of gold do you need to try finding to make it worth it?  If you are going for microscopic pieces, would it be better time spent looking for larger, although more infrequent finds?  Those are the questions I'm pondering - and by doing so, perhaps showing my novice status in gold detecting.

 

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The Tejon is a wicked hot detector..sometimes tricky to tame....but a well capable gold machine. I had one for relic hunting and was amazed how deep it went. I had the 5.7 round coil on mine and on air tests on sub grain gold it did very well. But in the gold fields I had to reduce gain to smooth out the threshold. 

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I would use either a 5.75 DD or the 10x6 coil,i dont own a Tejon,so cannot suggest any settings as such for you too try,i do own and use a Laser Trident 11 Extreme though,thats a super tuned hybrid machine made by the official Tesoro company here in the UK,its basically a Vaquero running @ 18Khz and running on steroids.

A small coil like the 5.75 could well be a nice gold machine,the Tejon would do for the occasional use of gold hunting but the Lobo Super Traq would be the much better option i would have thought and is a proven nugget hunter.

We dont have gold nuggets as such here in the UK but we do have my favourite Celtic gold stater coins that i am after,NEL and Mars do some nice small coils and very good reliable build quality as well,also much cheaper than the Tesoro coils.

 

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The original poster asked "I would like to try what I have, see if it looks promising and then maybe get a GoldBug II."

...which is why we got going on the Tejon, which is what he has. The Lobo would indeed be a better option, as would be many other machines.

I found a gold nugget with the Silver uMax once. I would have no major issue pressing any 12 kHz or better Tesoro into temporary nugget hunting duty. They are all hot little units.

As always machines built specifically for prospecting are a better choice in the long run.

The main reason I lean 10x6 coil is ground coverage. The 5.75 round is more for site specific work. For snooping & sniping the 5.75 is great. If one could be found the old 7" x 3" for the Lobo would be killer. That you have to be careful on however as there are two versions of that coil, only one of which that will work on the Tejon. 

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Thanks for the responses guys, appreciate it. I think I'll order the 10 inch Tesoro coil and see how it does.  It will give me the chance to try to find some gold without buying a specific gold machine. If I do get lucky and find something I'll definitely be thinking about a hot vlf gold detector.

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17 hours ago, N7XW said:

So how well will the 71kc GoldBug 2 detect smaller gold than the 56kc Gold Racer?  And how small of gold do you need to try finding to make it worth it?  If you are going for microscopic pieces, would it be better time spent looking for larger, although more infrequent finds?  Those are the questions I'm pondering - and by doing so, perhaps showing my novice status in gold detecting.

Good questions. Both detectors can detect a piece of gold weighing less than one tenth of a grain. There are 480 grains in a Troy ounce so we are talking less than 1/4800th of an ounce, or only 4800 or more found pieces needed to make that ounce.

Many would say that's crazy. But when you are detecting and I am digging one grain nuggets while you find nothing, suddenly it seems to mean something.

I think there is value in having a very hot detector, and anything running over 40 khz is likely to be able to hit gold nuggets under 1/10th grain and even some hotter machines running at lower frequencies like the Gold Bug Pro with small coil in the right hands will reveal them via whisper signals. Personally I would give the nod to the Gold Bug 2 as having the edge, but I have to admit in my opinion it is splitting hairs and trying to decide whether to get a GMT or Gold Bug 2 or Gold Racer based solely on whether one can hit a nugget weighing 1/10th of a grain better than the other seems like hair splitting to me. Better to consider the other attributes of the detectors like price and features. But for tiny gold capability combined with years of proven performance the Gold Bug 2 with 6" coil is still the classic small gold detector.

I have an article on the subject at http://www.detectorprospector.com/steves-mining-journal/metal-detecting-micro-gold-nuggets-crow-creek.htm that includes the photo below. The smallest nuggets in the photo weigh at or under 1/10th grain. I guess we could say nuggets smaller than Roosevelt's ear on a U.S. dime.

Sensitivity to tiny gold can matter immensely when trying to find whispers of gold in quartz rock while hardrock prospecting, or tracing any gold to its source. Tiny bits can lead to big bits. And no matter what, they do add up. Finding any gold is better than finding no gold at all!

small-gold-nuggets-herschbach-crow-creek-alaska-gold-bug-2.jpg

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