Gold Found With QED

[Steve Herschbach]

Welcome to the forum JR! Sorry for the initial confusion. I have been trying to get a little positive discussion going on the QED going but it has been hard to find calm participants - until now. That’s why I thought the QED deserved its own thread. That's some really great gold - Thanks for posting!

[Swegin]

How did I miss this thread?   Very nice looking gold Sir.  Congrats.

[mn90403]

7 hours ago, Norvic said:

I`m interested too.

I find myself always agreeing with Norvic!

[AussieMatt]

Very nice jrbeatty!

Kinda makes my 7.7 grams a little insignificant now  

[jrbeatty]

7 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Welcome to the forum JR! Sorry for the initial confusion. I have been trying to get a little positive discussion going on the QED going but it has been hard to find calm participants - until now. That’s why I thought the QED deserved its own thread. That's some really great gold - Thanks for posting!

Thanks for the welcome Steve. Great forum!

It's unfortunate that undeserved criticism has dogged the development story of the QED, and this has probably led to fewer discovery posts on all forums - but I'm not interested in politics and don't intend to bring any of that baggage here. All I'm interested in is finding gold as comfortably and conveniently as my 66 year old body can manage.

Is the QED a world beater? No. Can it find gold? obviously. There are prospectors using it who have found a lot more than us but, sensibly, say little.

In the final analysis, the choice of where to look will always be a more important one than which detector to use.

Off to work now - not prospecting but feeding cattle (I'm a farmer, which is an enormous help when negotiating access to farms) 

[mn90403]

2 hours ago, jrbeatty said:

Is the QED a world beater? No. Can it find gold? obviously. There are prospectors using it who have found a lot more than us but, sensibly, say little.

In the final analysis, the choice of where to look will always be a more important one than which detector to use.

Off to work now - not prospecting but feeding cattle (I'm a farmer, which is an enormous help when negotiating access to farms) 

What a sensible and practical approach to the problem of finding gold.  Thank you for that.

I did think your picture of where you were hunting looked more like cattle country than gold country. 

Well done sir.

Mitchel 

[jrbeatty]

On 9/27/2017 at 10:01 AM, mn90403 said:

What a sensible and practical approach to the problem of finding gold.  Thank you for that.

I did think your picture of where you were hunting looked more like cattle country than gold country. 

Well done sir.

Mitchel 

Thanks Mitchel. Pretty light country overall,  but grows good wool. The property owner who was on 20% (that's the deal we always work on) commented somewhat facetiously that it was the best return he ever had from that particular paddock . 

On 9/27/2017 at 7:05 AM, AussieMatt said:

Kinda makes my 7.7 grams a little insignificant now  

Not at all, Matt.

There have been many gold droughts in the past when I would have willingly mortgaged my right arm for just 5 grams

Who knows what's coming next? Go get 'em!

The bright flat 6 grammer was found by us in June this year on another property near Maldon, Victoria, but this time the lead had been worked in the 1860's. It is paper thin and sold for well over gold price. The reef above the lead had been fabulously rich, and all the gold was in sheet form. Apparently, following blasting,  it was routinely scraped off the hanging wall of the reef with spades, rolled up and sold to the local bank. The other bits appear in an earlier photo:

In contrast to the February picture, central Victoria in June/July has frosty mornings usually followed by pleasant sunny days. 

This is typical of the properties we work, with Reg (the good shepherd) and his bottle fed orphaned lambs he had discovered while detecting and saved from certain death.

[Steve Herschbach]

16 hours ago, jrbeatty said:

It's unfortunate that undeserved criticism has dogged the development story of the QED, and this has probably led to fewer discovery posts on all forums - but I'm not interested in politics and don't intend to bring any of that baggage here. All I'm interested in is finding gold as comfortably and conveniently as my 66 year old body can manage.

Is the QED a world beater? No. Can it find gold? obviously. There are prospectors using it who have found a lot more than us but, sensibly, say little.

Thanks JR, I really appreciate that, and like Mitchel I also appreciate hearing some sensible commentary. I have no use for drama and wish all discussion of detectors would focus on facts or even just opinions. The name calling and personal attacks are uncalled for and do nothing to help people learn anything of value. Anyway, thank you very much for injecting a voice of reason into a subject that seems to attract incendiary commentary 

[mn90403]

JR,

As you say ... a bit thin but thanks for the followup picture with the little ones.  It makes it a bit easier to hunt around the piles!

I do have to admit that many parts of our gold country in the west has range cows.  There is evidence of them everywhere in the thick, tall brush and gullies.  One place we hunt in the mountains routinely uses sheep to graze and it can be easier to detect after they have gotten many of the big leaves out of the way.  The shepherds  don't speak any English and it has the traditional mix of dogs to protect them.  Most of this is on government land (BLM or Forrest Service) which can be claimed and you don't have to share unless you are working another person's claim.

Your area in the picture is much flatter.  From the looks of the gold it seems very old in place and would seem to 'open up' some areas I wouldn't consider holding gold ... until you find it!

What is your understanding of the gold formations there?

Mitchel

[jrbeatty]

On 9/28/2017 at 12:29 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

Thanks JR, I really appreciate that, and like Mitchel I also appreciate hearing some sensible commentary. I have no use for drama and wish all discussion of detectors would focus on facts or even just opinions. The name calling and personal attacks are uncalled for and do nothing to help people learn anything of value. Anyway, thank you very much for injecting a voice of reason into a subject that seems to attract incendiary commentary 

Thanks Steve. It's a shame about the gutter politics .The level of abuse was totally unexpected by me, knowing nothing of the long QED gestation period involved. Publishing my results has resulted in accusations of fraud and duplicity, even being banned from one prospecting forum without warning or notice. Look, I'm pretty thick skinned and have been through far worse but I can understand why other users would be reluctant to publish results - Anyway, enough of that.

My observations so far:

I was sceptical of Howards little box at first and frequently checked the ground afterwards with my 5000. All that changed when we were detecting an 1860's lead on private ground near Maldon, not far from where the 6 gram shiny flat piece was found. This lead only contained small deep gold (biggest we found was about 2 grams) This was contained in a (noisy but very even) ferruginised sand on a decomposed granite bottom:

This time I marked out an area and gridded it with the 5000 and 14" Elite, then followed up with the QED (mode 1 gain 5, a very sensitive setting) This resulted in more gold, mostly deeper and some tiny shallow pieces. The signals were mainly sharp but some were threshold changes only. After that I left the 5000 in the campervan. Here's some of the bigger pieces from that lead, we gave the smallest bits to the farmer as his cut :

Reg uses the 11" Elite exclusively and can hear miniscule targets I can't. I don't mind, since I hate chasing bits I can neither see nor weigh.

Edit: located an image of the total tally from the "flysh-t lead" as we named it: