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Targeting Specimen Type Gold With The SDC 2300


Reno Chris

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It's well known that the SDC is finding a lot of small gold, but the truth is that it can also be used to find some larger types of specimen gold where the SDC also has an advantage over other detectors, because the response of wiry, porous gold is much like that of small gold even when the overall amount of gold is fairly large. Metal detectors work by seeing the eddy currents created by a magnetic field coming out of the detector’s coil. The eddy currents which are created in porous, mossy or wiry pieces of gold decay and disappear much more quickly than those which are created in solid pieces of gold of the same weight. This type of specimen gold behaves much more like a very small nugget even though the amount of gold contained within the specimen is good sized.

The new MPF technology found in the SDC 2300 allows it to begin searching for eddy currents much more quickly than previous pulse induction detectors. This accounts for its ability to find smaller gold, but also allows the SDC 2300 to be very hot on specimen gold, and that is why I am making this post. If you want to find larger pieces of gold with your SDC 2300 that have been missed by others or could not have been detected with previous detectors, you need to be looking in places where specimen gold abounds or the gold is of the mossy, prickly, porous or wiry variety. So the next time you are thinking about where to prospect with your SDC 2300, remember that if you choose places rich in specimen gold you may be finding some very nice specimens with your detector.

These nuggets were all iron stained ugly specimens a few weeks back but spent a lot of time soaking in acid. The larger nugget I found a few weeks back - plus a few more found a couple weeks before that. The small one below the bigger one is from California, the others are from Nevada. Biggest piece is 0.57 ounces, total is 0.9 ounces.

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Nice piece's chris,it's amazing what the 2300 can pickup after many,many other vlfs and pi's have been over. You have probobly about wore your 2300 out also this year. Do you and steve have an idea how many hours you guys have together on both machines this year? It doesn't sound like there are many issues with them so far. Guess i had better get my order in for one before they are obsolete. Glad to meet you this fall Chris it was very enlightening and informational to learn from you and steve. Hope to see you two again in 2015 somewhere. Rick.

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nice gold, do you have a picture of the gold before you soaked it? and what acid did you use? Oh, I read your book, very informative, it's one of those books that gets used as a reference too.

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Dayyummm... the right HF treatment on those species and you could easily quadruple their worth. Nice score! ;)

what do you mean by that?

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Rick - I hope to get out there sometime next year and see what I can do to help you guys get some more gold.

 

Gambler - I don't have pre-acid photos, but they were ugly and heavily covered with iron and some rock. Steve saw them - they were not pretty. The two on the left especially had only a little gold exposed as they were dug. They spent about 10 days in muratic, then about a week in Whink, which is a product with weak hydrofluoric acid. Hydrofluoric or HF is a very toxic acid capable of dissolving quartz and glass. It must be used in plastic containers and can release toxic fumes.

 

AZblackbird - HF treatment is quite the art and I've heard plenty of stories of prospectors who turned pretty specimens into piles of tiny bits and wires of gold. It is very easy to over do it - if you take away all the rock, it can just fall completely apart. I got about a half gram of fines from this project which will go in with the rest of my fines.

 

Gold cleaning thread in this forum http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/404-best-way-to-clean-gold/

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AZblackbird - HF treatment is quite the art and I've heard plenty of stories of prospectors who turned pretty specimens into piles of tiny bits and wires of gold. It is very easy to over do it - if you take away all the rock, it can just fall completely apart.

 

 

Yep I agree. HF treatment is an art. Thus the reason I said with the "right" HF treatment and those species would turn into works of art that even many non-gold collectors would pay a handsome price for.

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Nice stuff HF - i'll rush right out and get me some. My pal the Chemical Engineer has bad dreams about this stuff - it is used in huge quantities in microchip fabrication - one of those "clean industries".

"... In addition to being a highly corrosive liquid, hydrofluoric acid is also a contact poison. It should therefore be handled with extreme care, using protective equipment and safety precautions beyond those used with other mineral acids. Owing to its low acid dissociation constant, HF as a neutral lipid-soluble molecule penetrates tissue more rapidly than typical mineral acids. Because of the ability of hydrofluoric acid to penetrate tissue, poisoning can occur readily through exposure of skin or eyes, or when inhaled or swallowed. Symptoms of exposure to hydrofluoric acid may not be immediately evident, and this can provide false reassurance to victims, causing them to delay medical treatment. HF interferes with nerve function, meaning that burns may not initially be painful. Accidental exposures can go unnoticed, delaying treatment and increasing the extent and seriousness of the injury."

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Rick -  HF is indeed nasty stuff and very toxic just like I said. Yes, you should not use it with your bare hands! No one should use it unless they fully understand the dangers.

The product I mentioned using, Whink, is a cleaning product available at Walmart and contains about 1% HF in a buffered solution. I still would not use it with my bare hands but handled properly it can be used. I kept the jar with the nuggets of Whink and my nuggets in the garage to minimize the effect of any vapors that might have been created.

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Nice stuff HF - i'll rush right out and get me some. My pal the Chemical Engineer has bad dreams about this stuff - it is used in huge quantities in microchip fabrication - one of those "clean industries".

 

HF when properly used and stored is no more dangerous than many of the other thousands of toxic chemicals that are contained in, or used in the manufacturing of products we all use on a daily basis.

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