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Thanks again Steve, you are definitely speeding up my learning curve. I live in Nevada now so it will probably be a few weeks before I can get back to the beach (my wife travels to California often and has a free companion pass so I tag along for free). I will share anything new I learn. Most of my experience has been with the Fisher GB2 on meteorites and while not related to beach hunting I have learned a few tips recently that have paid off. I usually hunt the Franconia Strewn field which consists of chondrites and tiny irons. Most of the chondrites have been found and most folks think the irons have as well. But many of the irons are tiny, some smaller than 0.1 gram. The irons exist in an area that has been more or less entirely gridded. I recently bought a 14" coil for my GB2 to allow me to cover more area and went back to Franconia a few weeks ago. I hunted the usual area of "iron alley". I kept the sensitivity maxed out at 10, as well as the audio and the audio boost switch on. I ground balanced often, but with these settings the GB2 more or less is continuously noisy. Anything less than max sensitivity would be a waste of time because most hunters run maxed out. Anyway, with all the visible scrapes and dig holes on the smooth desert pavement areas I decided to instead concentrate mostly on the areas with large basalt rocks from golf ball size to around softball size. The GB2 was screaming from all the hot rocks but every now and then I could hear a slight faint blip in the background. Sure enough many of these blips turned out to be irons and many were larger than normal up to 1.5 grams or so. After 3 days of hunting I had 49 irons and 2 chondrites, a new record for me! What I learned from all of this is to focus on the specific target sound or blip that usually indicates an iron and ignore all the hot rock sounds. It can be tough to do because the basalt hot rocks create a loud background chatter that is almost continuous. And most folks avoid the basalt area for that reason. This technique probably won't be much good with the ATX because it runs so quiet, but just thought I would share it. ....jim

Hello everyone, Last summer while out hunting old mine dumps, we (wife & I) took one of her friends and son out on a hunt with us a few times and I made the agreement with them that anything I find find we would split down the middle. I was beepin -n- they were diggin. We were too close together for them to use a GB2 we had with us. Well after a couple trips I bought her son 10x loop and gave him a couple little nice pieces in quartz and a little nugget to check out. All the other pieces went into a Tupperware tub until there was enough to do something with. Well low-n-behold, I got out one of the rocks that sounded off and did show a little gold on the outside and started to work the rock off it. I had no idea it contained such a nice nugget and it was a real 'nice surprise' when I discovered it ...a second time!!!! So.... greenhorn question here...... How much does the value of a specimen like this go up vs a hammered nugget that has been found in a creek bed? Spot +1/4.. Spot +1/2.. Spot +3/4... 2x Spot ????? I realize that it all depends on what some one will give you for it of course and I'm just looking for a fair ballpark. As of now, we have not decided to sell any so I am just looking to gain some knowledge. Thanks - NvAuMiner - Doug

Youtube- Making a gold button mat brandl

Oh yes and I am just uploading a video of the silver bar I made too