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This month in 1979 I bought my first metal detector a Bounty Hunter RB7, took me almost 3 years of pure frustration to get my first nugget,(pic below) after many 100s of hours, I know now I sure went over heaps of detectable gold, and still do, but not the heaps I went over then,...…...I hope...……... Below is some photos, I wish to share with DP members to celebrate, unfortunately I did not take many photos, straight into the crusher smelted down and off to the mint, have scanned what I could find from the old "shoe boxes". Plus a couple of recent ones, the specimen last is highly magnified, gold in limestone, and although no weight is probably the most valued by me, not just because it was my first piece (found with that RB7), but because of its uniqueness. Consider myself very privileged to live in this era, it has enriched my life not just in its monetary value, but given a challenge and still does that I suspect has no equal. MN I`ve gone and done it and not even close to the 30th of February.

17 x 12 Spiral, pings tiny .1 gram bits no worries. Pain in the butt digging them but sometimes they lead to bigger and better chunks as was the case for me today. 76 grams at 18 inches, any detector would have heard it, same with the 6 gram bit. 14 gram bit was a different story, 20 inches down and very quite but definitely a dig me signal. With the X running so quiet it was no worries. A bloody pleasure to use, a complete contrast to my stock 14” which is so touch and knock sensitive, it’s had a hard life so maybe just worn out but it never ran as quite as the X.

Just some stats for those who may wonder about such things. In the last year (July 2018 - July 2019) this website had just over 350,000 unique visitors (each person counted once, not every time they post). The top ten countries.... United States 55.5% Australia 13.93% United Kingdom 8.22% Canada 2.45% France 1.19% Germany 1.18% Italy 1.06% Netherlands 0.99% Turkey 0.92% Russia 0.71%

A Minelab dealer down Geelong way put up the below post about an Aussie company starting to make GPZ coils. Interesting timing, wonder if the Russian guys have forced Minelabs hand to allow a local 3rd party to make coils. Here is the link to the facebook page https://www.facebook.com/luckystrikegold/ Not looking to start a fight here, just sharing info. I don't care what coils everyone wants to run lol Lucky Strike Gold Brand new GPZ coil coming soon! ? There is a rumour in the wind that an Australian company will soon be making GPZ 7000 coils. At present there are only Russian made after market coils being made, so hold off and bag yourself a genuine Aussie made one. They will be cheaper than the Russian coils and, as always, very well made.

Out last night and got a nice 1892 S barber dime. Pk1, 5 tone, recovery 7, iron bias 3.

I tripped over that same one and when I was cussing and kicking it out of the way I almost broke my ankle when I hit another one that was stuck deeper in the ground...,. It must have been a 2 pounder... but I didn’t want to take time to dig it when the big ones are the ones really worth digging?

The population of the United States is 327 million vs 25 million for Australia. The percentage of visitors vs the population is: .06 of US population .2 of Australia population

I have to agree with Fred that Chris did an excellent job of ranking prospecting/mining methods in time-cost -return. There are so many variables involved that the best use of the article mentioned would be for comparison only ( as Chris alluded to). What is great about Chris's article is that he put a big dark cloud of truth right in the middle of many new prospectors silver lining. I fully intent to blow his 40hrs / ounce of gold completely out of the water.

Spot on! Every season I get people here intent on making thier fortune with a shiny new detector. Half the detectors just aren't suitable for finding gold and half the people just aren't suitable for living in the scrub. After a couple of days they soon learn gold doesnt just pop out of the ground, you have to really work for it. If you want a lifestyle become a prospector, if you want to get rich get a job.

I think Chris did a good job of providing his own rough estimates of the time for him to produce an ounce of gold. I think he wanted to give nubbies some realistic idea of what is involved.... I don’t pan anymore, way to much work, dry washing is too much work...sniping is fun and easy; but, I don’t live near a river anymore. Metal detecting is my thing! I would not even guess the number of hours it took to get the gold I found. The thing is, if I was doing it just for money working at Walmart would have been a much better choice. fred

That`s because we`ve got so much gold over here Mitchel. I was walking to the shops the other day and tripped over a 5 ouncer ?

If it were easy, there would be a hell of lot more people out there detecting. The other key is knowing where to detect to improve your chances. Read up here and elsewhere to get those clues and how to read the beach or parks or wherever you are trying to find them for the most likely locations. Whole books have been written on that topic alone.

RU, you can bet I would, tis a magic journey that I am still soaking in it, mind you a wee bit slower.

Have to do much better than a rumour. Hold off? how long? Sorry I'm not waiting on a rumour

Great pictures and story! There are some weird-ass critters there, that’s for sure!? p.s. and I didn’t mean you guys lol?

Gerry, (and Condor) Absolutely great story telling images fella. Thanks for sharing it all... You, your team and more recently - Condor have painted the most believably and real stories about trying to make a strike in this challenging land. Luck is always a component, but as 1st timer Yanks, even skilled Yanks, still have a lot to learn without an equally skilled local guide. Even then, it takes a bunch of time, research and connections to dive into this activity in that terrific land of mineral promise. Even JP, with his volumes of local knowledge, having grown up there, and with connections, must have difficulties filling his poke from time to time in these beaten-to-death lands. It appears your skills have served you all very well against incredible odds in the relatively short time frames you had there. Envious Kudos!

Nothing against Wallmart Fred but I think you and I would find our way around Home Depot much easier! strick

I worked for a dangerous goods transport company up to about 10 yrs ago and during a safety meeting we were told about a chemist in WA that spilt Hydrofluoric on himself in a lab and I remember we were told, within minutes this man immersed himself in a swimming pool, and the poor man still died. The day I heard that story I decided I would never work with Hydrofluoric and if anybody had insisted I work with it, I would have quit. I always wondered whether that was a true story or something they made up to scare us so I googled it today and found an article on the incident. https://www.fluoridealert.org/wp-content/pesticides/fluoride.poisoning.1996.pap.htm

Lots of great answers. Unfortunately gold, lead, and aluminum overlap. In general, the smaller they are the lower the VDI number and the larger they are the higher the number. Women's rings tend to fall in the foil area below US nickel. Men's rings tend to read above US nickel up to zinc penny and possibly higher. I often block out zinc penny and higher and just dig everything under that. If really cherry picking I look for targets that hit hard on a single VDI number, no jumping around. To get more insight on the VDI scale and gold see this article.

So a guy can actually make money doing this stuff? I was 16 years old in 1979...that was the year I should have took up metal detecting...but hunting and fishing were the hot stuff back then..not to mention hormones getting in the way every now and then. I was surprised to see that Bounty Hunter has been around that long...I had no idea. Thanks for sharing the pictures as we all know you don't do that for obvious reasons. My favorite is the big lump by the 2nd watch...if only you had the modern cameras of today back then! strick

Only manual GB Tesoro I ever used was an Outlaw. It seemed to gain a little depth by GBing normally then turning a quarter turn negative. If I remember correctly the “super tune” also involved a maxed threshold setting as well, but I’ve never used a delta “hot” Tesoro Also there are some tips on “power balancing” the detector in disc mode. Have to crank the sensitivity, if memory serves, and then turn GB positive until it chatters then go back negative until it’s right on the edge of stability.

Well done Sir Norvic. We have now seen with our eyes the stories you have told us with great care. Thank you.

Outstanding images,really find these types of stories interesting.........would you do it all over again ??

Excellent history and pic's! thanks fred

Thanks! for sharing your finds, nice collection of gold that you found. I agree with you on last specimen and I would highly prize that one.

Beautiful !!!! Congrats

Mine was in HF and I recommend you let the experts do it. Hydrofluoric is a bad nasty. Not sure what % they use, it is a Chemical Specialty Shop in Oregon.

Condor and his trip/notes was the inspiration of my post. He too realized the easy gold is gone, but we go for the Adventure too. Thanks Condor for sparking my old memories. At least you can say.."I did it". Spring 2006 three buddies/I decided it was time to quit talking about it and just do "Australia" with a detector for gold. With many details left out, but a quick overview. Yes I made it home (America) and am alive. The venomous snakes, iguanas (4 foot poisonous lizard), attacking kangaroos, wild goats and monster sized spiders/centipedes could not stand up against the rancid ripe odor of an un-bathed light skinned Yankee running across the dehydrated desert flats with detector in hand. I just returned from an enjoyable 1st time trip to Western Australia and the richly red iron soils of the Outback areas of known golden fields Kalgoorlie/Leanora. Even though I caught some serious plane crud on the 16 hour flight from LAX to Sydney, AU. and it lasted hard the 1st week and a half before I got a little better...I still managed to have fun. The Outback is one of a beautiful and secluded primitive place this mother earth allows us to play with many sites, sounds and wonders to gather and ponder in the mind. I would love to return some day, but would do things a little more different and be set up for gold hunting more for the serious BUSH and not be seen for a week at a time. Most areas we detected had been hunted really hard (just like here in the US such as Rye Patch, NV.) and we would find the crumbs that others missed do to their lack of detector knowledge and skill. We did manage to find an occasional small site that was off the beaten path and get a few nuggets. The Minelab GP-3500 with a Commander 15” MONO elliptical coil ran flawlessly and found most of my nuggets. In fact all 4 of us were using GP-3500’s and were amazed at how well they ran in the much heard of highly mineralized Australian soil. I did manage to find 4 small patches that produced the majority of my gold.. In no way do I base the success of this trip on recovered gold, but as usual, I hoped for and expected more. Of the 4 detectorists (including myself), we found approx 110 nuggets and one 5 oz specimen. I managed 62 of those nuggets and the specimen. To give you a weight total, we had a combined wt of approx. 4 ounces and then the 5 ounce specimen. Of the 4 ounces of gold nuggets we all found, my total wt was just over 64 grams (2 ounces) for the 62 nuggets, so you get an idea of the size with an average of my nuggets being around 1 gram each. The largest nugget (not including the specimen) was 3.9 gram and there were 2 of those found. Yes I was hoping for a few larger nuggets and even expected that we each could find a 1/4 oz'er but that never happened. Does that mean the trip was a bust? Most certainly not and I assure you, it was an amazing trip that I'll fondly remember for the rest of my life. Moral of the story to add to Condors trip. Over 10+ years ago, 4 good American nugget hunters with the newest detector technologies did not find what we had expected and hoped for in the gold category. 4 of us Americans did something most dream about but never do and we'll remember the Australian Outback...and those girls wearing pasties, for the rest of our lives. I always wondered if there was a nugget under one of those pasties? Maybe go back some day to check. Thanks for caring. Gerry in Idaho Gerry's Detectors www.gerrysdetectors.com

Fred, It filled the whole skillet. Added a little Roo tail (many on the sides of the road to get some meat...if there are maggots, don't eat it though) and mix them together then toss a couple spoons full in a tortilla shell. One of the shells busted and it smelled like someone stuffed a dead roo under my pillow. Stayed that way for a week. Finally got to the great salt flats and I salturated my hands and the pillow. Then it was worth sleeping on again. Oh those memories and stories around the camp fire. Did you know the Aborigines sleep most of the 1st half a day when the sun in warm to their bodies and then stay up all night and drink around a big bonfire to stay warm. We seen this a few times. After noticing this, we decided our camp fires need to look small puny and hardly any heat. We did not want to attract them, as our booze were limited.

Phoenix, I love it. The Commander 12 x15" MONO has found many ounces of gold for me. It is one of my all time favorites. The weight is a little heavy, but it is great when used in grass and also seems to stay close to the ground, so I get max depth. I wonder how many nugget hunters can wear out a coil cover in 1 season. I used to do it all the time with the Commander 12 x 15" coil.

Thanks for the look looko Nice history! i had an RB also ....anodized red color

Yeah, I was going to say the same. $30+/hour would not be a deterrent for the vast majority of people. I'd be very happy to hit half that, and would be happy to recover costs for my hobby.

Excellent photos of a stunning coin.

40 hrs for an ounce detecting in the USA? Maybe 10+ years ago. Most the people I meet in the field are struggling to get 1 ounce a season today if they don't have exclusive land access or insider/oldtimer knowledge to work off. I don't have a subscription since they run LRL ads (or did when I subbed) and paper hangers and I believe an engineering journal shouldn't support scam artists and pseudoscience, but that's like $60k a year equivalent, more than I make at my job. That isn't greenhorn deterrent, that's the stuff that makes a newbie go out and buy a $2500 metal detector and get extremely frustrated. Hopefully the article clarifies that stuff.

Fantastic coin

Great post phoenix. The case of the boiler was a Health and Safety Team major project.

Well Fred, I don't recall weather it really happened or it's just my imagination, but you know with me it's all the same.

Hey Strick, Thanks for your reply and really glad to hear you like it! Yep just tighten the tension on the clamp and you shouldn't have a problem ??

In the early 1980 we got many tons Hydrofluoric Acid for internal cleaning of mill scale on newly constructed 375 MW Brown Coal boiler. It was shipped via road in steel tanks it concentration was 35%. I can't remember what it was diluted to. It was continuously circulated in a closed vessel for a couple of days. Most people would expect it to eat through the steel tanks at 35% Conc. but that is the normal process. The big problem with a Weak Hydrofluoric Acid is that it burns into the skin and attacks the bone with very little warning in pain till it very serious.Vapours into the lung is very serious. https://ehs.princeton.edu/book/export/html/197

Gerry I was in the area 2006, with a couple years experience up my sleeve I cracked 32 oz for the winter. You did quite good for your first trip. I had three Yanks in my van begging to buy some nice size nuggets (2 oz in total) at a 25% above spot price. They convinced me to sell as they wanted something to show that their trip paid. By the way one Emu egg make enough for four hungry Men.

Ah, an edible pastie ... I kinda remember those days ... Great story and pics of your far and away adventure Gerry.

Great pictures! I have to ask, did you make an omelet with those Emu eggs? fred

Cool Gerry, thanks for sharing. Thanks for the perspective, we all should keep that in mind.

No GB. This one I dropped it in hydrochloric acid. I don`t play around with hydrofluoric acid. Bad stuff, but there is the tiniest trace of hydrofluoric in the Ali Brite I mostly use.

I think the times quoted are for when you are on the gold.

In my opinion Auto is only there now in case I break or misplace my Ferrite. If people do not see the point of the Ferrite then I HIGHLY recommend they use the Auto mode to at least give the detector the chance to calibrate the X signal naturally. Auto might be the only way people can use the X coils in areas with a lot of X signal. Absolutely you can detect in MANUAL, I often do and it does provide the maximum depth achievable assuming both X and G are calibrated properly to the former and localised ground balance conditions for the latter. If ambient temperatures are north of 15 Deg C in the morning then usually the X balance does not move very much, I allow an hour for things to settle down electronically, but seriously 30 minutes should be plenty if the ambient is getting above 20 DegC. It only takes seconds to check the Ferrite balance, so long as the residual signal is small then there’s no need to fret. JP

I wish it were even that simple. In the US, the two most common pulltab types are the ring & beavertail and the so-called 'square' tab. One problem is that even when narrowed down to these two most common types the TID's vary quite a bit. To give an idea, on the Minelab Equinox the beavertail alone (broken off from the ring) can fall in the 11-13 region, right on top of nickel zone. Most common TID for the square tabs is 14, but broken in half they read 12-13 and 16 is fairly common. The full r&b when completely flat (not folded over) can go as high as 18 (bottom end of corroded zinc penny range). There is a small version of the r&b which reads 13 when not folded over. And you can find every orientation of r&b -- people back then (1965-75 was the time of the r&b) just loved to fiddle around with them, sometimes breaking them, folding them, chaining them together.... The bottom line is that it takes humans to lose rings, and those same humans like to drink their beer and soft drinks (and tossing pulltabs on the ground ?) in the same locations where they're losing their valuables. Gotta take the bad with the good.

I only have the initial Spectra. V1 don't use it much now. My method was dig every thing except when the coil can not be swung without hitting targets. Your problem is gold ring vary in size,shape and gold content. This means there is a wide range of reading you will get. However pull tags and a lot of junk target were mass produced and have a uniform response get to know these and then decide if you dig or not. One bit of advice is to try to get a beep at the same volume by lifting the coil up a bit as I got more accurate signal doing this on my detector.

General advice is dig all pull tab signals! You don't want to risk leaving a gold ring in the ground. With the V3i you can use the polar plot feature to help a little bit. In 3 frequency mode the pull tabs will be all over the place whereas the rings more often show a nice tight pattern. This is assuming the ring is flat, it's big enough, and good quality. You still risk leaving a ring behind, but it may help you out some.

The trick is to get new models when they come out so you get the full ride. After several years you just never know when a new model may.. or may not, come out. And no matter what the new machine costs existing units always take a price hit as many people dump the older model to get the newer one. Since Minelab owns the high end market with no competition in sight there is no business reason to replace the GPZ any time soon. For a long time now the only company competing with Minelab on the high end gold detectors has been Minelab. Not saying it won’t happen, but people counting X number of years between releases forget what happened when the GPX 4500 came out. The release time between it and the final GPX 5000 doubled over previous release intervals. I know because I sold my GPX 4500 anticipating a new model.... and then had to buy another one when the 4800/5000 release was delayed.