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Well we finally got thru obligatory rehab work, and we dryblowing work. Drove the backhoe to the next area and decided to scrape a little while we were there... Glory be!!! 10grams right off. Most were in the dirt above the cap. Did a repeat the second day with 16grams? Got most of the gear ready to go... piddling today...enjoyed Sunday with a couple of mates. Getting my camper all ready to go bush... I repaired some tears and old loose seams yesterday with a Speedy Stitcher... handy tool to have if you ever have to sew canvas....works like a charm Built a new battery/propane housing frame on the tongue so I can boondock with 2 propane and 2 deep cycle batteries on hand. Also got a Yagi antenna from Trent that should give me Internet... that will be crazy out where I’m going... I already took the water trailer with 250 gallons down day before yesterday. Hopefully this area will keep producing well for us. Picture of me below shows how I love dryblowing.

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%

**** TRIP 2 **** The main purpose was actually to test ferrite balance in saturated ground, but I wasn't going to drive back to the first areas I spoke of. That is way too far for some simple testing. I have another area where I found my first gold patch. Strangely enough it was on a GPAA claim. Who would have thunk. Those claims are beaten down and squeezed dry, right? Me and a friend both laugh about this place. We very often go back to the general area to beat down the skunk. After getting out to the claim at midnight, I set up the detector. Surprisingly, ground balance was fine and so was the ferrite balance. So much for testing that. Next best goal for testing is to determine if the 10" coil gets gold missed by others. Well this place has been hit by every machine you can think of, including the VLF's. Well after checking the main hillside area, I had nothing. Only one boot tack I found that everyone missed. Then I headed down to the stream where I had found gold before. Lots of pieces had been found here. But the area had been worked hard by drywashers and detectors, too. My buddy with an SDC2300 basically cleaned this place out. Last time I was here, I got the skunk. It was starting to look the same this time. But then after hitting the sides of the wash, I got clear signal. And by the way my rule for this hunt was that I wasn't going to get down and dirty and make the gold appear by using the tricks of the trade like digging out areas and moving rocks. I wanted to see if got what other machines had missed, not what other techniques had missed. But nobody should have missed this signal. There actually seemed to be a couple signals. The first two signals were the biggest pieces. But I kept hearing more and more signals. I dug down another 4-5 inches through the schist and pulled out another 4pcs for a total of 6 (all of which in a 2'x2' area). I had hit this specific spot before and found gold about 10' away. But here I am with more. I am not really sure how the larger pieces were not heard with the GPX5000 I used previously down this wash. So I still have no conclusion on the ferrite ring other than I know I can use the other coil to lock in the ferrite balance, so I am not too concerned. Does this coil find what other machines cannot see, well that is hard to say. I know SDC,GPX and GPZ's have been over these areas. I think a lot of the gold on the hillside patch was gone over. I may have just been lucky on this spot. But it *is* strange that it was not far under the bush or hidden or difficult to reach. Anyways, not much to conclude with this test other than this coil operated smoothly at this location and still finds gold. I do really like the small pinpoint accuracy of this coil and how light it is. Not very big gold (total of 2 grams), but I am only showing it to give an idea of its capability in the states. It does seem to add an inch or two depth on the .1g pieces. This is what I would expect for a 10" coil.

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.

And a very civil site it is! Thank you, Steve! fred

Yeah, Sorry I swore secrecy to details about this hunt, but since your asking.....? if we are talking about the same place it is where you found a specie as big a a beef short rib the first day you had the 19” on the ZED... There was some deeeep ground there that held some nice ones, but they couldn’t escape from the Beast .. I had forgotten the watch,... but didn’t you get a nice coin too? That place was hammered but even I found a one grammar with your 2300....,(whilst waiting on ZED brains to be delivered) We had a good camp and good grub there. And it is where I got my first, (of many) —-Australian swearing sessions ...for doing something stupid. I will never forget later when we were fishing at the hut and I caught the barra.... and you said very nonchalantly, “Well, your a hell of a lot better fisherman than you are a detectorist that’s for sure!!!” Hahahaha.... priceless ?

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

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.

Another ounce and a half today with the X

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 ?

New Zealand ranks at #13. Keep in mind these are total website viewer statistics, not forum statistics. The forum obviously has far fewer members and of those an even smaller number of active posters. Thanks for the civility comments. It is the cornerstone of the forum. There are no doubt some who avoid the forum due to what they would call "censorship" but I have found almost without fail that those are the very same people who enjoy disrupting forums so no loss in my opinion.

Please stop teasing me...it hurts so much!!! Have a great and continuing adventure, Paul! fred

Found these today in the same area, 1908 IH and a silver button of some sorts, think it came from a hat or something. Has a post in the back of it and is pretty thin. Was pretty deep and picked up on the halo and when I first dug I lost the signal then dug a bit more and found it. Probably had some iron pin/spring that rusted away.

a life well lived, with the gold found and memories made.

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?

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

About 3 or 4 years ago I ran a post about a specimen I got at Tarnagulla at about 6" with pretty well no visible gold, and the sg for quartz said there was maybe 1½ ozs of gold in it, but because there was rock other than quartz, I really don`t know how much gold there actually is. At the time, I dropped it in acid and then promptly forgot about it till I came across it today. ? The main body of it is about half the size it started and there is now gold and gravel in the bottom of the jar. I`ve taken this photo of the biggest bit remaining, renewed the acid and dropped it back in. I wont forget it again (I hope). Sorry Mitchel, back to the dime ?

Only thing that matters is Kiwi performance tonight at Lords, if they take out the UK in cricket and become the 19 World International One Day Cricketers, first thing tomorrow morn is I`ll be begging Steve to make a mention of Kiwi presence on the 4M, maybe as a compromise to include you folks with the OZ stats, as say the Downunder stats. Pressures on I`ll be in the Lords crowd waving the biggest NZ flag right in the Barmy Armies face.

That's interesting but I am sure VPN's can skew those a little. I agree with Fred about civility of the forum which is why I think this is the best forum period.

Not too shabby for an Arizona weekend. (We don’t have the old stuff you others have got in the ground.) Three straight days of detecting yields an 1898 Barber Quarter, 1945 Mercury dime, 1951 Franklin 50 cent piece, Utah state tax token, 13 Wheat pennies, some other trinkets, and a 14k gold/platinum setting diamond ring. Not shown here was also a serial number stamped on a plaque from an 1880s sewing machine and a whole pile of other junk. I’m most excited about the Barber and the 50 cent silver. The quarter was about 6-7 inches down and on edge. It sounded good both ways, but swinging inconsistent numbers on the Equinox 800 in Field 1 with the 15 inch coil. I surmise the yard had been cleaned out before even though the owner thought it had not. That was one of it’s only few coins in 8 hours of detecting it—and the yard was massive. Conversely, the Merc., Franklin, and most of the Wheats came from the another small 8’ by 16 ‘ front yard that took only a couple of hours to detect. The diamond ring came from the old school house. Left by someone else unwilling to dig a repeatable number 12 target. Can’t wait to do it again, but going to need some muscle recovery time from all those lunges and precision digging.

HahHhaahha I have 4 of them now ...I bought the yanks when they left..lolo

Nah, still in original form, decided to leave it that way, do it when I find the rest of the beast it fell off...…..just gotta be there somewhere...……..Should get up there with the Z + X in August before it starts to heat up.

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.

Right on, MN your mention of stories has got me a wee primed, and Stricks given a wee bit of encouragement too, this one I`m sure I took photos of but I can`t find them, so you`ll have to use your imagination. Early days of the SD 2100, Mate decided we`d take his brand new Niva (Russian 4WD) for a days prospect. Jokingly before we took off I had a shot at the mates proud new purchase ( as any Toyota Troopy owner would naturally do) "Crikey wont want to get much this thing looks like a 6 pack would overload it." Anyway off we went, got stuck in a dry gully at base of a E/W ridge out in fringe country (mines, diggings miles away). Bit disappointed with the Niva getting stuck so easily, we left it stuck and decided to detect the quartzy ridge and creek at its base. Couple of hours later I`d got a massive signal and kicked a football sized lump of quartz which promptly rolled away a couple of metres downhill, signal gone back down over the quartz, signal back. Picked it up whoa, the weight was there, bugger all gold showing but when crushed she had a wee over 12oz in her. Was there more above, too right plus below there was, but I`m going to find those old photos before I tell. Strick that lump by the 2nd watch come from where I first took Nurse Paul in 2017, had been flogged for 30 years by every detector operator in OZ well nearly all of em, but the Z showed its magic and come up with the goods again. If you`ve your ears on Paul, could you please give your version of this story, I`ve told mine in another thread.

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.

Klunker we should all suffer from so much gold under the coil that our detectors will not ground-balance...poor thing! fred

That speci I got a couple of weeks ago, I dropped it in Ali Brite about 5 days ago and it came up pretty good. After it was cleaned the SG came down a fraction, it now sg`s at 2.082 grams gold ?

The wife and I got out for a couple of hour detect today and about 1 hour in I got a really iffy signal with the 7000 and it sounded like it was down maybe a couple of inches. I was really surprised when the hole started getting deeper and deeper and the target was still there. When I was down about 8" in hard ground I got the 2300 my better half was using so I could pinpoint cause I really couldn`t tell where in the hole it was and down about the 12" mark this piece popped out. Looking at it from the side it pretty well looks like a rock but all around the edges there are hundreds of tiny pinpoints of gold. It sg`s at 2.1 grams gold and is my biggest piece in quite some time. ?

Came up really good Phoenix. Love species.Keep up and get some more. GoldEN

Well Steve I`m begging, NZ didn`t win but what a battle, they went so close to taking out "the old enemy". I doubt there has been another final like it in the cricket world. Number 13 is good but they do post a lot of quality posts, just a wee mention or they`ll be on my back forever...……….pleeeezzzze

Maybe when it cools down. At 112F, not many people are getting out. Very few go out at night like me.

That's what makes this the best hobby out there. Variety of finds and at any moment you could uncover a piece of history, a family heirloom, a precious coin, 22k of AU or a piece of canslaw. That must have been a roller coaster or emotions on that hunt. Congrats!

https://eshop.ramint.gov.au/Mutiny-and-Rebellion-The-Eureka-Stockade/10188.aspx This is a must for Vic gold prospectors and may other prospector.

Andyy you mentioned your friend has an SDC. Any way you two could do a comparison on targets? Maybe video it?

Possibly made by NuggetFinder! Lets hope these ones are waterproof.

Well now, that would be interesting. You see, competition is a good thing. Even if people do or do not like the Xcoils, it forces Minelab to react. Everybody wins.

Thieving ..s WA’ers?

3

Funny you mentioned that. I messaged that seller and asked him if he was selling it for so low because it was counterfeit. He never responded. ?

Hmmmmmmm....August you say....?

"I'm gonna try and drown mine as I'm getting close to the end of my warranty strick" Warranty is three years, so unless you have a time machine, no need to rush...lol. But you might as well find out. ?

MN your spot on, Y be satisfied with just the brilliance of the X coil, go for an OZ coil on your Z too.....

There was a GPZ on eBay for bid that had a pic that said email/message and buy it for $2k. The listing was gone in two days. Seemed like a potential counterfeit unit. Someone always seemed to bite on those “to good to be true” deals!

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

Last night I read a very interesting (IMO) article by Chris Ralph in the June, 2019 issue of the ICMJ (https://www.icmj.com/) titled "How Long Does It Take to Find and Recover an Ounce of Gold". There are a lot of caveats Chris lists, which makes it dangerous for me to summarize what was written. Further, there is a fine line between showing results from a magazine/journal which needs money to stay afloat and requiring interested parties to simply pay for a subscription. IMO, anyone halfway serious about searching for native gold (and there's more there than just gold) should be a subscriber. Most importantly, his estimates certainly depend upon the ground you are covering -- this should be obvious to everyone and I hope simply mentioning it will squelch any attempt to quibble at his results. Basically there is a lot of uncertainty around Chris's numbers, which he is well aware of, but it's still interesting to hear from an expert who has used all of these methods countless times. I was surprised at some of his estimates. In order longest (least efficient) to shortest: Panning: 42 hrs, Metal Detecting: 40 hrs, Sluicing/Highbanking: 30 hrs, Dry Washing: 30 hrs, Dredging: 20 hrs, Hard Rock Mining: 8 hrs. I think it's worth emphasizing that this is a time efficiency, not a cost efficiency. Panning is clearly the least expensive with hard rock mining by far the most. Chris also points out that the leadup time/research/preparation & cost are vastly different -- hard rock mining being the obvious extreme.

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

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.

Fantastic hunt. Never found a 90% silver half.

I usually take a soft toothbrush clean water and some baking soda to take the dirt off the silver.

I'm with you Steve. For some strange reason I'm thinking they will wait until someone released a detector that grabs our interest. I know 1st Texas wants to release a perfect machine (nothing is perfect) out of the gate but there will be a point where people will quit waiting and move on. As I recall a couple years ago they, (presumably a leak of 2 new detectors under development, "CZX" well I waited until the Equinox was released and jumped on board. And I'm glad I did. If they wait too long, it will cost them. You know, Minelab listens to what is going on and it wouldn't surprise me if they don't release something to pickup part of that market before 1st Texas.