Jump to content

Leaderboard

Popular Content

Showing content with the highest reputation on 11/10/2019 in all areas

  1. Hi all, It’s been awhile since my last post, but I’ll be sharing some knowledge and anecdotes more often, now that my summer job is a thing of the past and I’m free to once again roam the desert southwest, wielding the power of the mighty Zed to unearth nature’s golden treasures. I was carefully gridding (or - in deference to Gerry in Idaho - crawling) an old nugget patch during a recent trip to the far flung reaches of Nevada’s golden triangle, when the hypnotic drone of the threshold was suddenly broken by a sharp, double “wee-ooh, wee-ooh”. This type of response typically heralds a small and shallow target, usually within six inches of the surface. “Most likely a boot tack or bird shot”, I thought to myself as I crouched down and scraped an inch or two of the dry and dusty desert soil away from the target zone with my pick. Another swing of the detector coil indicated that I had moved the target, and a quick sifting of the material with the hand scoop revealed a small yellow nugget...the first catch of the day! A few more of these shallow pickers were dug during the the next couple of hours, and then I heard a faint, single “wee-ooh”. Knowing that this meant a bit larger target at depth, I went to work hacking into the densely packed soil with my pick until...well, I’ll let this short video tell the rest of the story: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zzmm1pgdrpaswe7/Nugget dig.mov?dl=0 The actual weight of the nugget turned out to be 5.6 grams, bringing the total for the day to over a quarter of an ounce of the good stuff!
    4 points
  2. Was in an old 1940 school yard that used to be a farm and got all giddy at first when I dug this up, was pretty deep about 14" or so. Thought it was a large cent in good shape but still kind of neat. Medal is bronze.
    4 points
  3. This is the best video I have seen yet explaining the basics of search coils and why some may be better at some uses than others. By Garrett May 2019.
    4 points
  4. I have been hunting an old desert SP stop that is heavy alkali , so heavy that the top of the ground is a white salt crust. The park 1 and beach 1 settings have produced the most favorable results for me and at this point seem equal. The sensitivity level I run varies as chatter annoys me. The settings I have been using are 50 tone, Iron ON with volume set at 1, 0 iron bias and recovery at 6. There is a lot of garbage in the ground. I recall Brian Cal-Cobra posting about hunting in similar conditions and am interested in his take (as well as others) on setting choices. The Morgans and the lock came out of the worst of the alkali mud and were completely encrusted. All three were good dig signals but none deeper than 6 inches.
    3 points
  5. I have now modified my 18650 pack to incorporate a 1g silica gel pack now as I was getting slight condensation. I’ve not been out with it yet be it may help.
    3 points
  6. Welcome back to the AU zone Lunk, great looking gold for the Patch. You’ve been missed. Your skills and ability to find the gold “that I’d just missed” (way back when the Zed was new in 2014), convinced me to divest myself of lesser gear and jump on the GPZ wagon. Between you and Gerry, I’ve never regretted that move. You two, along with all the advise of Steve & JP, have become the game-changers in my outings. So thanks to all, my poke keeps getting heavier.
    3 points
  7. It's a shame Lunk and I never hunted together while I had my GPZ. He and I hunt the same way, super slow and methodical gridders. We both find gold. But we are complete opposites when it comes to tuning. I tune for hot and noisy and let my ear sort the signals. Lunk goes the other way, tuning the machine as best as is possible to eliminate all the false signals that I am sorting with my ear/brain. Both methods have reasons why they may be better and in general I recommend people tune like Lunk does rather than the way I do. I'm more the oddball person out on that sort of thing at the other extreme. JP falls more in the middle leaning perhaps a little my way - he hates smoothing. In any case it would have been fun to hunt together and cross check targets found so opportunity lost there. It may have helped shed a little light on which methodology is best. If there is a tuning wizard out of the three of us though I vote for JP. Lunk and I are more the outliers. No offense meant there Keith!
    3 points
  8. If you have a 3D printer , save some money and modify this model to your liking: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2873737
    2 points
  9. I love clever ideas like this Sure Grip that makes detecting life easier. This is what I did before I saw the Sure Grip. I cut a swimming noodle to a convenient thickness, cut a slit in it so I could simply slip it around the top of the handle. It buffers the control box from weighing on my hand and stays on with no problem. It's nice and comfy but easily removed when cleaning my EQX. The Sure Grip however would be better when submerged in water.
    2 points
  10. Flakmagnet I have had this problem a few times. Find some mild ground then try to ferrite balance for 2 to 3 minutes. If that doesn’t work then RESET ALL settings. Then try a long ferrite balance again. Then restore individual favorite settings and turn on the GPS and WM-12 if you use them. Have a good day, Chet
    2 points
  11. I paid good money to get those setting (and a lot more) and now he's giving it away! I wouldn't have missed it. I've had better days in Rye Patch since the training than before the training. I think I've already paid for it with my finds over the last couple of trips. Mitchel
    2 points
  12. No offense taken, amigo, and I totally agree with your assessment: JP is the wizard!
    2 points
  13. Simply put, in combination with my other audio settings, the target response is the most distinct with High Audio Smoothing. If you switch back and forth between High and Off, you'll hear what I mean.
    2 points
  14. Yeah, I just added a note to my first post. This is the same detector as the much more expensive Fisher F4. The F4 comes with an 11” DD coil instead of the 8” concentric on the 3300, plus the F4 has a three piece instead of two piece rod. However, the target id scale on the F4 is compressed from 0 - 99 compared to the amazing 0 - 199 scale on the 3300... see my post above. I doubt Walmart and Cabelas are very happy to be sitting on 3300 stock at higher prices.
    2 points
  15. Yeah and no real mention of PI. However, what there was they covered briefly and well, with good illustrations. Concentrics in particular are overlooked so nice to see a clear explanation iof them. In mild soil with targets not too close together they are a secret weapon. Metal Detector Search Coil Compatibility VLF Concentric vs DD Coils
    2 points
  16. Very nice find my friend, but what astonished me most was your smooth tongue and colorful story telling capabilities. As for a 16" deep nugget, I just measured the 14" ZED coil and with stock coil cover it is actually closer to 15", since the cover sticks out almost a 1/2" on both ends. Your 16" deep nugget find is more like a 17". Now you are getting close to the 18" depth I dug one last week. Either way, your attention to detail, ability to find other top performing settings on the 7000 and the shout out just goes to show folks why I enjoy having you on my Field Training Staff. Hopefully I can get back down there 1 more time before the weather sets in. Nice 1/4 oz day btw.
    2 points
  17. That all sounds excellent, especially the small gold results. I am in total agreement that any discrimination system has trade offs, even in the best VLF detectors. Those trades are perfectly acceptable as long as we know what they are so we can apply proper judgement on where to employ discrimination and where to dig everything. The big downfall for PI has always been its affinity for ferrous targets making it simply impractical for use in some locations. Impulse AQ addresses that issue and I expect the best places to use one initially will be exactly those locations that PI users have avoided until now. I personally have no doubt this detector will be very productive in the right locations and look forward to using one myself. I have not owned a waterproof PI since I sold my ATX and have been waiting patiently for something better to come along. For me the waterproof TDI was too little too late. I wanted one from the very first day I used a TDI but after years of being ignored in my lobby efforts I found by the time White’s finally made one better things like the Impulse were on the horizon. Very kind of you to post that information LE.JAG..... thank you! It’s especially good to hear the Terra version is in beta testing, that bodes well for a dual machine introduction.
    2 points
  18. From Wikipedia: "A long-range locator is a class of fraudulent devices purported to be a type of metal detector, supposedly able to detect a variety of substances, including gold, drugs and explosives; most are said to operate on a principle of resonance with the material being detected." There is more at the link, but "a class of fraudulent devices" says it all as far as I am concerned. I just wanted to post this so people can find it in the search results in case they are looking. For me these devices have always failed the most basic test... the experience of hundreds of thousands of prospectors and treasure hunters around the world. Treasure hunters and gold prospectors will give anything a try that might work, no matter how crazy it seems. If it works, the use soon spreads to other prospectors. You can Google genuine successful results for regular metal detectors all day long. The internet is full of successful people using normal metal detectors to make great finds. Except for a few obvious promotionals, the success stories of people using LRL devices are glaringly absent. All excuses for why this is so flies in the face of the simple common sense answer - they don't work. In almost 50 years of metal detecting and prospecting I have met a lot of successful people, and none of them got that way by relying on a long range locator. Part two of the common sense test is if they did work, there would be at least a few users of these devices that would be fabulously rich. The few I have met are anything but... just the opposite. Again, excuses made about why these rich LRL users are invisible fly in the face of common sense. Like wanting their privacy, as if we are not a country that brags about every tiny thing we can think of! The only people getting rich are the people selling these devices. I personally refuse to purchase anything from a company selling long range locators. It says something about the management of the company that makes me prefer to do business elsewhere. If you want the absolute best information on these device anywhere visit the website below. More at Geotech
    1 point
  19. I’ve gotten a lot of questions from hunters (who learn that I have two books out on the Equinox) asking for “settings.” One guy saw some rings I had found in salt water with the Equinox and asked for my “settings.” Others describe a type of site they are hunting--“cellar holes” for example and want to know just what “settings” to run. I can’t answer these questions because what they need is not a “setting” but rather a skill set--a “system” of tuning the detector, (in relation to the specific ground and target matrix), listening to and examining targets with the coil, selecting responses and conducting their overall hunt. To focus on simple “settings” or the technology of any detector type ignores the fact that there are a whole range of skills needed for success at difficult sites. Not all involve the detector itself. The real skill lies in understanding and managing the interactions. A good maxim is that: “…predetermined settings only get you into the ball park—it’s up to you to find the best seat…” The ideas is to learn to recognise what the conditions demand and apply your machine’s strengths based upon basic skills--not hope it will take the place of them. What I advocate is a broad-based approach to learning and detecting. This is kind of like the Equinox itself--just as a multi-frequency signal gathers more information to be analysed, examining your signals from a wide range of standpoints lets you learn and develop a broader knowledge base--faster. Then, as you encounter problem targets or sets of conditions which are new--you have the general skills to adapt. Part of the misinformation about the Equinox comes from those who have had success under highly specific conditions--many in situations where not a lot of skill was needed--flat out “hear and dig” in stable inland conditions. While there are sets of conditions where this is the only way to operate--it’s a narrow mindset. Why buy a detector that has the versatility of the Equinox and not develop the kinds of skills that will let you get the most from it? From” “Skill Building with the Minelab Equinox Series Metal Detectors” by Clive James Clynick (Prestige Publishing, 2019)
    1 point
  20. The local public TV station KCET has put together a series about gold in the Mojave Desert. I think there are only 3 parts and I have not watched the episodes yet but I have skimmed the online portions and they are fantastic. I've been to many of the places depicted and now I'll know a lot more about them when I make time to read and watch this history of my gold hunting areas. https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/desert-gold-part-i https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/desert-gold-part-ii https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/desert-gold-part-iii
    1 point
  21. Time flew by up at the cabin and on my little claim this season. I continued to clear, detect, and drywash the decomposed granite bench areas. Here’s a nice clean out from one drywash session: I also reworked the sides of some oldtimer Diggings, filling in their ditch as I go....lots of work here for little return lol! Found some nice nuggies when I uncovered some crevices in a different bedrock...biggest piece was almost .6gram, decent size for up here: A highlight of the summer was having my nephew’s boys visit. They learned drywashing, running the concentrates through the recirculating sluice, then how to pan. Each ended up with a couple grams(hmmm....maybe a little “salt” in those concentrates lol): AND the season ended on a positive note! Found a nice handful in this small scraping from a new spot....definitely will setup the drywasher here next year! Ended up with just shy of 12 grams total up here for the season....not much gold, but tons of fun and memories! 🙂
    1 point
  22. My last day of trip, I actually started working around a road.To be honest, I wanted the variety of trash to help speed up the learning curve of differentiating target sounds with my new machine. Pulled a nugget right by the road. was laughing to myself remembering you telling just a couple days earlier how you were looking around, not wanting someone to see you digging near road. I was doing the same thing. Something about it feels so wrong.
    1 point
  23. It was too cold yesterday to detect and the wind was blowing too. Today was different! So out we go (me and my wife) to a new elementary school. I used my trusty T2SE with the Cors Shrew. The conditions were for lack of a better word- weird. Coins were coming in much different than how they usually do on the ID. This is one of those areas where the dirt is red and filled with the golden sparkle flakes everywhere. Well onto the meat and potatoes. I found some clad quarters, dimes, a nickel and crusty pennies. Ran over the entire chip bark lot and had just told my wife "It's time to get the ORX out and sweep up". Right at that moment i got a quarter signal and out pops this pretty shiny coin at 7" in the chip and red clay. It is a 1953 Canadian Silver 25 cent piece. It looks rather worn to me and is my first Canadian Silver. I was very excited to get that. Question is, HOW did it get here in the states on a playground? I have a feeling some kid raided a coin collection and wanted to ditch the evidence maybe. After that find the ORX was deployed and found another 2 quarters a couple more dimes, a nickel and more pennies. Oh yeah, also found a "Chuck E Cheese" token. First token I've dug. First and second picture is the silver coin. Last pic is the crusty clad haul. The silver was already sort of scratched looking on the face when found. So in all today, the 1953 silver canadian, 7 clad quarters, 10 clad dimes, 2 nickels, 14 clad pennies. I threw some corroded pennies away because they had edges that was ragged. Pleased with today's silver and will not complain about coinstar clad!
    1 point
  24. Just rock piles left from the wind erosion....
    1 point
  25. I would be in cruise mode around the edges of that area.
    1 point
  26. Hard to guess, perhaps someone raked some to detect... usually the tail piles will be faint but still visible..... if it was detected there should be shallow dig holes from the old Vlf days...those marks hardly ever disappear completely. Did you detect any? fred
    1 point
  27. During the beginning of detecting with the 5000 I found it extremely useful to re-read the manual every 2-3 months. There is a lot to unpack there. Heck its probably still useful now
    1 point
  28. Haha, yes those too.. Gold Mode: High Yield, Ground Type: Normal, Sensitivity: 8, Volume: 20, Threshold Level: 27, Threshold Pitch: 25, Volume Limit: 3, Audio Smoothing: High, Ground Smoothing: Locate Patch. Thanks Lunk
    1 point
  29. Thanks for taking the time to show us your find. That's a deep target in anyone's book so nice work. I was wondering why you use Audio Smoothing on High? I am always interested in learning from you...
    1 point
  30. Lunk uses Locate Patch too. Why isn't there a setting that says 'Work Patch?' haha
    1 point
  31. Well done Lunk. Keep them coming this winter. Gerry will be watching! haha So will the rest of us. Mitchel
    1 point
  32. Wow, two silver dollars! I’ve only ever found one in all my years detecting. And great relic finds also... good for you!
    1 point
  33. Steve, Some very good points here. For me the problem with the Impulse is that for some bizarre reason First Texas has chosen to remain almost completely quiet on the machine. The questions of "holes" in gold targets are very legitimate and it is surprising to me that Fisher hasn't taken the time to at least release some sort an update on this detector. I mean, they've selectively teased everyone with short videos and drops of prototypes at shows, so why not just tell those of us honestly what's going on?
    1 point
  34. If this detector works at 19khz it will be more sensitive to different sizes of gold, but again to large silver coins, or to 25 Us cent / Quarter / will have less reach than bronze coins or copper coins of the same size ..
    1 point
  35. If you have an Airtest range of 2-euro coin around 30-32 cm, and for 1 gram gold brick will be 19-20cm, so this detector Fisher Gold Bug-pro... with 11 "DD coil in discrimination has the right range ..
    1 point
  36. Just a little bit more water pressure and I think it would run great. Good job on the plastic bottle. I sent you a pm message.
    1 point
  37. I went to Gold Basin with the IDEA of finding gold. That proved futile so I went back to a couple of places where I've found meteorites. I managed to eek out a couple (10g partial sunbaker and 2.7g from near the helicopter pad) before I headed home via Franconia on Thursday morning. This is the patina you expect on a sunbaker meteorite. I haven't cleaned it and I'll let this one stay with the little bit of dirt. I heard it but didn't see it before I scooped it. I also didn't have my camera with me to take a picture. I have not been in Franconia with the 7000 since it came out. On that trip I got a couple of nice chondrites and about 20 irons. The picture and story won Minelab find of the month. I was hoping for a repeat but I also wanted to target a different area. Part of that plan worked and part didn't. The first half of the walk I didn't find any irons and found one deep target that is not a meteorite even tho I've found a meteorite there at a similar depth. Here are the beginning panoramas for Franconia. It was a good 'second half' of the trip because I swung down to where the irons fell and found a few on the patina patches I had missed before. They are not very big but they sound off really good. Beginning at 1 o'clock on the dime and going to 12 the ten meteorites are: .06, .06, .07, .07, .10, .18, ,25, ,28, .32, and .34 grams. Just like gold the meteorites in Franconia are harder to find! Mitchel
    1 point
  38. Erik, with the mention of the fine free gold in the ore you might want to pan in the creek some. If you find pin head size specks of gold fairly easily panning and no gold with multiple tries detecting it is possible the gold formed in tiny little flakes in the ore and there are no large pieces. Some places are like that. There are more areas around me with only small gold than there are areas with detectable gold. I can get gold in nearly every pan, it's just really tiny.
    1 point
  39. Uh, Chase, I'm almost certain he wasn't kidding. I'm pretty sure he's gonna be buying a 44 if you dont lay down some educational content. Erik-kidding or not that was a well written entertaining post, thanks!
    1 point
  40. 1 point
  41. Hello, and welcome aboard! Steve and Simon, along with many others here, will have you finding stuff in no time! They all have pretty much seen it and done it all! 💰Good luck!💰
    1 point
  42. 1 point
  43. I returned to that same beach again for what was going to be a decent low tide. I must admit I was kind of tired that morning and it showed in my not so smart strategy. Basically I used the wrong detector, with the wrong coil, during the wrong part of the tide recession. That's it in a nut shell😆 The beach was starting to sand in and my use of a 14" coil for the GPX on a very wet, black sand area, littered with iron was a bad choice. I should have let the sand dry a bit and used the 5x10" coil. Also used the Equinox with the sand too saturated (11" coil), and it performed marginally. For my area, it is better to let the surface of the sand dry a bit and let the saturated part be below and not surface, for the coil to see. All of the silver was found in the dry sand with the GPX early on. Also by shifting to a lower area, you can see the ratio of zinc to copper pennies was way different than the other two hunts. So even after 50 years of detecting, I am still able to make some rookie mistakes 🙄 But I did get a great silver spoon at 20". It was a ghost signal that I chased and it ended up being that spoon. I think it reads-1HAS.W.Kennard&Co 925. I'm heading out to another beach tomorrow to see what it holds. I need to give that beach a rest for a bit. The fun continues.........
    1 point
  44. Thanks again everyone 🙂 Oh i forgot to tell you all, my girlfriends GM1000 is fine. When she tumbled the shaft by the armrest unscrewed a few millimeters. So i just tightened it and all is well again. You guys are going to laugh (because i did), on the previous expedition when my girlfriend was attempting to use the GM1000, she was doing a new swinging technique i haven't seen before 🙂 just think of Karate Kid and Wax On, Wax Off. lol. What's even funnier is she found a hot rock with excitement thinking it was gold, she takes the dirty hot rock hands it to me and said its gold! I said no...it isn't gold, if it was that little rock would weigh ten times as much. So the GGM1000 is going strong again and I feel like an un-experienced teacher lol 🙂 P.S - GGM1000 = Girlfriends Goldmonster 1000. Next Expedition October 30th.
    1 point
  45. Thank you guys 🙂 I appreciate you all for helping me in all this. It's been kind of a confusing time for me. I will take "ALL" your advice and I'm going to use with what I have and you all are right I have some good hardware and not everyone has what i have. P.S - BTW I donated the GM1000 to my girlfriend. She got excited when she found a nail. 🙂
    1 point
  46. After having bought and used a Minelab Equinox 800 for more than 80 hours/ 1 year, I bought a Garrett AT Max as well. The AT Max is my favourite detector now. Don't get me wrong, the Equinox is a very very good detector in my opinion and I'm keeping it for sure. However I can not really get used to the "tight" vdi scale of -9 to 40. I prefer a vdi scale of 0 to 99. And the handle/straight-stem combination causes my arm (elbow/shoulder) to hurt some after even half an hour. No problems with the S-stems of my other two detectors. But most importantly (for me personally) the AT Max has something extra, that I have never experienced with another brand of detector, namely: FUN. It's hard to describe why or how, but just looking at it and using the AT Max gives me joy. And every time the Max connects immediately with the MS-3 headphones (or my Z-Lynk receiver for use with my XP backphones) and the wireless AT Z-Lynk pinpointer. BTW, this "FUN-factor" is not advertised by Garrett, but you get it nevertheless and for free. 😉 I think (and it's just my personal opinion, others may have a completely different opinion of course) the Equinox is more technically advanced and adjustable to personal preferences. More frequencies and also simultaneous frequencies will give me more confidence of being able to adjust everything to the "max" (with the Eqx instead of the Max 😀) while prospecting or searching around salt water. The Equinox has everything I want in a detector, but , since I bought the AT Max, I find myself taking out the AT Max to the fields and parks every time. On topic: Garrett AT Series That Good? : ( for me) YES! I suppose, now I'm a Garrett-fanboy, as well as an Equinox-fanboy. 😁
    1 point
  47. I'd be lucky if I could swing that an hour...then I'd be layed up the next day.
    1 point
  48. I stumbled across a post on another forum about the auto ground balance on the AT Pro and how it is not as close to the ground mineralization as it could be. The poster suggested auto ground balancing then switching to manual ground balance and dropping it by 5 clicks. I tried it with a couple targets on the ground, silver dime, gold earing and small white gold earing and yup gained about 2" on the gold and easy 3" on the dime. Though the targets were on the ground and not buried I believe the gain will be a bit less but the vdi numbers will be more accurate. I also tested 10 clicks down but that may be too close the grounds mineralization and the machine may start falsings. I had done this before at the beach where auto gb doesn't work that well. In wet sand the Auto Gb would set the machine around 12-14 and running the machine at 8 or gave it a bit more punch and actually ran quieter. I just never tried that on land as I assumed when the machine was quiet it was good to go. I'm sure many of you already knew this but thought I would toss it out anyways.
    1 point
  49. Yes its 100% finding plenty in the Thames were they used to scrap ships RR
    1 point
  50. Interesting also that the hottest machine ever made, the Gold Bug 2, only employs concentric coils.
    1 point
×
×
  • Create New...