Amgminingco
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On 10/18/2023 at 8:22 AM, Gerry in Idaho said:
Thanks for asking a very important question. As you view some of the pics, you'll see my coil size and selection varies based on the detector used. When running the older GP and GPX series with some Iron Identification, one must have a DD coil and the detector set up accordingly. I really like the 10" Ellip DD in some of the rough terrain areas and also the lighter coil on those bigger heavy machines is more manageable.
When running VLF detectors in such sites I'm swinging the stock size coils as I'm not really interested in tiny bits and pickers. Back in the day on a Fisher GB-2, Tesoro LST, White's Gold Master series, I used stock 10" Ellip and larger 14" Ellip. With MXT series the 950 coils and or even 12" round. When newer Fisher GB came out and after some testing, I liked the 11" Semi Ellip. spoked coil. Then came the X-Terra series by Minelab and my testing provided me best results with the stock 9" round Concentric coil in the 18 kHz and if really rough terrain the 10" Ellip DD in same 18kHz. After that was the Equinox series and boy did the EQ-800 with stock 11" round coil and extreme light weight really get it done. I even used the larger 12x15 in a couple areas that had produced a few bigger pieces and managed to squeeze out one more sandwich of gold.
Below for my big mouth fans...
Below pic was found with NOX-800 and 12x15" coil.
The Manticore and coil size. No option yet, just a bunch of BS teasing us. Yes, I have used Manti with success and the 11" round DD is fine and will be more preferred coil. Eventually, I'll step up a size for a select few areas...but at the rate things are going, it will probably be next year before I get to swing one as winter is setting in around my closer sites in ID, NV and Eastern OR.
As for the GPZ-7000, I used the stock 14x13" coil but only in a few select sites as there is no Iron ID. Same with the newer GPX-6000, the stock 11" round is just fine.
With the newest of the big boy detectors, the Pulse Induction Garrett Axiom and it's variable capabilities and coil options is ideal for a variety of such style of detecting tailings/diggings. It has Iron ID capabilities the 6000 and 7000 do not. Plus, the Axiom's advanced PI technology does better on many kinds of specimens and invisible gold many other PI's miss. My own style of detecting and the size of gold I'm chasing with the Axiom at such sites, I've been swinging the 12x13" MONO coil.
One piece of advice for those who prefer to use a big deep detector, be sure to have a good VLF with target identification capabilities nearby. Doing so will save you so much time and energy.
Realize what is different about me than most. I don't really like chasing small gold, unless that's the only gold remaining in the area. When you have dug up a couple trophies, it's tough to step back to small again. Yes, I know there's more small gold than big and that's exactly why when my Field Staff and I do training, we teach most to use smaller coils as they provide better results for the majority of what's left.
Always varying scenarios and choices out there and not 1 way, 1 machine or 1 coil is best for everything. Options in different detectors and coil selections allows me to find more heavy metal.
I had a 6.7 (or 6.9) I always forget.. specimine with over a lb of gold in it and when I got within 6 inches I swung the gm1000 over it and it pinged out on the iron side. And was grunting like there is no tomorrow. If I didn’t know the area had lunks, (I’ve found 4,5,5,and 6 lb specimens within a 150 feet area aswell as multiple ounces of smaller nuggets) if I didn’t know this I probably would have thought it was a shovel head or a pick. The monster didn’t ping gold or even give an indication until the specimen was out of the ground. Do you just leave it if it says iron?
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2 hours ago, IdahoPeg said:
Holy crap! You were a slow learner on that detector, but wow have you kicked butt once you figured it out! Congratulations on your success!
Actually I had dialed it in pretty well, I just got tired of getting nothing but nails and bullets. I bought and sold my gpx5000s 2 times because I got discouraged. Then the third time I finally got a stroke of luck. And after two months with the third gpx5000 I had enough saved up to buy a gpz7000. Which the very first day and very first time ever using it I went out, turned it on, walked 5 feet, and got a 68 gram nugget. Fifteen minutes later and 20 feet away came the 10 ounce nugget aswell. I was done detecting for the day by 9:30am.. then i upgraded the coil to the nuggetfinder 17x13 z search. And the rest is history. Both nuggets are in the photo.
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MY GOLDEN STORY; PART TWO!
MY GOLDEN STORY(PART TWO)
IF YOU HAVE ALREADY READ PART ONE SCROLL TO PART TWO!!!
Hello my name is Allen, I grew up in Mariposa and I’m still here(I don’t think il ever leave) I’m 29 years old and I have been prospecting since I was 13, it all started when my dad took me to the gem and mineral show at the county fair grounds. There was a roaring camp Recirculating sluice box display and a man was giving tutorials on how it works. When he saw I was curious in the item he gave me a quick demonstration. He then proceeded to try and sell me one(I was broke like most 13 year olds) I went to my dad and asked him to buy me a gold pan, I already knew he wouldn’t buy me a 100$ sluice box. he quickly said no, my dad was never into gold prospecting. Upon hearing that the man who was giving the demonstration of the sluice box came up to me with a brand new gold pan. He handed it to me and said go find some gold. I thanked him and when I got home that afternoon I immediately went down to the creek below my dads property. I dug out a pan full of material from the inside bend of the creek like I heard the old man explain earlier in his demonstration. That pan yielded me nearly 2 GRAMS!!!
ADDICTED TO SHINY YELLOW ROCKS
I was hooked immediately and in the first 6 months panning after school and weekends when I had free time I was able to pull 2 &1/4 ounces of placer gold from just that inside bend! All of the gold I had panned was sharp which at the time I never paid any attention to; but we’ll get to that shortly. When I was 15-16 years old in 9th grade I was really into prospecting, by that time I had been able to buy my own sluice box, 5 gallon buckets, and classifiers. I had gotten a few more ounces out of the creek and the alluvial placer deposit seemed like it would never end!
BUILDING A GOLD TROMMEL
One day I was told by a family friend that a nearby mine owner (it’s now a gravel plant) was told about my passion for gold prospecting and he offered to sell me a cinnamon grinder which I could turn into a trommel for scrap price. I paid 2,000$ for the 26 foot long barrel and I- beam contraption I knew nothing about. We got it home and the fabrication work began. Over the next 8 months my dad (who was now seeing I was actually pretty good at finding gold) taught me how to weld and how to make anything I ever needed from scrap iron. He is a real McGuiver, the hopper is made from welded together propane tanks, and the cut 4 foot x 2 foot slabs of 1/4” steel that came from the areas where the 3/4” expanded metal screens now are. The trommel came with a 35hp 3-phase electric motor. “That won’t work”, my dad said. So I started. And I began my search on Craigslist for a gas motor. A week later I found a 65 horsepower Wisconsin 4 cylinder engine in Sonora for 150$. It wasn’t running and the seller had no idea if it would run at all. I got a ride to acquire the engine and upon arrival I made sure the engine wasn’t seized and took it home. Growing up riding dirt bikes on a dusty road I knew how to rebuild carburetors like a professional. So I did just that and the engine started right up! The sluice box and hopper for the sluice were then added. Everything fabricated by me and my dad based off of what we had learned and inquired from the internet.
RUNNING THE TROMMEL FOR GOLD!!
We got a 1602 permit after finishing the trommel and getting it set up, and we ran 50 feet long and 10 feet wide of the seasonal creek I had been finding all of that placer gold in. This task took us one weekend to complete and when we cleaned out the 2 sluice boxes there was an astonishing amount of gold in the first, and none in the bottom! How much did the first sluice box obtain? 27 ounces!! Most of which was very sharp nuggets/pickers and a few jagged eraser sized quartz specimens.
METAL DETECTING;
Metal detecting for me wasn’t very exciting in the first 12 (YES TWELVE!!) years… I had started with a Garrett gold stinger 2 and knew absolutely nothing of how to find areas good for metal detecting that have indicators for metal detectable gold. I gave up on detecting for a few months and went back to my prospecting in creeks with a gold pan/sluice box.
MINELAB; if only I were had the knowledge of how to properly run the gpx5000. I bought and sold 3 whole sets of minelab gpx5000 due to me getting discouraged when going for months in a row nearly every single day with no return. Okay now let’s get to the INTERESTING part of this exciting stories of mine which are such great memories now.
SAME MINELAB; COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MACHINE!
I would try for the next few years repeating my buy-sell cycle. Looking back now I would tell myself not to get discouraged. Because you might just give up on the MOTHER LODE! on September 9th of last year(2022) I had gotten the itch to prospect with my gpx5000 and look for the famed “nugget patch” everyone is so eager to find. I wasn’t 500 feet from my dads doorstep walking behind his house when I got a signal. That signal turned out to be a 2.3 gram nugget of rough gold!FINDING THE NUGGET PATCH
This is where it got tricky, I had a friend of mine come over and examine the area where I found my first metal detector nugget. He had a minelab gpz7000 with a gp19 coil. He also knew a whole lot about gold prospecting, hard rock mining, geology, and metal detecting methods. He was the previous owner of the famous colorado quartz mine. Located in Mariposa California. When he got here we spent three hours metal detecting 100 feet up the slope where the nugget was found; aswell as 50 feet on each side looking for the brothers and sisters of my exciting piece of gold. When he had gotten tired he decided it was time to go down the hill and give up. “That nugget must have fallen out of some poor miners pocket or slipped out of a burlap sack full of gold.”
DONT GIVE UP!!
The following week I would spend some time every day walking the hill sides while swinging my gpx5000 which I had finally gotten my college degree to know how to properly tune & use it. One day I had gotten another signal, thinking it was going to be trash again I slowly proceeded to dig it up from the ground. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I pulled out a solid round 1 inch quartz-gold specimen weighing in at 13 grams! The hunt was on..
I COULD GO ON…
I could go on and recount every single one of my finds and the excitement that came with them, but I could write a book by then. Long story short, It has been 1 year and 2 months since my first metal detected gold nugget, and my specific gravity gold total is over 15 POUNDS!!!(gold weight only) most of which is coarse-big nuggets and crystalline gold quartz specimens. Very few are placers. My passion has always been learning something new.
CONCLUSION
so here we are coming to the end of my story. I will give updates and add a few more memories a few days a week. Until then, REMEMBER, BE SAFE AND SWING LOW AND SLOW…..OH! and if your an alluvial placer lover; heavy pans!
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I had a signal on my gpz7000 take me down to 2.5 feet which I know from experience in my area generally means huge gold, I swung the monster over it with 4” of dirt cover and it overloaded on iron with that nasty grunt and I ignored it, 6 lb 7 oz specimen with no iron oxides or sulfides of any kind in it. It didn’t swing to the right on the bar until I had the specimen out and put the detector right on top of it. Rule #1 don’t trust it lol
My Golden Story
in Detector Prospector Forum
Posted
Oh man, il have to break out the 5000 from my dads house down the road later today, I haven’t ran that guy in 8 months or so and have forgotten all of my settings but I will here shortly. The main thing is the nuggetfinder coils, I learned the stock minelab coils are very very noisy and do not do a sufficient job in depth for smaller nuggets. The number one thing I can say is your detector settings and proper ground balance is the #1 key to have a good machine. The gpx5000 with the nuggetfinder Sadie coil is just as effective at depth and small target identification at depth as the gpz7000 with the nuggetfinder z search 17x13. The only reason I use the 7000 is because it has a bigger coil and does the same as the 5000. The Sadie coil is only a 9” elyptical coil so it takes much more swings to equal to one swing with the 17x13. That’s literally the only reason I don’t use it. Love that darn gpx5000.