geof_junk

You are spot on about pin pointing. I have got to the stage of not watching a lot of video finds now because of the wide spread lack of pin pointing and time they spend getting the gold out of the ground because of it..

Sometimes the junk will beat you. My wife and I got nuggets right up to the cans. We removed a lot of cans before the photo was taken how ever the small bits of rusted cans made it impossible to proceed. However managed to find two patches that yielded over a kilo of gold each with only a couple or so of steel rubbish no further than 5km away.

All I can say is discriminating for gold is risky and only for larger than a coin nuggets in highly mineralization and junky areas.

To me a sunbaker is one that you can see before you disturb the ground, that is the nugget can see the sun. It is OK if the detector sees it before you do.😁I have lost count of how many but it is around 30 but most are small in the range 2 to 4 grams. The one on the left has moss and lichen as it was hiding from the sun most of the time. It made the oz+ the other one was an oz also The large one on top was just under 5¾ oz and was sitting right out in the open enjoying the sun. The smaller one was in the ground hiding near by about 6" deep.

If you are looking for a spot to do and the GIS data bank has records of mine/claim before 1950 load it in by it self in the area that you are interested in. My belief is in those days a lot of them had to be worked by hand and not loads full of speculation claims these days.

Rob don't get dishearten, back when big nuggets were everywhere I spent 10 weeks 12+ hours 7 days a week detecting in Wedderburn Vic. Aust. and I found 2 nuggets less than you. In those days no one was teaching anyone how to use a detectors. As Gerry has said a lesson or two will speed up your learning curve and it is not only learning your machine that involved. Best of luck in the Gold Fields and keep at it.

Some good advice above. Gold does move and spread out a lot in some ground. The trick is to cover a lot of ground correctly at the required speed. Have a look at this post, but start near known gold finds. .....Nugget Spread....

You are in luck gold is measured in Troy weight. ie. 12 heavy oz instead of 16 light oz so don't use the kitchen scales for your pounder. About 81 grams lighter.😁 The troy ounce is heavier than the avoirdupois ounce, yet the troy pound is lighter than the avoirdupois pound.

I had a dredge, pan, sluice and a pick, no detector. I bought the best Garretts at the time for the wife. She hated it so I got her Whites 6000 Coinmaster so I was left with a second hand Garretts ADS Deepseeker 😉. The battle was on who had the best detector. She got the first nugget over an ounce 😭 So when she was looking after the boys in the mornings I tried hard to catch up. Did that with a multiple ounce one (4 oz). From then on my job was to find the patches, which was done with a double digit patch of 26+ oz I got most of it 19 oz in the morning the rest when I took her out after lunch. After about 15 years use I upgrade to the Whites Goldmaster which was just release in Aust for Australia. As I knew my detectors I saw no reason to upgrade till I retired in 2003. Then I bought 2 of the lastest ML GP-3000 as we were going to West Aust. gold fields. Got the lastest Nugget Finders coils and got to learn the ML detectors which paid for themselves in the six months before we went to WA. I guess 15 years are up so another decision has to be made about some new ones and light weight is a prime factor.

That's the one, I did start to take notice of the GT1600 at that time. You make me feel old now all my kids were in Tertiary Schools back then. 🤣

JP did you use a XT 15000, it was the worst top line detector at it times ( It was over the top in HYPE at the time as well). I agree with your view of all other Minelab detector.

Try looking at George C. Payne Inventions and Eric Foster-Carl Moreland https://patents.justia.com/inventor/george-c-payne ....LINK.... https://patents.justia.com/patent/8749240 .....LINK.....

Try this for BFO detectors Proceedings National Graduate Conference 2012 (NatGrad2012), University Tenaga Nasional, Putrajaya Campus, 8-10 Nov 2012.pdf

I was doing a farm paddock the was a known horse race track. The wife was detecting down on the flat with no luck. I took the high ground that over looked it and was do really good on silver coins and was gridding the spot. The wife walked up swinging her detector saying it been flogged, and stopped dead and dug up a 1800 gold sovereign. I said that mine, but got told finder keepers. That was her second gold coin the first was at a gold site. She keep close to and old hut while I looked for nuggets a bit away from her. Don't ask me how many gold coins I have found.😭 As she always asks the same question when gold coins come up.

Have you looked the area with google earth it might give you a different view.

Well it been a long year since COV19 hit, it would be nice to see some camp fires from your detecting grounds. This was winter about 15 years ago in WA.

For some one doing it for wages, it would be foolish to not up grade at each release. For an amateur each major up grade is worth thinking about, but only buy the best for your conditions when you do. You will still find gold with the best old models even if it does not find wages.

It is the hunt that's fun, the gold is the reward and allow you to convince the spouse that a new detector is worth while. Hope you have a lot more of those days.

surveyors paint in many color

I wonder how many large nuggets will be found before Easter.

Here is a bit of free tucker in the west Aust out back. The dinner table. Catching it first. Cooking it when fresh Done. Ready to eat. I am not sure the eggs might be protected these days

Due to the fact that we were outback for months we had a food dehydrator and had a lot of dried fruit and veggies in the van as fresh one were not always available. Jerky was a lot cheaper when you made it yourself.

This one got away so no tea that day😀

Does a Microwave work Tuna or do you use Sandalwood to cook it.😄

That will keep the younger completion away, they can't live without their phones😀