Jim in Idaho

Really nice, Bob! From what I've seen in Wyoming, and Idaho, blue flourescence is fairly rare. That "tube" nodule is also a special find.

Jim

Good info, Steve...thanks1

Jim

John, that trap Kiwi showed, and the one I found are leghold traps. They're not designed to kill, they're designed to close on the leg, and as the leg is pulled up, they're made to grab whatever they can...usually toes.

What Fred said is the truth. I'd love to find one of those old grizzly bear traps, with the big teeth. That would be worth some bucks.

Jim

Last winter, I was exploring the McCullough Range in southern Nevada, and found a double spring # 3 Victor trap. Probably set for coyotes back when they still allowed grazing in there. It was on the edge of a drywash, and probably drug there by the critter. Still had the stake and chain attached. It was on top of the ground, so I didn't have to worry about getting "bit"..LOL It still works, too.

Jim

You can count on that. I got tangled up on another project, and ran out of time on the black sand thing. Hoping to get back at it soon, assuming the weather doesn't get me.

Jim

Chris, the only real use I can see for this feature is trying to locate pay streaks of flour gold. That's what I really wanted it for. I live very close to the Snake River, and the river is full of very tiny flour gold.....the amount is estimated in the billions of dollars worth. Because of its shape factor, that flour rides well up in the water column, and is deposited on the surface as the high water goes down. The follow the black sand feature could be useful, if it worked, to find those surface paystreaks. As far as finding deeper larger gold with that feature, I agree with you...not much benefit.

16 hours ago, johnedoe said:

Jim in Idaho...

I think they did years ago... It was a BFO machine....

LOL...yes, John, they did. And I've still got my old Garrett Master Hunter BFO, with two double coil sets for it.

Jim

Thanks, Chris. I was under the impression that while you might see through one, you can't read text or see a straight line through one.

Jim

I'm with Chris. A simple test is to look at at text through it. Or even a straight line, or some sort of edge. If you can see it, it's not a diamond. You can't see through diamonds. Also, it doesn't have the luster of a raw diamond.

jim

26 minutes ago, auminesweeper said:

Yeah Rick, they a great battery packs but I would not use them In any of the E-Series machines because they can put out well over 14 volts which is a bit risky because there is very little known about what the limits are in the E-Series machines, Where as Duracells and Energizers can put out 12,6 to 13.0 volts +/- and Energizer Ultra lithium's can put out 1.84/1.87 volts per cell which is 14.72 volts to 14.96 volts which is a 25% increase in power on the input side of things, These machines were made with the current Battery tech in mind back in the 90's /00's and these newer batteries are tempting fate, "Yes" they will work but for how long ? that is the question,

The V3i and the TDI SL are battery hog's and the SL has a bit more wiggle room when it comes to Voltage but the older E-Series are voltage controlled and have much tighter tolerances so over powering them is not a risk I would be taking. Unlike the SL the E-Series does not benefit from the higher voltage,

I was playing with an LED Lantern and I saw it had a charging point/plug socket, being fed up with cranking the handle I pluged it in to a power adapter and it was charging good, and after a few minutes it started to get warm and every thing was fine but after about 30 minutes it melted the solder and the wire to the charging circuit became un-attached,, The thing I am pointing out is that if you go putting to much power in to the MXT/DFX you stand a good chance of melting the solder joints where the battery Tabs on the circuit board are soldered to the board, I repaired the Lantern and now I use a solar charger hooked up and it is always ready for action and no more worries, personally I would I would not use the RNB in anything but the TDI SL because it is adding about 33% more voltage and where there is voltage there is Heat and although you can't feel it buried within that big metal box does not mean it is not there, so just be careful, Ok.

John. 

John, the RNB packs for the GMT, DFX, MXT, etc. are 3-cell packs. max voltage is 12.6...perfectly safe in those models. RNB doesn't make a 4-cell pack in that configuration. To my knowledge, the only person making, and selling the 4-cell pack is Reidman. You defintely don't want to put a 4-cell pack in the aforementioned detectors, but it works terrific in the TDISL.

Jim

5 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

The Prospecting Scan (Alluvial Scan) is, as far as I can tell, a continuous graphic display of the ground phase which is the same thing as the ground balance setting. It is showing you the TYPE of ground mineralization, not the AMOUNT of ground mineral. See here for reference. Low numbers are salt ground and higher numbers ferrous ground. It is therefore not really analogous to the GMT "Follow Black Sand" Fe3o4 reading, which measure the AMOUNT of mineral.

The advantage as Jim has found is tracking ground phase can be done as you sweep normally, whereas making a mineral amount reading requires pumping the coil.

yes, and sadly, it's still too slow to change the numbers. Required several pumps over my samples to get the numbers to change....not good. This whole discussion makes me wonder why no mfg. has offered a simple machine to do nothing but track black sand concentrations? Maybe it's more complicated than it appears.

11 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

More information here on mineral type (GB numbers) and mineral amount (Fe3O4 readings)

http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/1599-gb-numbers-mineralization/

 

Thanks, Steve...good read!

I figured it was time to do some serious testing on this, Steve. I've seen tidbits here and there, but nothing very definitive. I'd read that you had to pump the coil to make it work. Nobody is going to spend more than few minutes doing that! Talk about arm-weary...LOL. There's a branch of the Snake not far away, that is now dry. River hasn't run there for thousands of years. I thought it might be a good place to look for black sand streaks, and collect some material to pan. I decided I needed to know just what the GMT could do for me in that regard. When I get some time on the dry channel, I'll be sure and post it.

Jim

I've been planning on some testing of the GMT's ability to find paystreaks of black sand. Finally went down near the Utah border and collected some sand to use. I was disappointed in how slow the GMT's indicator changed over the sand I used. Much too slow, unless you want to die of boredom before finding any. That's probably why so little is written about it. It only works in "autotrack", too. I tried various levels of V-Sat, Gain, etc., but nothing worked in a way I'd spend much effort doing. But, I DID find something that works.` I put the GB in Manual, and cranked the GB as POSITIVE as it goes (99). That way, it only responds to REALLY strong positive signals, and most negative signals. I turned the THRESHOLD all the way down. At those setting you hear very little ground noise, but still get a good response on the black sand. The gain can be adjusted to ignore the general levels of blacksand on a bar, but still respond to a higher concentration of it. The response is fast, so you can run the detector as if looking for gold. Of course, you won't hear any non-ferrous targets at these settings...they're strictly for finding concentrations of bs. The concentric coils had a definite advantage over the DD, but I would have no problem using the DD for this. I was using blends of pure magnetite,or at least ALL of the black sand I used could be picked up with a magnet, mixed with sand that had no magnetic iron in it. I used both a 1:5 ratio of bs to white sand, and a 1: 10 ratio. Both were detected at nearly 4". I didn't try any ratios below 1:10, but I'm sure a ratio of 1: 20 would be detected, but might be only at shallower depth, depending on where the gain was set, and that would depend on the level of bs in the general run of the bar being detected. Another thing on the mixes used....I used a teaspoon of magnetite in each mix. Put them in sandwich bags, and spread it into a thin layer. But, to be fair, the coils could always see the entire teaspoon of magnetite, as the test blend, even spread out, was smaller than the area of the coil. All of the sand used was smaller than #50.
I tried using the "learn accept" function on the DFX, but could make nothing work on that for finding black sand. Tried several different programs and settings, with complete lack of success.
Jim

Many thanks, Steve!

Jim

Well do, John, assuming I can figure out how to do it. Maybe I'll just email you a couple.

Jim

1 minute ago, auminesweeper said:

I not going to mention anything to do with age or that you were the shipwright when Noah set Sail.

There is a lot to be said for the GM series and them longscan coils, Always first class service from Whites, I wish I lived closer to them, I would like to go there one day.

John 

LOL.. I'm afraid Noah would have canned my old backside, John. My new to me GM 3 is supposed to be here today. Really looking forward to that!

Jim

Yup, swamp, old like me...LOL. We should make a good pair. With the little 5.3 concentric I bought this spring, this GM 2 beats the GMT with the same coil by about 30% on my 1 grain bar. Of course, have to manually balance, but I don't mind that.

Jim

Bought a GM 2 a couple of weeks ago. $120. Nice-looking unit, but had a tough time getting it ground balanced. Finally figured out the Sensitivity (gain) pot was shot. Every time I touched it I got loud howls from the machine. The pot is soldered into the circuit board, so I needed that specific pot. Couldn't find one on the 'net, so called Whites, with the intention of buying one. tech said...no problem I'll put one in the mail. No charge! So I got it yesterday, and took things apart last night and got the new one installed. Took about 1 1/2 hours. had a tough time getting the old one out (5 pins). Then had to drill out the holes with a #59 drill to allow the new one to go in. The rest was easy. Now I've got a nice backup unit for the GMT, and for a buddy to use when I'm out and about. Whites never ceases to amaze me with their service.

Jim

2 hours ago, Rod K said:

Anyone know of any 1.8V AA rechargeable batteries with a high mah for sale? Trying to find something hotter to use in my TDI SL. Or how to go about using 4 of the Panosonic 18650 3.7v 3400mah batteries in the 8 battery box? Still waiting for Whites to have an upgrade available.

You can buy a 4 cell Li-ion pack, that includes a built-in balancer from a guy that goes by Reidman. Be aware that you will be at a higher voltage, when freshly charged, than the rating on the electrolytic capacitors in the power supply, which are only rated for 16 volts. The pack will supply about 16.8 volts when fully charged. I've used his pack for over a year with no problems. I don't have a link to Reidman....you'll have to do a search.

Jim

Yup...I agree with all of that.

Jim.

I think Reg has come around on this, now, John. but he doesn't know, from what he's told me, exactly whats going on either. This whole thing may be just an "unintended consequence" of something Whites changed when shifting to the SL version.

Jim

Man, that's great! I never find that gold like that!

Jim

46 minutes ago, green said:

The GB works fine. I've never had a problem getting it to balance anywhere I've used it.

Jim

 

Thanks for the reply. I'm just trying to learn something. Seems like a good detection distance for the 1grain bar.

It surprised me, too. When I first started testing my coils, before the battery tests, I just wanted to know what to expect from my detector. I was disappointed when I tried cutting nickels into small pieces, and the detector couldn't see them very well. Then I tried lead shot, sometimes flattening it. That also wasn't very promising. I usually couldn't see anything smaller than 3  or 4 grains. Then Reg Sniff told me the pulse width used by Whites was optimized to get a reaction on gold. So, I bought that little 1 grain gold bullion bar. I was really shocked that the TDI SL had no problem seeing that....even with the 12" DF coil. I guess, from an engineering standpoint, it's possible to optimize the pulse width for whatever metal you wanted to find. Nickels electrical reaction is similar to gold, but nickel is much lighter (lower SG), so a 1 grain piece of nickel would be 2X or 3X the size of the same weight in gold.So when you're testing, there's no substitute for gold when testing a PI. in my experience, the VLF's are less critical about the metal used...but that's just my opinion.

Jim.

50 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Hi Jim,

Thanks for that. Again, I am puzzled why this information directly contradicts the TDI SL Owner's Manual. My own recollections of what I remember using the TDI SL I will just consider out of date. I will leave the whole issue of TDI SL and ground balance on or off to better minds than mine except to note that according to what we are hearing from you and John, that there is no advantage to be gained with a TDI SL by turning the ground balance off. The goal always on this forum is in just trying to help people get better performance out of any detector they own regardless of brand or model. I appreciate you guys helping achieve that.

Steve, I can't explain it either. When John first mentioned that to me, maybe a year ago, I thought he'd been smoking old kangaroo hides. Everything I'd read had said that GB off gives the best depth. I needed mine on for the places I detected, so never thought about it much. I hadn't communicated with John for several months prior to the tests, and he had no idea I was doing them. I was as surprised as anybody with the results.....kept redoing them thinking I'd made a mistake. But Reg told me, after I gave him the results, that he thought Whites had changed something in the GB circuit on the SL. I've never heard from Whites on the subject, though I've heard from them on the voltage comparisons. Maybe they've figured something out on GB? Who knows? All I can do is post my results. I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything.

Jim