jrbeatty

Looks like I'm the only cat man:

"Tigga" (as a youngster above) is a bit of a homebody. He prefers keeping the bed warm from the inside during winter, snuggled up real close.

He's a big cat and loves catching rabbits, brings them through the cat flap and then consumes them, naturally, under the dining room table on ever ready strategically placed newspapers. There's nothing he loves more than being "bashed" with a rolled up newspaper, which he eventually shreds. He wouldn't have a clue about prospecting, and probably couldn't care less.

Always waiting for me at the door when I return from a days work. Meg tells me he frets when I'm away prospecting.

I've had a lot of close cat friends over the years and hopefully, some of them might put in a good word for me eventually - not that I'm religious - but you just never know eh? Karma and all that -

Good to hear from you again Kiwi! Wondered what happened to you. At least we know you haven't yet fallen off one of those cliff faces chasing a colour :)

I well remember three of us digging up a deep 30 oz piece with just the pick head years back - wasn't going to leave that one behind either!

1 hour ago, kiwijw said:

That looks like my towbar, & your grass is just as green as ours....at the moment.😉

Old photo. Not much grass left here in the southeast corner, and even that's all dead - bloody drought!

Mate, keep those gold pics coming - great morale booster atm. 

Cheers!

On 11/20/2019 at 10:30 PM, geof_junk said:

The Walco if I remember were made in Maryborough Vic in the early 1980s and were great I saw  "Mallee Boy" pick when he made it for himself and show me it to me in Leonora WA  in the late 2000s. Mike was a real man of the land and made it from spare parts off his property. The picks of 1979 - 83 were hopeless and many of us made own on pick as nothing worthwile was available at that time. The right pick varies from person to person. Mine is made from a truck leaf spring with a small jackhammer tool piece Mig welded to the pick pointy end as I kept wearing out the tip of the pick.

Can't remember the original brand of my pick but I've modded it extensively over the years. 

Latest mod is a section of Cat D4 grouser plate steel I cut to a long point and "V" welded for strength with low hydrogen electrodes.

Pretty well indestructible and extremely abrasion and impact resistant. Now all I have to do is "ding" a half reasonable colour with it (to stop it turning into lead) and I'll be happy :)

Interesting report PT. Pretty much in line with what I've noticed with CC coils as well, particularly the ground penetrating ability and minimal EMI.

I still haven't had time to get away and have a proper play either, but this adaptable coil holds intriguing possibilities.

- - - Except Kiwijw finds real gold  :)

1 hour ago, goldenoldie said:

Is there a video of the QED detecting a decent size nugget at depth. Plenty of photos of gold but no actual video footage of their depth.

Depends what you call a "decent sized nugget" :)

Previous page has my amateurish phone vid of a sub oz piece at about 16". Biggest piece I've found with the Kwed was a 53 gram piece a few years ago, but that was dead shallow - and no vid.

A short vid I made a few months ago. Shallow gold in  a Victorian paddock. My battered old 14" Elite strikes again  :)

Ploughed ground often puts gold in the topsoil within a few inches of the surface:

41 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I’m an ex-drunk coming up on eight years sober.  It was the hardest thing ever did, with it taking lots of miserable years and two stints in rehab to get clean.

That took some guts.  Makes finding gold child's play by comparison. 

Respect!

Good hunting Mark - love the west!

Replacing all my lost images made me realise that I had completely missed posting the 2018 Victorian prospecting trip. I may have posted it here elsewhere but the images there would now be gone.

Reg and I scored over an ounce together, mainly from our new goldfield. The three rough bits were detected by Reg Wilson and I on an excursion to a patch of forest way out on the western edge of Victoria's gold bearing zone. The larger 5 gm piece (found first by Reg) got us excited but only had two more small companions. All found with the very latest QED's at the time, which Howard graciously supplied for testing.

Most of it came from this shallow lead which begins at the distant low ironstone hill (looking up the lead):

- - - and continues on through the far distant treeline onto the next property, which was under crop at the time, and again this year, so not yet done by us:

Detail of rough 5 grammer:

- - - or something like this:  :)

No one's going to admit to doing that Dave 🙂

1 hour ago, mn90403 said:

Why couldn't I get one of those when I was there?  haha  (Just to break the thread a bit!)

John Hider Smith claims that you have to ding them hard with the pick to prevent them turning into lead  :)

As the video shows, we certainly dinged that one - although there were mitigating circumstances - - -

5 hours ago, Busho said:

No Im not. Yes others were doing stuff and I don't doubt you have one your mate built, I know others were doing things, but it was through the use and kind release of Jims info that the ones we have today are. That is what I was saying. Im not going to get into an "im right, you're wrong, I know more than you" thing here. Was just paying tribute to Jim for his knowledge and contribution. 

Nah Busho. Jim never claimed to pioneer flat wound coils. How do I know? 

Because I worked with Jim for many years both as a prospecting buddy in WA and Victoria, and also helped him wind many coils. He was intrigued by flat windings and understood the principle very well (after seeing what Bruce Candy and others had achieved with them) and we even attempted a 36" DD using flat wound Litz wire, but it was not a success.

Jim did, however, wind many successful coils. As Reg points out, Jim's major success and big money earner was the 36" bundle wound "Bismarck" coil, although he also wound different sized coils for the SD2000 prototypes (in collaboration with close friend Bruce Candy) Here's the "Bismarck" with a 30 oz and a 5 oz we found with it at Guys Rush:

If you are attending the Laannecoorie bash next weekend then you can fact check the above statements with resident prospector Tony Honey who carries on Jim's tradition of homebrew coils, and worked in close collaboration with Jim until his unfortunate demise.

All images restored. Phew! 

Had a free half day to work on the album, got to the end of page 8.

Phew! Hell of a lot of fiddling about, but this website is absolutely brilliant for editing.

Simon: The file names you supplied don't match the original images I have (perhaps they were Tinypic names)  Now  I can't always remember precisely which were the original images used, and there are hundreds and hundreds of them on Jannines memory stick, often multi images of the same piece of gold. Some are self evident, others may now be different but I have tried to be as faithful to the originals as possible.

Let me know here if anyone has comments, advice, etc, best not clutter the album pages.

Thanks everybody.

5 hours ago, dgatleyDP said:

JB,

I feel your pain my friend, really I do.

The one lesson I can add is always Back Up your photos, particularly after the time you had put into each image and the background on those.  Memory is cheap now, I can only assume it is in Australia also.  You need to treat your photos as “digital assets” and back them up at least once, ideally twice, professionally three times with one copy off-site (in case of fire, theft, or natural calamity).

It’s added cost and time, but should the bad-day come, you’ll welcome the effort spent.

Good luck out there!  D

Thanks DG, I have all the images (albeit scattered somewhat)  Part of the problem will be working out which ones fit the narrative.

Another part of the problem is the sheer number of images scattered over many pages. The main problem will be finding the time to do it

Simon has helped considerably already swapping images available from the Wayback Machine.  Thanks mate!

Ahh! the good old Wayback Machine! 

Simon, I'll take you up on your offer -  PM on it's way - 

2 minutes ago, phrunt said:

Steve has his own photo storage on this site, would of been safer to use that or even Google photos.

Sorry to hear about tinypic and now the mess you've got to deal with to fix it up.

Yeah Simon - should have indeed - didn't think it through enough.

The gold album has been up a long time, so I guess most people have seen it anyway. Reg's better half (Jannine) has a book coming out soon on the topic anyway.

- - - which means all my uploaded images have vanished, including the "Reg Wilson Gold Album" and "Gold found with the QED"

Wasn't even given the option to transfer my  images to parent company Photobucket for a fee.

Huge amount of work to edit and transfer images to another host - so shock and apathy prevail for now - need a beer and time to think - - -  :<(  

1 hour ago, Reg Wilson said:

Phrunt, you are the victim of false news. The above photo was taken weeks before the climate change march and has been fraudulently posted in many areas in an effort to disparage the people involved in the march. Looks like you have been taken in too Beatty. Thought you would have been smarter than that.  

Nah Reg, Ticking the post, not the rubbish bit. BTW, Worst rubbish I ever saw was at a Rolling Stones concert back in the 70's next morning while looking for my wallet. Naturally, never found it - but found some illegal substances - -  -

20 hours ago, jrbeatty said:

More good news on the ($AUD) pricing from Detech Australia:

6 hours ago, jrbeatty said:

Yes Keith, Iron reject works with these coils. 

More good news on the ($AUD) pricing from Detech Australia:

"Great news! After many refinements in the manufacturing process which has reduced manufacturing costs, Detech are pleased to pass the cost savings directly on to their customers with a greatly reduced retail customer price for the new 18” concentric coil, to suit Minelab SD GP GPX machines

This 18” coil will pleasantly surprise you with its weight of 950 grams (approx) with open Skid*

The first lot of stock coils sold and these customers will all be given a refund to coincide with the new pricing

The coil will now sell for $540

Great opportunity for prospectors to experience the benefits of the concentric

Next shipment should be here next week

*A closed skid will also be available for this coil and it fits very snugly"

 

 

I should add that I still haven't been able to put much time in with the 18" Detech CC, but impressed so far - 

On 9/4/2019 at 9:00 AM, Keith Leppert said:

Hello everyone.... I just heard about this coil today.    Of course if there was any info out there on it I knew it would be here!   🙂

It was interesting reading that this concentric coil can be run on DD mode and will reject iron like a DD coil... did I read that right??   All I need it to do is reject the shallow iron.  If it does that, the east coast relic hunters will be wanting one of these...   🙂

 

Yes Keith, Iron reject works with these coils. 

More good news on the ($AUD) pricing from Detech Australia:

Quote

Great news! After many refinements in the manufacturing process which has reduced manufacturing costs, Detech are pleased to pass the cost savings directly on to their customers with a greatly reduced retail customer price for the new 18” concentric coil, to suit Minelab SD GP GPX machines

This 18” coil will pleasantly surprise you with its weight of 950 grams (approx) with open Skid*

The first lot of stock coils sold and these customers will all be given a refund to coincide with the new pricing

The coil will now sell for $540

Great opportunity for prospectors to experience the benefits of the concentric

Next shipment should be here next week

*A closed skid will also be available for this coil and it fits very snugly

Hi Mitch:

On of my favourite places en route to the Victorian goldfields is Kiandra, Australia's highest goldfield. 

Located high in the Snowy Mountains of NSW, it was briefly "rushed" in the 1860's by 16000 miners before they were driven out by freezing alpine winter weather, never to return since the easy, fabulously rich nuggety shallow alluvials had been largely worked out.

The area was later reworked in the early 1900's by Australia's first large bucket dredge "Enterprise" My winter Image is of one of its frozen dredge holes. Note the water channels originally feeding sluicing claims on the far hill: