oldmancoyote1

Cheap foam knee pads.  Lots of duct tape.

Addressing the knee pad part of these comments, for me knee pads are essential, but they were a huge pain in the neck because they slip so much.  In frustration I started using duct tape to hold cheap foam pads in place.  No subtlety here.  I just wrap'em until the stay where I want them.  Works pretty good.

I'm thinking about your suggestion.  It may take a while.  Thanks

Thanks for all the info folks.

You're right about VLF not being practical.  Yes, for PI machines it would lock on real non-gold targets, but in that respect I don't think it would be that different from  what is normal for PI machines.  Syncing between swings would be difficult, but it would be doable if the user laid down a thin chain alongside the area to be searched.  Then, the beginning of each swing would be marked by a double peak signal.  I probably would discard the second (return) half of the signal.  A uniform swing wouldn't be that hard to maintain.  

How about wether there is enough noise with PI machines to make this worthwhile.  I have very little experience with PI machines.

I might write an iPhone app to filter noisy metal detector signals.  Is this a big problem, or is the problem just my old GPX4500?  The basic idea is to repeatedly swing across an area, and the app would add all the signals together.  Random signals would cancel each other out, and a valid signal would be reinforced.  The oil companies call it "stacking", and it has been extremely successful.  Any other ideas for an app for nugget hunters would be very welcome.

I have had similar problems in the past.  In my case I was getting only one of the two stereo channels.  Fiddling around with the 3.5 mm plug fixed the issue.

There is coverage for the south eastern part of the Klamath Mountains, specifically coverage for the Carr-Hirsh-Delta... Fire areas.The lidar images from this web site are fantastic.  Here is a satellite image for one area and the lidar image for the same area.  The second image shows pocket gold pits that are otherwise invisible.  The images are about 600 feet across.  The scale info on these copies is not correct.

If you are not experience in VLF, experiment with a VLF in your intended area before you buy anything.  You may be disappointed.  If all the iron junk is small, VLF has potential, but larger iron junk (particularly rusted iron) can produce VINs in the gold range.  This can produce trashy areas that are very frustrating to detect.

There are things that can be said, but i must say that I have no specific knowledge of gold related to the paleo-lakes and the ensuing floods.

It occurs to me that gold-bearing stream discharges from mountains ringing the lake would form deltas where they reached the shores.  When the lake drained, much of this sediment would be eroded away.  As these deltas would be at the edges of the lakes, they might escape catastrophic erosion and  leave some gold behind.  

This is an exploration concept not a prediction.  Sometimes exploration concepts are profitable.  Often they are not.  Without specific knowledge of discharge-related gold occurrences you'd probably do better ignoring the floods and seeking an exploration concept related to a known traditional gold occurrence.

Consider renting ground penetrating radar.  You can get a simple system for about $100/day with a $100 prep fee (look on-line).  Shipping and insurance are extra.  There are useful videos on-line to help you understand and interpret it, but there would be a significant learning period before renting.  You would also have to convince the rental agency that you are responsible.    All in all this would require a significant effort to make this happen, but it is in the range of possibility for an amateur.

On 2/9/2022 at 9:42 PM, UpAndDownTheHills said:

oldmancoyote1

Have you thought sending it in to get an assay and see what the yield is?  It might be pretty good even though it's not visible.

I have only seen about 1/2 square feet of gold film.  I think the odds are way too low.  There isn't enough sulfide to yield much gold.

11 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Would you give an example or two of minerals that fit this profile?

Locally, it's pyrite that usually forms an iron stain or lumps of iron oxides, but the situation is very complicated.  Example:  Some of the local pyrite contains a little gold.  When the pyrite oxidizes, it forms an acid.  If there is some manganese present and some salt (often the case in black shales), any gold may go into solution.  The gold can then precipitate as very thin films on shale or as valuable spongey pocket gold.  I don't really know how to judge which is the case without digging up the shale.  After digging up a lot of oxidized pyrite without any visible gold, I have given up metal detecting the local black shale.

Sulfides are very common in shales.  Oxidized sulfides often resemble gold when viewed with a metal detector.

If your metal detector does not find anything up hill, consider panning looking for gold of any size including dust-size.

Do check the slope up hill for a pocket gold deposit.  There's lots of info on this on the web.

Can't tell from the photos.  I think I see some cubic forms.  If so, it may be pyrite.  Crush a small piece.  If it crushes to a powder, pyrite is most likely.  If it  deforms like lead, it's likely gold.

One sometimes useful way to anticipate tech advances is to look at the extreme high-end hardware and software packages for big money uses like military, shallow ground investigations for engineering, and maybe archeology and geology.  I haven't looked at this stuff for several years, but the thing that did impress me was graphics especially map views and 3-D representation of the sub-surface.  As hardware become cheaper and the software more sophisticated, some of this will come our way.

Mary Hill wrote a booklet Hunting Diamonds in California.  A geologist I met who specialized in conventional diamond geology said he searched the pit Hill mentioned and found no indication of diamonds. The diamonds found in California apparently are not from kimberlite pipes as found elsewhere.  Looking for a pipe would not be a very promising approach.  Your best chance would be exploring a pit using an ultraviolet light after dark.

I should mention that rattlesnakes can fluoresce too.

Azurite(blue) and Malachite(green) are two rather soft copper minerals with stunningly pure bright colors.  They are relatively common and not that expensive. You could moderate their intensity by mixing some white or black mineral powder.  They tend to form acids when wet, so seal them well.

Show a picture of your work as I do woodworking too.

Nice gold.  Consider making one of Two Toe's hooked probes (see his youtube videos) made from a windshield wiper arm.  I find it gives a lot more control than a screwdriver tool when extracting gold from cemented gravel adjacent to bedrock.

22 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Physically speaking, no. Every place is a puzzle that needs figuring out. The only commonality is the historical data indicating large gold was found in the past. If you want to catch big fish, go where big fish have been caught in the past. In general I don’t hunt places where the records indicate nothing but small gold unless there are no other options.

Thanks

You have had a lot of success over the years.  I imagine you have found some wonderfully large masses of gold.  Think about each of those for a few moments, especially those in the lower 48.  Does anything appear as a common feature of their locations?  Surely not everything would fit the same mold, but was there anything present frequent enough to indicate one location might be a little bit more likely to yield big gold than another?

Thanks

On 8/13/2021 at 8:03 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

The gold is from multiple sites on a high bench deposit, not just the one pictured. The rocks in the photo are old hand tossed from a small pit just over and beyond the top of the photo. A mix of rounded old channel rocks, large sub-angular glacial rock, and broken bedrock.

The rock near the pick on the left is bedrock, and I am moving rocks covering pit blowover material, and detecting/scraping it down to bedrock, which is actually peeking out under the entire work area. The material under the rubble may be only inches deep to no more than maybe a foot to bedrock. The entire bench location was worked, and most dirt has been moved at least once, but the leftovers and tailings are riddled with lost or missed nuggets.

That's similar to the area I reported on recently.  It was placered by individuals until it was hydrauliced by a large company and then worked again in the 30's.  There seems to be more gold left over from prior activities than I had imagined.  I thought folks were much more thorough.

There is a large bedrock exposure 5 minute walk from where I live during the summer that I thought was so public and so obvious that it was exhausted.  Someone told me otherwise, and this week I have started finding flood gold and small nuggets.