Jim_Alaska

Well this post clinches it for me Steve. From what you said about this machine it doesn't look like I could do any better with a newer one. I worked about five hours today in the new hydraulic pit I found and found a few square nails, a very thin, flat bullet fragment and lead shot. I guess it is like you have said for years, "if you can find these things you just need to get the coil over gold". Now I have to work on my patience, especially when there are very large steep areas to work. I find myself getting sloppy because of the amount of ground to cover.

Thanks Steve, that's good information for someone like me that goes great lengths of time between detecting. Somehow I doubt that it may be foam break down since this machine has hardly been used and not abused at all. I have no dealers where I live here on the Klamath. I had even thought of getting it to White's and letting them go over the whole machine. I emailed them several times about sending it to them for a tune up, but they never answered the emails. I guess I should have done it the old fashioned way and called them. I'll go back to the original larger coil and see if that makes a difference. I have not used that coil since I first got the machine in Alaska. When White's came out with the new tiny coil I used it exclusively since then. But as I said before, I don't detect much. I had been crevicing blind in a small hydraulic pit all summer and doing ok just cleaning cracks. But winter came and the rains put a stop to that because of mud. Scouting around I found this large hydraulic pit and decided to switch gears and use a detector. It is very rugged ground, lots of exposed, decomposed bedrock and a lot of climbing. That's where the small coil gets my attention because it is so easy to use and carry and it gets in the cracks, where the original coil has to just go over the cracks and hope it can "see" deep enough to not miss gold. Anyway, I really do appreciate your and other's suggestions. Time to experiment by going back to the stock coil. You mentioned the Gold masters as being "super hot" machines. I had never heard of them described as such. I was always under the impression that because it is so old that there were many "hotter" or better machines that my relic. Unless of course "hotter" doesn't necessarily mean better.

Thanks GB, I may try that if I can figure out how to get the cover off without damaging it. This coil is about sixteen years old, so warranty is not a problem.

I had wondered about it being a bad coil, but sort of ruled it out because of such low time on it. Of course I got it many years ago, but I would bet that it doesn't have 20 hours on it. Well, I guess it's time for a new coil then. Thanks for the input Steve and Fred. I may not get to detect much, but I know where to go when I need an answer. I guess now I need to decide which coil to get. I really like the small one for the areas I usually work, but I may be better off with the same one that was originally supplied with the unit. I can actually use it like it is, it is just annoying the way it false signals. I have not actually found a nugget with this little coil, but can consistently find shot as small as #7. So when trying to justify using the coil I always convinced myself that if I could find lead shot that small, I wouldn't miss gold. I do have a number of different size test nuggets, some very small and I can bury them and have no trouble with the detector giving me a proper signal. Thanks again guys, you are the best.

Steve, I still have my old White's Goldmaster V-Sat. It's the same one I used when we hunted together at Crow Creek. I have two coils for it, the original coil it came with and the very small one that is used for tight places and bedrock. This is the coil that White's first put out when we lived in Alaska, small and black with no markings on it. Steve Houston introduced it when he came to Alaska on his promotional trips. I don't use the original one because I find it impossible to ground balance with that coil, so I am limited to just using the small one. That's ok by me since most of my limited and sporadic nugget hunting is in bedrock areas. The problem I am having is that I constantly get false signals and lots of other noise whenever the coil comes in contact with anything. If I bump rocks or brush, or if I even brush it up against wet grass it will false signal. this makes it impossible to "scrub" the ground as you advise people. I am wondering if this problem might be in the settings on my control box, perhaps I am choosing the wrong settings? I have tried just about everything I can think of, but it does this all the time and is very annoying. Is there anything that you can think of that I may be doing wrong?

Thanks for posting that Steve. What an amazing collection of finds.

Personally I like the LeTrap sluices for dredge cleanup or bank run material screened down to 20 mesh. But I think I can see the benefit of your blue sluice for low water conditions. Most other sluices, including the LeTrap need a decent water flow to drive the riffles so that they recover gold efficiently.

Sadly BB you are right. I didn't even give it a second thought. I will do as you suggest and seek out professional help. But I can't help but notice that even though I never thought about my two replies having to do with clothing, you did. Perhaps it may be beneficial if I made an appointment for the two of us. Good hunting mate.

Oh well, my idea wasn't near as good as some others you guys have......Buuuut.......... What about those shorts that BadaBing is wearing? Those have to be the ultimate in nugget shooting apparel in Oz. Maybe Steve could suggest them to the guys in Alaska, I'm sure they would be a big hit up there, especially if he provided a picture of him wearing them.

I have no experience with this at all. But looking at the pic you provided, I got a good idea of the size of the WM12. It looks like it may just fit in your jeans pocket nicely. It would also be closer to the detector Or......how about those baggy pants with pockets in the leg that you see, sort of military looking too.

AuWanderer, Sounds like a GM truck. My Chevy has the same problems with getting stuck in a four wheel drive position. I have found that if you stop, turn off the ignition and wait a full minute before restarting, this usually resets some nutty computer glitch and the selector switch will now work normally. The really frustrating one on GM products is the heater/air conditioner. I live with either one being stuck in either the heat or air conditioner position. If you start the truck in the morning and need some heat, you turn up the heat selector, you get heat. But then the problem develops that when it warms up outside, the heat won't turn off, so you bake the rest of the day. I have spent hundreds on repairing this, only to have it come back later.

Ummmmm, don't look now, but everywhere you might find raw gold has things that will eat you.

There isn't even a store or gas station where I live. We are very remote and dealing with a wildfire at the moment.

Thanks Art, I did see that one. At first I thought it was mine, The orange grip is exactly what I put on mine, but after looking it over I decided it was not. It showed the damage to the plastic housing on the blower, it was extensive and mine had no damage. The bucket also had something that ;looked like it was pretty battered. Mine Also had a black gas cap, this one is orange. Thanks for looking though, perhaps it will turn up with folks looking for it. It makes me wish I had recorded the serial number like some have suggested. guess I have to learn the hard way.

The studies have already been done, lots of them that show what is called de-minimus, which means insignificant harm. Brandon was the one willing to put it all on the line financially for this case. Any other case based on harm would have to be initiated by someone willing to put it all on the line also.

Thank you all for your condolences and kind thoughts.

No Harry, I never remember that one. i did stop by the Scott River camp and told Rick, the caretaker.

Thank you for your generous offer Ridge Runner. That would be a way to get me back running again. I would like to pay the shipping since you are donating the blower. I would like to wait just a bit and see if it somehow surfaces since I have put the word out on all the forums. If you send me an email I will send you my address: jfoley@sisqtel.net

Posting this here just in case. Yes, it was old, just like me. It even took on some of my old age idiosyncrasies; it was heavy when full, started hard in the morning, ran intermittently depending on mood, took a lot of tinkering to get it to perform properly, created a lot of dust and its exhaust smelled bad. But it was a trusty old friend that was always there in a pinch. It’s ability to draw material and gold upward out of a crack was second to no other method. You may have guessed by now that I am talking about my trusty gas powered vacuum. It is the old original Vac Pack. Unfortunately someone thought they needed my Vac Pack more than I did and rudely helped themselves to it. Yes, I should have known better than to leave it where I was working, but circumstances dictated that I do just that. I was working in my “secret spot” that has lots of exposed ancient bedrock and my trusty vac was producing enough gold to keep a smile on my face. But part of getting old is that you just can’t do the things you once did and old age infirmities make hauling equipment and full buckets of material over rough ground an almost impossible task. In recent years I have developed peripheral neuropathy, the result of which is no feeling in my feet and legs. This translates to not being able to walk very far and extreme instability. I have to use a cane at all times for stability. So what I carry and how much must be limited as much as possible. So, I chose to carry buckets of material back to the truck and leave my vac concealed behind the bedrock. This is in a place that no one drives into and even if they did they could not see the equipment without walking all the way to it. I have been working this place all summer and had no problems leaving the equipment and have not seen one other person. In the past I have left mining equipment in numerous places and never had a problem, but all it takes is one time and just the right person. If you see or know of anyone trying to sell a gas powered vac I would like to know about it and possibly get a look at it. As I said this is the old, original Vac Pack brand. It says Vac Pack on the bucket. The bucket is 5 gallon black with the letters in faded gold. The engine is the old Gray colored Echo brand leaf blower motor. The bucket has a traditional wire carrying handle, but I replaced the old thin grip with one of the new snap on orange handles. This should make it easy to identify. So I guess its back to using the old methods, screwdrivers, crack tools and a brush. I already miss my trusty friend.

Siskiyou County has more than our share of this sort of thing also. I always carry when I am out and about prospecting or just exploring. You never know what you are going to run into or when.

Paulito, The atmospheric conditions you described are exactly why The UCLA atmospheric research facility I worked at in Alaska was located where it was. Alaska has extremely clear conditions and intense darkness in winter with no city light sources. I was an atmospheric research technician, running experiments there for many years. I forget what year it was that we had an intense Leonids meteor shower. But in that year we tracked hundreds of Leonids per hour. Of course our experiments did not depend on visual sightings, although we did have some of those. With this equipment we see every meteor that enters the atmosphere. Each one is recorded digitally. Our experimental equipment included a liquid Mercury telescope, laser excitation, photometers and computer diagnostics. This is one of the lasers inside of the building. Look closely for the yellow laser line. It comes out of the laser horizontally on the left, then hits a turning mirror and shoots straight up. This is the laser exiting the building. It excites the Sodium layer at 90 Km in altitude. This is the liquid Mercury parabolic dish telescope. It holds 450 lbs. of Mercury.

The color of the tail is determined by the different gasses it passes through as it enters the atmosphere. Generally gasses are stratified in layers at different altitudes.

True Klunker, but then everything else in mining does also. I find that the inset will hold gold better and allow black sand to wash up over it. It just takes gentle water movements that will suspend the black sand, but not move the gold much. The real trick is in making sure you don't lose gold when you start to get down to the heavies. That is usually about half way through the process. You have to keep resettling the material and watch very carefully.

I like the inset on my small plastic clean-up pan. It allows me to pan out all black sand, right down to only gold. It takes some practice, but I can pan out every spec of black sand. I use the small green garret pan, don't like the small black ones, they are harder to use. Like Harry, I don't use the riffles either.

Paying it forward has such amazing rewards in all situations of life. Thanks for a great example of detecting ethics and success.