Jump to content

PG-Prospecting

Full Member
  • Posts

    147
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    2

 Content Type 

Forums

Detector Prospector Home

Detector Database

Downloads

Everything posted by PG-Prospecting

  1. Fun little outing from a year or two ago. No gold found but the day was cut short by an east coast land mine aka ground bees. I use lidar to discuss my methodology and reasoning for detecting this area. I also discuss what I look for when detecting for gold on the east coast out side of stream channels. you can get a good idea of the challenges faced when detecting for gold on the east coast, (thick leaf mat, organic topsoil increases the depth that a detector has to see through to even reach possible good ground. Vegetation covers everything etc. Hope y’all enjoy. Feed back is always appreciated.
  2. It’s a wildlife management area now. No mineral removal no picking plants not metal detecting no sluicing no panning. Basically only for hunters. Bunch of crap really it’s my tax money and they won’t let you do anything on the dam property that now covers over 8000 acres I believe. Gerry - if you ever coming out VA let me know. My mentor was a relic hunter for 30 years or more in VA and only happened to fall into nugget hunting. Many of the Va civil war battle fields happened on top of or in close proximity to many old gold mines.
  3. My buddy still has them and more. And the east coast generally doesn’t suffer from being picked over with detectors. It takes private property access to get on any old mine site and most people don’t detect out here and if they do you still have hundreds of acres of heavily wooded and brush covered terrain. I think that I’d you picked up the east coast gold belt and changed the climate to something AZ with little vegetation and opened it up with a claim system and not private property you would have lots of gold nuggets being found and new patches be located all the time. But many of these properties haven’t been touched since the 1800s. And very little modern prospecting has taken place including big companies searching for high grade deposits. But some of that is changing.
  4. Here are some of the big chunks found by my mentor back 10 years ago or so with a gpx4500 and later 5000. Biggest chunk in the upper left corner is just shy of 7 ounces. The coin is a quarter. All Va gold.
  5. Alaska detector - like I said with the gpx I’m mainly picking up scraps left behind by my nugget shooting mentor. Weight wise more with the gpx. But my mentor has many ounce nuggets and a 7 ounce one pulled from the locations. the best location is now no longer accessible. It was bought by the state and no detecting is allowed on state property.
  6. Afreakofnature yes I know him. I may see if he would let me borrow it lol. As far as I know so far he has not found any gold with it in Va but COVID killed his year since he is a medical professional.
  7. The pictures are of nuggets I’ve found in VA using the gpx 4800 and the gold monster 1000. The gpx finds were all on hill tops and hillsides at location in and around old gold mines. These locations were found by a good friend of mine back 10 years ago or so. I’m just picking up scraps compared to what they found. The gold monster finds were in creek finds at a property that I mainly dredge. Only a few areas of the creek have produced any gold to detecting. While dredging this creek it produced up to 12 gram nugget so far. I’ve detected all around the hillsides around the creek with the gpx and haven’t found any gold. It’s been frustrating lol. the vast majority of my nugget collection not shown in the pictures has come from dredging. Nugget shooting in VA is more of a winter activity when I get bored lol. I’d love to give a gpz a shot as it may be able to detect small gold deep enough to punch through all the leaf litter organics and topsoil But I can’t drop that kind of money on an unknown
  8. Thanks Gerry! And I must say that I’m following in the footsteps of a good friend now who has had by far the best success of nugget shooting in VA. I’ve learned from him with nugget shooting and his collection puts mine to shame. And I have gotten access to places that he discovered though I’ve so far found one patch of my own lol. I’ll hopefully have some exciting stuff to share in the near future as I may have gained access to an area that has an unmined high grade gold deposit under it. So it may be amazing or may bear nothing lol. Time will tell.
  9. I primarily dredge to find gold in the east. I also metal detect for nuggets but I generally only do that in locations where I have found nuggets while dredging or panning. Nugget shooting is the most frustrating form of prospecting on the east coast. Be prepared to possibly go years with only finding trash. With panning and dredging I can pretty much say that I’ve never been skunked but with detectors it’s quite the opposite. In VA the gpx series reigns supreme so far for pulling out nuggets outside of the creeks. But of 30+ Old mine site detected only 5 have produced actually nugget patches and not random one off finds. In the creeks any of the vlf detectors do well but I’m switching to the equinox 800 as primary now that I sold my monster. most other finds with detectors I hear about on the east coast generally seem to be one off got lucky finds and not actual patches that produce many nuggets. just some good for thought for you. I hope this helps.
  10. With a detector only in Virginia which is unique for detecting gold. Don’t hear much about east coast nugget shooting.
  11. I just activated a speed boost plugin. I am completely new to building website so right now the SEO stuff and speed stuff is all new to me. It will be a long learning curve lol. Thanks for the input.
  12. Hey everyone! I recently managed to get my website launched that is dealing primarily with providing LIDAR to prospectors and detectorists. I will say after taking almost a month to build i appreciated what Steve does here now even more!. The website is directed at LIDAR for prospectors and detectorists, but my eventual goal is for it to be the go to source for prospecting research as well, this is because i am slowly adding to the Document Library that i been building there, and over the coming months i will be adding all the various prospecting and mining related documents that ive found in my research. The overall plan is to make the document library the a one stop place for all gold related documents, that way when a prospector is doing research he doesn't have to scour the web for obscure hard to find articles. After you look at the site please leave feed back here as this is the first website that ive built and it was learning process to say the least! Well here is the link! https://theprospectinggeologist.com/
  13. Hey everyone! Its been a while since i posted last. Recently i did a comparison video of the Proline and Keene full size 4 inch dredges. It think it is a great resource for those looking to buy a dredge in the near future. I go through each component and talk about my reasoning and though process behind why one is preferred over the other. This is definitely not a video for fanboys of either brand lol. The main point of it is to get potential dredge buyers thinking about there intended use of the dredge and how various features on either one may be better for there intended use. Hope yall enjoy and please leave any feed back. Discussions are the reason im here !
  14. Hey everyone, been awhile since i posted last. But here is a video i did that goes through and shows you how to make lidar maps from the available free lidar data, using free programs. Unfortunately the lidar data is not available everywhere and there are certain file types that the free programs cannot work with. But for areas that have good data available, lidar maps are amazing for scoping out an area before ever setting boots on the ground. I am by no means an expert and others on here like Clay Diggins are very knowledgeable on the subject. Here are some previous posts on the subject: January 22, 2014 Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) July 12, 2018 Just Discovered Lidar. Amazing Insight Into Old Sites. Feb 22, 2019 https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/8778-gold-prospecting-with-lidar/ For those who dont want to delve into figuring out how to make the maps, I still make them on request as well. Thanks for watching, hope yall enjoy!
  15. SJM - I will eventually throw on 5.5hp with proline p350 pump to see how much suction the powerjet can generate, but for the purposes of this dredge im hoping to mainly use the 4hp motor. I removed the air compressor just due to the fact of wanting this one to be as light as possible and will mainly be in creeks that i can snorkle in. If i hit deeper areas i just bring the proline 4 inch or my 5 inch. This one will also serve as a lightweight sampling rig. Joe D - Thanks for that info! Ill have to play around with those websites and see what i can learn! I also plan to increase the hp of the motor by adding a performance exhaust and carburetor, go-cart guys do this all the time with their honda motors and simply putting on a race exhaust and re-jetted carb with race air filter should increase the hp of the motor by 1 or 2 hp. Joe D with your background you should get up with someone who has a dredge and go over it with them and work on figuring out all the areas where the flow dynamics could be improved. While the components of dredges all work im not sure how much has been gone over by someone with a back ground like yours. I mean in comparison performance exhaust systems on air planes are polished and meticulously gone over just to pull a few more hp of out say a 200 hp piper supercub. Then i go an look at the inside of a keene pump and see how rough it is and cant help but think that if it were polished and gone over carefully that a few extra gpm couldnt be had. Especially since the friction of water is far greater than the friction of hot exhaust. Steve - Thanks! Im of the same mind that less friction of a larger intake would help a tiny bit. Im always of the philosophy that ounces make pounds and pounds = pain. Using the same thought process with gpm and efficiency of the power jet. All those little not noticeable gains/losses add up to a noticeable amount. Larger intake hose and foot-valve coupled with a larger and shorter high pressure line, coupled with shorter suction hose and better placement of the power jet. While each single thing wont make a noticeable increase in suction, all of them combined should. Well at least thats what im going with lol. Sorry rambled a bit in there, with my thoughts and observations, but im just a geologist that tinkers, definitely not an engineer lol
  16. Thanks guys! It adds another one to my arsenal which already consists of a 2.5 inch, a proline 4 inch and homemade/keene parts 5 inch. I like building things and still have enough parts to more or less build another 4 inch and another 5 inch. Steve - What are you thought on increasing the size of the intake line from 2 inches to 2.5 inches, as well as having a larger footvalve. The intake on the pump still constricts to 2 inches, but i wasnt sure if an increase in line and footvalve size would help or hinder the gpm. Thanks again! Next project is a 5 inch ultralight mini, using a derivation of Dave McCrakens double screen classification system.
  17. Been messing with this project on and off for a few years now. Finally got it where it was ready to be tested this past weekend. Was originally a keene 3 inch with 4 hp motor and p160 pump i believe. I sold off most of the 3 inch parts and started building the components need to turn it into a 4 inch. From the 3 inch all that remains is the frame, floats and motor and pump combo. I bought a 4 inch flare from keene, since i have no good way to fabricate a lightweight flare. Everything else i have been working on fabricating, primarily being the sluice (16x40), riffle trays, and the power jet. The power jet is were i diverged from most of the current designs that are widely used. I wanted to build a 4 inch as light as possible while still using the 4hp motor and pump combo, as most the streams i work are shallow and dont require huge amounts of suction for dredging at great depth. The problem was that the 4hp motor and p160 pump struggled in my mind to provide adequate suction to the 3 inch even when near full throttle. Based on this i decided to build a copy of a dahlke tri-jet which should allow a 4 inch to be run off of a smaller motor and pump when compared to a normal 4 inch, due to increased efficiency over a standard style of power-jet. Pictures of the tri-jet in various stages of completion: Picture of the sluice and riffle tray, first iteration with woven wire: Testing day! Couple of issues were noticed while testing. There were a few leaks in the power jet, the woven wire was too open and large rocks would get stuck on it, the high pressure hose was way too long and since it was inch and quarter and so is the pump output , it was constricted to less than inch and quarter at the coupling areas, and the long high pressure hose probably caused a loss in pressure due to friction. The power jet should also be mounted not right at the flare but a few feet from it, so that the hose acts as a longer jet tube and helps increase suction, a 20 ft suction hose also didnt help. But regardless i was able to dredge with moderate suction, with it. So the test was a success, and with the various refinements it should have greater suction and water flow. Then the next day, the various refinements and fixes from the problems noted during testing. Replaced the woven wire with 3/8 inch 40% open punch plate, moved the jet so it is mounted about 3 feet from the flare, shortened the high pressure line and increased it to 1.5 inch so there are no restrictions, patched the holes in the power jet, and painted it. I do have a question or everyone, would increasing the size of the footvalve and intake hose from 2 inch to 2.5 inch help increase the gpm of the pump at all? The footvalve cage that came with the keene pump seems small to me. I have some pictures below showing the difference. I look forward to hearing from everyone! It was a fun project!
  18. Garikfox - The min-trucks are actually pretty cheap you can find used ones with offroad tires already on them for around $4,000 to $6,000.
  19. Ive been looking at Japanese mini-trucks. They fit what i need better since they have a 6 foot bed, and are still about the same dimensions as most utvs. Just gotta buy one that is 4x4 with axle lock or dif lock and put offroad tires on it. They also have a full enclosed cab and can be found with AC and heat, and can be made road legal in certain states. I just havent been able to justify any type of UTV since they all have tiny tiny beds, and cant get them road legal.
  20. Hey Steve, any thoughts on starting another poll to see what people are now mainly running in 2019. Would be interesting to see some of the shifts, especially with all the new vlf gold machines on the market. Just a thought.
  21. So there is a used Whites TDI pulsescan detector in my area for sale for $675. It is not an SL so im guessing its an older version. Is there any benefits to owning this detector along with a GPX4800? The price seems good and its close by. Ive also thought i heard that the older TDI were more powerful. I also believe it can use most GPX coils correct? I dont really need it but it seems like a great price for a PI detector.
  22. Lacky - I did do that, but no pings. The bedrock is so decomposed in this spot that I can rip into it a few inches with just my fingers. So I generally remove the upper few inches of bedrock, but I still detect it after. afreakofnature - yep ive seen them and many others all around the hillsides. I haven't detected those ones yet but I plan to. Ive detected around other similar pits and came up with nothing. Including in areas that have produced lots of big nuggets with the dredge. Its a baffling area in that way.
  23. Haha, i doubt it would spit out a big nugget. Its already caught a gram nugget right up top where it should. And yes i try to document everything. It helps with the big picture of whats going on in the area. Below is some of my mapping, yellow squares are pickers, yellow circles are nuggets, and the triangles are colored based on the type of bedrock at each location. Is anyone else tis crazy when it comes to mapping and documenting the area that you primarily prospect?
  24. Was at the above spot for labor day weekend. Didnt really detect much as most of the pieces worth recovering with a detector have been found, so now is the time to dredge the area. So i pulled out my homemade 2.5 inch dredge so that i could have clear water while dredging. I probably would have got more gold if i used the 4 inch, but then the water would have recirced and its more fun to be able to pick gold off of the bedrock. The homemade 2.5 inch set up. 10 inch wide box and riffles are from a side sluice of an old keene 5 inch triple. The first days haul. Biggest nugget was about 10 grains. Camping right next to where you dredge, cant beat it. My fiance and our dogs. Second days haul, the two pieces of quartz were in-situ and each have a small speck of gold visible in the quartz. I pulled more out with the intent to eventually crush it. These two pieces im going to clean up and see if more becomes visible. Hammock are so much better then tents. lol
×
×
  • Create New...