PG-Prospecting

Chase - I found these in the gold pyrite belt that runs from DC down between Cville and Richmond down into Buckingham county. Its funny that VA was once the third highest commercial gold production state yet it only produced about 160,000 ounces. But it definitely produced some nice nuggets including a 9 lb one and two big ones that are in the Smithsonian. If your looking for gold ground to detect look up the Central Virginia Gold Prospectors club (CVGP) they lease a number of gold bearing properties including the one that produced the 9 lb nugget back in the 1800's.

Man this is going to put geologists out of job. It took r jobs, lol. Id love to take someone who thinks this works to a few of my spots and watch them flounder around as I dredge and detect up nuggets.

Strick - We are pretty much exclusively on private property that we have gotten permission for. Lacky - Yes on the next one i will pay more attention to the volume. Funny thing is, is that i didnt notice it when i was making the video and i had head phones on. Not sure why i didnt hear it.

I wish i did but the furthest i drive for gold in VA is about 1.5 hours. Not much cool scenery in between.

Video is up! Hope you all enjoy! Critiques are welcome!.

Haha i feel you Reg, and i should have taken more time, in instructing him on how to use the Equinox. But i was on a mission and forgot to give him a bunch of pointers. It was my second time to this site and excitement was high so i just wanted to detect. Its something ill have to work on.

Believe me he was not going anywhere near too slow or to low. lol

At this site ive had to run in enhance with the 11 inch mono and 15x12 mono. Id have to ask the guys who have detected there more what they were able to run when using a DD and when they ran the big 24X12 coil.

We were hunting pretty wide open ground, but I was trying to see if the equinox 800 could hear the good sounding targets that the GPX heard. After doing that for a bit we all split apart and detected well away from one another. Btw the equinox got skunked for the day, not sure if it was my buddy being new to it, him not scraping the coil on the ground, the hot ground not allowing it to see the gold or what. From how i saw him swinging it ill chalk it up to user issues and not getting over a piece of gold. I kept telling him low and slow, lol..

Haha if I had the money id probably have both coils, but currently i can barely afford to buy one.

I know everyone probably gets sick of coil questions, but i have another. So the area i have been detecting and finding nuggets in VA was found back in about 2011 by some friends of mine. They hit it hard for a few years till it got to thick to hunt. One of the patches they found at this place was 100s of yards from all other gold finds, and was initially found with a 9X12 nugget finder coil, when they found a 1.5 ounce nugget. The next trip out they used a NF 24X12 coil and found, i think a 3/4 ounce, an ounce piece and hold your breath a 7 ounce lunker at about 30 inches down. But to my surprise that NF24x12 is the biggest coil they used. He has owned a 18inch and 24 inch mono coil as well but never really used them at this site due to EMI issues. Now my understanding is, that a 14 inch round should out punch the NF 24X12 on large targets at depth, and that Detech coils seem to generally less affect by EMI when compared to NF and coiltek coils. However would a 14inch DD coil out punch a 24X12 mono? Please correct me if im wrong. So the question is, is a 14 inch detech mono going to be a better option, or detechs new 15 inch Ultimate DD coil. Which would punch the deepest in fairly hot ground, with a good bit of EMI flying around. Lots of questions as i learn more about the site im detecting. Thanks guys,

This past weekend i was running the GPX 4800, and my buddy was using my equinox 800. I will say that i could not be within 30 to 40 feet of the equinox, it gave the GPX fits, and if you got closer than 10 feet the GPX was just screaming like it had a beer can under the coil. I found this interesting since its usually the other way around with the GPX giving the VLF detectors fits. Guess it has something to do with the Multi IQ that the equinox is running. Has anyone else experienced this?

Yeah chiggers suck, luckily their bites are just irritating for a few weeks, and they dont carry weird diseases like ticks do. But both suck, so whenever we go out into the woods we coat ourselves with deet bug spray.

Always some mosquitoes when your in VA. But luckly cooler temps in the 70s and low 80s and nice breeze kept them away. That plus lots of deet bug spray, but that was mainly for the ticks and chiggers.

So got back out to my one nugget producing spot here in VA, this past Saturday. Four of us in total went I was swinging the GPX4800 with the 15x12 commander mono coil, my buddy was swinging my equinox 800 with stock coil, and my two other friends (the ones who originially found this place), were swing the GPX5000 with a 11 commander DD coil. In total i got 4 nice nuggets for the day, the GPX5000 got 2 and the equinox 800 unfortunately got skunked. Biggest nugget was 2.3 grams, smallest was 6 grains. I also got a steel ball that came from a civil war case shot shell. All three detectors ready to go for the next days planned adventure. Fording the high creek water to get to the detecting area. Collapse mine shaft. Case Shot Case shot second pic Dirt gold right out of the ground All cleaned up and purty On the detectors coil All the trash dug in the search for gold. 100+ pieces. I got some good video footage so i should have a video up in the next few days.

Thanks for the comments guys! Ill be at this spot detecting and dredging over labor day weekend. Hopefully some more nice nuggets show up.

Thanks for the advice. Will be using the 15x12 commander to cover more ground. Going to let my buddy use the gold monster 1000 with the 5x10 coil. Two of the guys who found this spot back 6 years ago will be there as well with a gpx 5000. Will hopefully be some nice nuggets coming out of the ground. Fingers crossed.

So this Saturday im heading back out to the property that produced 4 nuggets with the GPX 4800 last time, using the 11 inch coiltec elite. The area we will be focusing on has mainly been known for producing larger nuggets in excess of 5 grams. My question is, is there any advantage to use the 11 inch coil vs the 15x12. The 15x12 obviously gets more ground coverage but would think the two would be about equal on depth to larger nuggets. The 15x12 is probably less responsive to smaller nuggets compared to the 11 inch. Which would you use on ground that was just clear cut with targets that will generally be on the order of 5 grams or larger? Thanks for the help

Not exactly a gold prospecting video, but it still deals with placer gold. My fiance and I decided to make our wedding bands from the gold that i have found in Virginia. At first we tried actual forging, which was way to hard and required to many specialized tools. So after a little more research we decided to try sand casting. This process required a few tools, but none were very expensive, and this process was easier to do. That being said it took about 10 failed attempts to make her ring and 1 failed attempt to make mine. Something to note is that the smaller and more intricate the item you are trying to cast the harder it is to get it to work properly. This video is just of making my band. All in all i am very happy with the results and i actually like the little dimples and imperfection that are in the band, it gives it character, and since im not perfect my band shouldnt be either lol. (FYI her band is perfect because she is lol) Hope yall enjoy the video. Thanks for watching.

From back in May when i first found my little nugget patch. Some of the smaller pieces of gold in this spot would ring up to the iron side, but since almost every target in this spot is gold, it shows you that on small gold the probability indicator should be ignored. Some nice gold for only an hour or so spent detecting. Will have more videos to come, im slowly working through my backlog. Thanks for watching!

Your equinox 600 can be pressed in use as an effective gold prospecting machine. While it does not have a dedicated gold prospecting mode, my understanding is that Park 1 can be used for gold prospecting, since in multifrequency i believe it runs up to 40khz frequency. Steve Herschbach should be able to comment on this more, since if I remember correctly he is the one that i learned it from on one of the equinox forum post he did. The other option would be to sell the equinox 600 and upgrade to the 800. Which is pretty much the best multipurpose detector out there and can detect nuggets as small as what gold monster 1000 will.

Welcome to the forum Joe L! New York is definitely not known from having much gold even for people panning, so finding a natural gold nugget there is pretty slim. But some of the states to the Northeast of New York, mainly New Hampshire and Maine have had some pretty good gold finds. That being said most of the finds i have seen have been by people using dredges, but thats not to say with lots of research and prospecting that detectable gold nuggets couldnt be found. Also the Mid-Atlantic states such as Virginia the Carolinas and Georgia all have a great history of gold being found. And i have found a number of areas in VA that have produced detectable nuggets. With that being said the east coast is much harder to hunt for gold nuggets when compared to the western US. This is due to 1. simply less gold being in the eastern states, 2. most all the old gold mines are on private property and require land owner permission to prospect or metal detect. But it can be done. Below are some pictures of gold found in VA with the gold monster 1000, which the Equinox can pretty much detect pieces of gold just as small. Best of luck on your search, and welcome to the addiction.

Agreed! Im on a few other forums and while i have not seen some of the bad stuff, the other forums dont generate as good of content and/or seem to be getting a lot less people participating as time goes on, but they are still a wealth of info if you are willing to dig for it.

Yep the gold pyrite belt runs in north east southwest trend, this also leads to the gold bearing veins running in a NE-SW trend as well. Most of the early mining started as placer mining and eventually turned into hardrock. So while the MRDS descriptions may say underground or hard rock for most of the sites, almost every mine site in VA was also placer mined at one point or another.