Doc

I got the first few covers from the production run of Gold Monster Covers I designed. I got a limited amount sent to me before the bulk of them will be shipped. It will take about 30 days to get the bulk of the production run, but I am really happy with the way they have turned out. The Gold Monster cover is made of a tough Green canvas with a neoprene lining to offer protection to the detector. I also designed a cord wrap, that closes with a hook and loop strip. I designed this to protect the coil cable and allow you to secure that cable without using that plastic cable pinch that has been molded into the vertical support. First it is very hard to get the coil cable in and out of that little plastic pinch, and second I am afraid over time you may damage the coil wiring. The wrap allows you to easily change the coil and not be pinch that cable all the time. This thing was a real bear to design because of all the weird angles. I think the testimony to the difficulty of the design is that I don't think anyone else has designed a cover for this machine yet. See the pictures. Doc

I too have used snowboard bags. It just does not seem like anyone has made a bag large enough to hold the machine and a 19 inch coil. This particular bag is a bit more compact than a snowboard bag. A little shorter and wider. Phrunt, I love that camo bag! Doc

Hey gang, I saw this Gladiator wake board bag at Overton's and thought, "That looks like it may be a great metal detector bag." Typically I find that bags made for other sports seem to be much better padded and better made than bags made for metal detecting. So I ordered one. This bag kicks butt. I really like the fact that it has a lot of padding. It is really wide. It has a big zipper mesh see-through pocket for accessories. And a little zippered pocket for bits and bobbs. And it's only like $39.99. I tried to find out who manufactures these but I wonder if this is Overton's own private brand because I couldn't find anyone else that carries them. They were on Amazon, now they say they are no longer available. I don't know if that means they are closing them out or what. https://www.overtons.com/modperl/product/details.cgi?pdesc=Gladiator-Padded-Wakeboard-Bag&i=320417&CAWELAID=120030620000073070&s_kwcid=adwords__&gclid=CjwKCAjwkrrbBRB9EiwAhlN8_ANDn26En6JkGu7SOuRtBNkNY64eVkifk97X0etDJT7TZoitbkVVDBoC2QsQAvD_BwE Doc 

Thank you Fred. Doc

Dear Phrunt, I am 69, I have had rotator cuff surgery, I had the head of my radial bone in my arm cut off because I crushed it, and I have had my hand operated on three times. So you might say, necessity is the mother of invention. But I agree with you. A bungee makes all the difference in the world. I have been using the proto-type of this bungee and I can swing my GPZed 8 hours with no strain at all. Thank you for checking in, Doc

o I finally have some production models of the New dual adjustment bungee I designed. I think I am going to call this one the QWEEGLE. Sort of a combination of Quick Bungee and Double for Double adjustment. I know a lot of you use your own harness, which in a lot of instances is a modified Camel Back. Camel Backs are great because they provide hydration and give you a great place to hook a bungee cord up to. Well I have thought long and hard about now to improve the QWEEGEE bungee which allowed you to adjust the length of the bungee where it attached to the rod. The BOOMERANG bungee which I also invented allowed you to adjust the length of the bungee at the "D" ring. The big issue with the QWEEGEE, was that you could only detach the bungee at the "D" ring, so when you laid your detector down the bungee was lying in the dirt. There was no way to detach the bungee from the shaft of the detector. Also where the bungee snapped onto the "D" ring it was pretty clumsy to get it on and off. I wear gloves, and when you wear gloves, small pieces of plastic are hard to deal with. So here was my challenge. 1. Design a bungee that could be adjusted with at the "D" ring or where the bungee attached to the rod. 2. Design a bungee that could easily be detached from the detector. or the "D" ring. 3. Make the process of detaching the bungee really easy and effortless. 4. Provide an optional attachment ring that would be similar to a "D" ring but be more durable, easier to attach to, allow the user to stitch it onto their own harness, and not turn around in the webbing you use to attach it. Standard "D" rings, always manage to wiggle around in the webbing and end up looking just like this "D" running vertical instead of like a U where the curved part of the "D" stays at the bottom. First part: Easy on and off attachment snap that attaches to "D" ring. Nice and hefty and durable. A thumb tab, to allow you to remove the bungee from the adjustment groove using one hand. Second Picture: Adjustment groove in snap. Lift or lower your detector while the bungee is out of the adjustment groove to find the right length, give a slight tug down to seat the bungee in the groove and lock the bungee to a perfect length for detecting comfort. SHAFT ATTACHMENT ADJUSTMENT Point. Long non-slip strap that will accommodate all known detector shafts, even the Garret ATX Deep Seeker that has a rod the size of a baseball bat. • Easily attach or detach bungee by pulling the bungee in or out of the SLIDE SLOT. Picture 3 • Easily adjust the length of the bungee by lifting your detector up or down, and then tugging the bungee up into the adjustment groove when you find the proper length. Picture 4 • Use the shaft attachment point only as an attachment point, and don't use the adjustment feature. Simply put the loop at the end on the bungee onto the shaft attachment point. Then you can use the snap at the "D" ring to make adjustments Picture 5 PICTURE 3 PICTURE 4 PICTURE 5 Then we have the optional non-slip "O" ring that I designed . Supplied with a piece of webbing for you to attach to your favorite harness system. I designed all of these pieces. I had to have injection molds made (not cheap) and had the parts molded out of Nyglass, which is a darn near bulletproof material. That "O" ring is 2 1/4 inside diameter. A blind drunk monkey could attach the snap to this "O" ring without ever worrying about having to see it. So I would love to hear your input. I have just 10 from the first production run. The rest will be sent by boat. Only the plastic parts and the strap are being shipped, we assemble the parts with the bungee here in Henderson. Some things are OK to have made in China, but bungee cord is not one of them. We use a very expensive high quality marine grade bungee. Doc

Just call 1-800-477-3211. No extension. Leave a message and I will call you back. There is no outgoing message, I have everything call forwarded into Skype so I can retrieve my messages anywhere and for some reason SKYPE quit letting you record an outgoing message so it is just a generic, "The Party you are trying to reach is falling down drunk and can't come to the phone"... or something like that LOL. These are in production now, I am having 600 made, which will probably not be enough. They are going to send me the first 10 out of production around August 4. The balance will not be here probably until the end of August. I am having these Equinox covers and Gold Monster Covers made. The picture of the Gold Monster Cover below, is a prototype, I didn't like the way the cover was fitting in the back it was not cut exactly right and it was making the speaker mesh bunch up. That has been corrected. That cover was a nightmare to get right because of the weird shape of the Gold Monster. With the Gold Monster I also designed a Velcro® type wrap around for the coil cable so you do not have to force the cable into that plastic clip on the back of the GM. That clip is too tight and I am sure it is going to cause shorting problems in the cord in the long run. So the wrap around lets you hold the coil cable in place gently, instead of pinching it into that plastic clip. Either cover is $44.95 with free shipping. They are made with a heavy duty canvas material lined with a thin layer of neoprene to provide cushion. These are really well made covers. Best material and the workmanship is out of this world. I have been using the same company for over 20 years. I wasn't really ready to let the world know about these yet, but I guess the word is out. Thanks Guys! Doc

Last Thursday February 8, 2018 got into the field. I'm calling the first one a "nerdle" because when I detected it I really did not know what I had until I got it home and cleaned it up. It set off the Zed, but I had a hard time seeing any gold. The only thing I knew when I left the field for the day was that it was something natural as opposed to man-made, and it was not ferrous. After getting it home and putting it in an acid bath, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the ZED was much smarter than I, and unbelievably sensitive. About an hour later and a whole lot of walking I came upon this little tributary running off of a ridge, the dirt was very red, lots of decomposed quartz and granite, and I snagged this little piece. Any detector should have been able to find this one. It was only about 4 inches down, right in the middle of the gully on the downhill side of a bush. Doc, Doc's Detecting Supply Authorized Minelab Dealer Minelab Certified Gold Machine Trainer

Hey, don't think for a minute that I don't take advantage of that perk. I don't have gold fillings, but they did get rid of all of my mercury amalgam fillings and replace them with composite. The composite is matched to your teeth color, so it doesn't even look like you have fillings. However, my boys have told me that they have ran into people with gold fillings. Some of this dental work done over 40 years ago. They tell me that gold is without a doubt the most reliable and durable material for working with teeth. They tell me that because gold is malleable, as a person chews that gold used in the filling works it's way down into even the smallest nook and cranny under the filling and seals it up. They have told me they have never seen a gold filling that has decay underneath because it "seats" so well that there is simply no way for bacteria to get under the filling. So even though gold fillings are more expensive, they literally can last a lifetime. Doc

Great story. Goes to show you, blood is thicker than gold. Took a customer out once for training. He purchased a SDC2300. So I am driving down and old wash and I see this small gully winding it's way down out of the hills that really was calling to me. I said let's pull over here and start your training. OK, so the basic machine adjustment speech is given. Really not very involved with the SDC2300, it's a pretty simple machine. We start up the gully, I am coaching him on his swing, telling him to make sure he rolls rocks, check under bushes, kick off a couple inches of dirt. Good student, he is picking it up pretty quick. Doing all the right things, making all the right moves. So I go ahead and turn on my GPZ7000 and work off to the side of him. Far enough away so I am not interfering with his detector, but close enough so he can yell at me if he has a question. Not a speck of trash in this area.. Unexpectedly, I get a really nice target. So I call him over and tell him to swing his coil right next to the bush. "Can you hear it?" He can, so I tell him to go ahead and dig it, if it's gold it's his. So I teach him how to get it in the scoop, split it, check the scoop and check your hand, etc. etc. WHAM, a nice nugget over a gram. Winner winner chicken dinner. OK so we go back to detecting. I hit another target. I call him over. Ask him if he can hear it, he says he can. I tell him OK you got the first one, this one is mine, and we will just keep trading off sharing the finds. Anything you find on your own, you can keep but I told him I would share my targets with him. So I dig a sub gram piece. I'm starting to think we may be on to something here. Oh, btw, both of those pieces and the other pieces we found that day were nice little specimens. So I get another target, right in a small little tributary behind a bush. I call him over. Can you hear it? This one he could not hear. So I told him, well it's there so just keep digging and checking the hole until you can hear it. So he does. It's down about 14 inches a really nice 1.5 dwt specimen. I told him to put it in his pocket. Next one I find is a gram plus. I told him, this is great, we are on a little virgin patch so we want to make sure we really cover this area thoroughly and go slow. So we keep detecting and I get another target and I call for him and he's no where to be found. Last I saw him he was headed up and over the hill out of the gully. I thought maybe he had to attend to the call of nature. I mean who walks away from a virgin patch? I called for him and no answer. So this happens for the next four targets which are all nuggets. I'm digging gold, and he is off wandering around. So the training day is drawing to a close and I go looking for him and he is two ridges over happily swinging his detector, apparently for exercise, because he hadn't found anything. I asked him why he left the area. He said he wanted to see if he could find something on his own. I told him well there is a rule in gold prospecting. Never go looking for gold, when you are finding gold. "Your best chance of finding gold would have been to stay in the area we were in and do what I had suggested, be thorough and go slow." Well here is a gentleman that had two nice nuggets in his pocket, and I was trying my hardest to make sure he had a successful day of training, and for some reason, he thought he was ready to venture out on his own. I see this happen sometimes. When I just happen to get lucky and actually get someone on the gold, they automatically assume it must be easy to find gold. They don't understand that it's an anomaly and it rarely happens that I take someone into the field and just happen upon a virgin patch. So I think my customer had sort of mixed emotions. He was happy he had some gold to show for the excursion, but ticked off that he didn't stick around in the area to snag a couple more nuggets. Gerry you know how it is, sometimes you just can't win, no matter what you do. Thank you for the great story about your brother. I never had a brother, and I really wish that I did. I have two sons, and I see the great relationship they have. They ride ATV's together, dirt bikes, go shooting together. They are both dentists so they have a lot in common. Happy New Year my friend! Happy New Year to all my friends here on the forum, Doc

Great advice Lanny. Sometimes the margins may be dead, but what they really are is a break. There is gold in one area, then a margin of nothing, and then you stumble into a fresh patch. I guess that marginal area could have been cause by a ground fault or a shift that broke up one area into two distinct areas. Doc

I think you have hit the nail on the head. Maybe that is why I love detecting so much. I don't think many people know that I was a police officer and a police detective. And for the last 40 years I have been a Licensed Private Investigator. I love a mystery. I love looking for the clues that lead me to a successful conclusion. And you are so right, that is exactly what we do when we find that first nugget. I often have referred to that first nugget in a new area as your "CLUE NUGGET" Thank you for the comment. Doc

Thank you Reg, really a nice compliment from someone I admire. Doc

I am always dismayed when I read of fellow detectorists who say that they have yet to find a piece of gold after one year, two years, etc. I am to the point now where I find gold almost every time I go detecting. I may get skunked 1 out of 20 times. That 1 time is usually when I am prospecting totally new ground, and just have not hit a new area yet. We all know the saying, "Gold is where you find it." I think that statement is wrong and very misleading and harmful. In fact I think it may give newbies the wrong impression about prospecting for gold. It implies that gold is randomly dispersed, and if you do happen to find it, it is only by some coincidence or luck. Nothing could be further from the truth. Finding gold is a science and an art executed by people with the skill and experience that know what they are doing. All we are doing with a metal detector is processing dirt. Now the more dirt we process the better chance we have of finding gold. But think of what a small amount of dirt we are processing. A column of dirt under the coil to an indeterminate depth and we sweep that coil back and forth. We do that for 6 to 8 hours a day? Now compare that to the tons and tons of dirt you see the boys on Gold Rush process. Yards and yards and tons and tons of dirt processed to collect their gold. It's amazing that we find anything when you compare the small amount of dirt we "process" with a metal detector. So, think about what a bizarre feat it is for a person with a metal detector to process such a small amount of dirt, and yet be able to find gold. It is the old adage "needle in a haystack" so to speak. Yet, experienced prospectors, like Steve and a host of others on this forum who are always posting pictures of their gold finds ...., us guys that have been around a while, how come we are more successful at finding gold than other people? Do we process more dirt? NOPE! Our secret is we spend our time processing dirt that is more likely to have gold, than other dirt. We have all heard go low and go slow. Well, I agree with that "go low" admonishment. You need to keep that coil on the ground. But SLOW? If you watch experienced detectorists, you will see that they vary their speed when they are "looking for gold." They speed up in areas that their knowledge and experience tell them they are less likely to find gold. They slow down in areas where that experience tells them there may be a greater chance for there to be gold. So they spend their time more productively by processing only dirt that has a higher probability of having gold. Now when they find a nugget, they may turn around and go back over the area they went through quickly. This time they will go more slowly. They do this because they now know this area may be more likely to have gold too. So they invest their time wisely. As an outlandish example. You are standing in a paved parking lot of a Walmart. Next to the Walmart are acres and acres of quartz strewn red dirt with all kinds of gullies where water has ran during the wet season. Where are you most likely to find gold? Are you going to spend your day in the Walmart parking lot swinging over asphalt? Well experienced detectorists are constantly looking at their surroundings. They look at where they are going and where they have been. They are calculating the odds. Is this a Walmart parking lot, or a gold vault? "Gold is NOT where you find it." "Gold is found in places it is most likely to be." Seasoned prospectors have spent their careers learning what those places look like. Now are we ever surprised to find a nugget in a place where we would never intentionally look. Certainly, but those are few and far between. Most times when we find a nugget we have a pretty good idea of why it is where it is. Deteriorated quartz is everywhere, we detect on a bench, in a tailings pile, in the bend of a gully, under a waterfall of boulders, behind a bush lining a gully, near an old mine or there are indications the old timers were there. I once was way off the beaten path on my ATV. I found a canteen that said BEAR BRAND, Patent 1918. Lid still on it, canvas completely gone. I stopped right there and detected the gully I found it in. I pulled out three nuggets. Let's say after a year you finally find your first nugget, under a boulder up on the side of a gully. From that day forward, you will check every boulder on the side of gullies. Why? Because you learned where to look. It's no coincidence that after taking so long to find their first nugget, newbies generally find their second nugget soon there after. WHY? Knowledge. I have often said, if you don't take at least 20 minutes with every nugget you find, letting it tell you it's story, you are missing a valuable education. "How did you get here little buddy? Why did you stop here? Where did you come from? What's different about this gully than other gullies I have checked? Is there a concentration of deteriorated quartz around here? A contact zone? You're sort of rough, you didn't travel far did you?" I can almost bet that any experienced prospector will tell you that they can be riding on their ATV and all of a sudden they come upon ground and their heart starts beating a little harder. They may even say to themselves out loud, "Oh man this area looks good." After years and years of experience, we sometimes just "get a feeling." It's not voodoo, it's just our subconscious telling us that at sometime in our past, we came across a place that exhibited similar conditions, and we found gold there. We may not even remember the specific area in our distant past on a conscious level, but our sub-conscious knows. So what is the moral of this story? Buying a detector and expecting to learn how to become a successful prospector without training is like buying a 747 and trying to get it airborne when you have had no training. I hear it time and time again. I've been detecting 2 years and never found a piece of gold. Who trained you? TRAINED ME? "Well I've done a lot of research and I have read a lot on detecting and prospecting and I belong to the GPAA ...." That's akin to someone saying, "I have had the worst luck with airplanes. I have owned five different planes and can't get the damn things in the air; I have crashed every one of them." Where did you get your flight lessons? "ME? LESSONS? YOU MEAN FLYING LESSONS?" So boys and girls, my lesson for today is: "Gold is NOT where you find it." "Gold is found in places it is most likely to be." So hire someone to teach you WHERE to look! There are great dealers who frequent this forum who offer training... it is invaluable. A company who only sells you a detector, is doing just that. They are selling you a detector. There is nothing wrong with that if you are a seasoned veteran who does not need training. Or if you have someone who is willing to take you under their wing and teach you this wonderful past-time. However, if you are new, or not successful at finding gold, look for dealers who sell detectors and offer training. Because then you are not just buying a detector. You are investing in a relationship with someone who wants to make sure you are successful at learning how to prospect and find gold. Doc © 2017 G.M. "Doc" Lousignont, Ph.D.

Dear Chris, I get that a lot! I had this one customer that walked to my office from the strip. I told him that was a bad idea as it was a bad neighborhood. We said he was a coach at a high school and taught the wrestling team as he used to be a college wrestler. We concluded our business. I insisted that he allow me to give him a ride back to his hotel. He vehemently refused. He takes off walking and about 10 minutes later is back at my office with a bloody elbow. He said some jerk tried to rob him and he took him to the ground and broke the guy's arm. This happened like two blocks from my office. He said he knew he broke the robbers arm because he heard it and felt it snap. The bad guy went running off down an alley screaming in pain. The bad guy didn't get anything and my customer said he didn't want to file a police report. I got out the first aid kit and bandaged him up. This time he very graciously accepted my offer of a ride back to his hotel. Doc