Doc

Dear Fred, I would play with the positioning of the adjustment piece with the strap before using the 3M adhesive patch. I prefer to tilt the adjustment slightly to the side, towards the hand I use to make the adjustments. So as you can see from the picture I have it mounted slightly to the left. The strap on the rod adjustment piece is really long to accommodate some of the weird detector shafts out there. That Garrett ATX Deepseeker Pulse Induction machine has an upper rod the size of a baseball bat. You can deal with the excess strap, by cutting it to size and putting a little Elmer's glue in between the velcro and the strap at the end to seal it up. Or, you can use the small velcro strip I have supplied and double over the strap back on itself and secure it with the small velcro strip. Let me know how it works for you. Interested in pictures and your assessment. Thank you, Doc

OMG -LOL ? Oh hell no, I'm not old. Can't see, can't hear, OBVIOUSLY I can't read. Yes we used to go to Imperial Beach down the way from Coronado every year. Sorry about that. I feel like Roseanne Rosanna Dana. On the old SNL she would go on an on about some subject, "What's all this non-sense about "ENDANGERED FECES." How can Feces be endangered? There is plenty of feces to go around." She would go on a 5 minute rant until Chevy Chase would say, "Rosanna, it's not endangered feces, it's endangered species." Oh, well, then. never mind! Doc

Dear Fred, The one after the Swingy Thingy is the Ultra Swingy Thingy. But I thought I would send you the new bungee when I get them in. We are all waiting for it to get cooler, trust me. I have never been to Colorado Beach in my life. I don't even know where that is. In fact I have not been through Colorado since before 1983. Only time I was in Colorado was when we lived in Illinois and would go to California on vacation and travel back through Colorado. So it isn't me. But if I ever do get up that way I will look you up. Doc

Fred, Do you still live on Normal? I need another Field Tester. My records show you have a Swingy Thingy, but not an Ultra Swingy Thingy, is that correct? JW, That car reminds me of a story that gives me chills every time I think of it. Not related to gold unfortunately, still a valuable, "look before you leap" lesson to be learned. So the time frame is 1971. I was a police officer in a town in Illinois. Second in crime rate in the State of Illinois only to Chicago. We had a nice size police department, 185 sworn officers. Small enough to know everyone, large enough that we weren't Mayberry PD with Barney Fife and Andy Griffith. My first assignment was as an undercover narcotics officer. I was undercover for 6 months. I was a real young looking kid, I could have passed for being a high school student, so they threw me to the wolves early. I had just come out from undercover and had been assigned to patrol and to a Field Training Officer, after all I was still a rookie. While I had earned an Associate Degree in Police Science and actually had done two semesters of internships on the same Police Department, you learn real police work on the job. So I had the misfortune to be assigned to the absolute most arrogant, burned out cop on the job as my Field Training Officer. This guy drank on the job, left me sitting in the squad car while he ran into his girlfriend's house for a quickie, this guy was a shining example of everything you did not want to be as a cop. Anything I learned was from observing other Field Training Officers teaching their assigned rookies proper procedures. So this town in Illinois sits on a river. A pretty substantial waterway that feeds into the Mississippi. Taking the squad car down by the river between calls was a standard thing to do. The cooler air coming in off the water was nice, as you sat in your squad car trying to catch up on writing reports. I would write reports while my partner would sleep. The river area was devoid of any significant buildings because the river would flood every spring. So it was littered with all kinds of crap that had been dumped, abandoned cars, old tires, dumped refrigerators, stolen bikes, rats and dead bodies. There were actually some remnants of an old marijuana field that was down there from the 40's when there was a hemp rope factory near by. We'd catch kids down there every once in a while trying to harvest the Marijuana, apparently they wanted to make rope to get a Boy Scout merit badge or something. ? In 1971 the Movie Dirty Harry was released. Good ol' "Make My Day" Harry Callaghan. Well every hot shot cop had to have a 6.5 inch 44 Magnum gun like Dirty Harry after that movie. Our duty gun was an M&P model 10 (I believe) with a 4 inch barrel .38 caliber. You had to carry that gun. You could carry a longer barrel, but you could not carry anything larger than a .38 caliber. Now while that was the rule, there was nothing that said you could not carry a backup gun, and there was no specifics as to what that backup gun could be. (Mine was a 5 shot .38 caliber feather weight S&W snub nose that I carried in an ankle holster) My idiot partner's backup was a Dirty Harry Special that he carried in a shoulder holster. So this nitwit is carrying his duty gun in a standard issue SAM BROWN holster rig, and a 44 magnum 6.5 inch, in a shoulder holster while wearing a police uniform. He looked retarded. So he says to me, hey kid, let's go down to the river for some target practice, I got some new "hot loads" I re-loaded myself and I want to see how well they work. So we go down to the river and he jumps out of the Black and White, and without any warning fires a round into the door of a rusted out abandoned car. That particular car had been there for years. It totally caught me off guard as his quick action was as if he was trying to practice exiting the squad and firing at a suspect who was firing back. I pooped my pants a little. I don't know if you have ever fired a .44 magnum, but let me tell you those rounds are loud, and that gun has a pretty good recoil. Well because he had reloaded these rounds with extra powder his first shot was absolutely deafening and the recoil almost sent the weapon back into his forehead. It was such a violent explosion that it sort of stopped my partner in his tracks to reassess whether firing anymore of his homemade rounds was prudent. He said, "I think I'm going to try the regular factory rounds to see what the difference is. He proceeded to dump his homemade miniature metal sticks of dynamite onto the hood of the squad car, and reload with factory rounds. I took that opportunity to go check the car, as I had a really bad feeling about the lack of common sense my partner had exhibited. As I approached the car, somewhat shocked at the huge hole in the car door left by the round he had fired, my eyes fell upon a body of a man lying in the back seat right behind that door. I yelled at my partner, "You idiot, stop what you are doing and get your ass over here." As he approached the car and he saw what I was looking at. I saw the blood drain from his face, "Jesus Christ, what the f--k? Why didn't you tell me there was someone in the car before I began shooting?" WHAT? Now it was my fault that you acted like a mental patient on meth with a gun, jumping out of the squad before I had barely stopped and fired a round before checking the area? The bullet had passed though the passenger side rear door and exited the driver side rear door. But! Had it passed through the body of the person in the back seat? I'm shaking this guy, obviously some homeless drunk trying to sleep it off, yelling wake up, are you OK? At the same time looking for any signs that he had been shot, looking for blood, any signs of life. No movement for like 3 minutes. Meanwhile my partner is outside the junker puking his guts out, lamenting that his career is over, interspersed with a really insane commentary about how, "WE" could just throw the body in the river. I'm thinking, oh no buddy, this one's on you. My next radio call is to dispatch to give me a duty lieutenant, the crime scene unit, and have an ambulance on the way. Midway into my partner's really well thought out plan on how to handle his stupidity... which I believe I heard included shoving rocks and stones inside the bum's pants so he would sink in the river. The bum started to groan and wake up. That bullet had passed about 3 inches above his head as he was passed out in the back seat of that abandoned car. He was oblivious to what had happened. He was also alive, and unharmed. I checked him over to make sure he had not caught a stray fragment, he was good. There were some metal pieces from the door that were stuck in his old stinky padded jacket. God protected this poor guy from what would have been certain death. I contacted dispatch and had them send the paddy wagon to transport the "luckiest man in the world" to the drunk tank where he would be fed allowed to sober up, given a shower and clean clothes and released in the morning. My partner was busy thanking God, Jesus, Buddha, the Dalai Lama, St. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all the Angels and Saints, all the omnipotent soother sayers, knowers of all, Lord High Masters of the Univererse and Captain Kirk, Commander of the Star Ship Enterprise. He begged me, "Partner you can never tell anyone about this. It was an accident, you can see that right?" (Oh now I was his partner, not a shite eating no nothing who could only hope to become half the cop he was. He had to be kidding? I wanted to become an alcoholic, burned out embarrassment of a cop? ) "No, here's what I can see. This wasn't an accident, this was sheer stupidity on your part. And it just adds to the list of stupid things I see you do every day. You don't want anyone to know about this? OK, here's my conditions, take 'em or leave 'em. You're going to get your head out of your ass. You're going to start going back to your AA meetings. If I ever see you take a drink again, I tell everything. You're going to start acting like the "great cop" you claim you are or more accurately were. You're going to stop sleeping on the job, f--king your girlfriend on duty, and you're going to teach me to be a cop. You're going to teach me everything you know about how to stay safe and alive, and how to be ethical and a real asset to this community. If you don't think you can do that, then you need to resign as a Field Training Officer so I can find someone who will train me. Otherwise, I write the report that will most certainly result in a board of inquiry, and your possible dismissal. "I know what you're thinking. Is he bluffing or would he really turn me in? Well to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I'm not really sure myself, it's sort of a blur. But being this incident could have resulted in the death of an innocent person because of your stupidity and carelessness and would most certainly blow your police career off the face of the earth, you have to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well do ya, punk? MAKE MY DAY!" OK, I didn't really say that, but damn it, if I had the presence of mind to have said it, that would have been EPIC. Bottom line, was from that day forward, my partner did change. He went back to AA, he got himself sober, and he was like a totally different person. He actually was a good cop. He had a lot of knowledge, a lot of common sense street smarts, and he went above and beyond. We became one of the best police partner teams the department had. I don't know what the circumstances were that led him to being an I don't give a damn burn out. More than anything I think it was the hopelessness that comes from being an alcoholic. I went on to become a Field Training Officer myself. Then I was promoted to the detective bureau. From that fateful day at the river, until the day I resigned from the police department to go to polygraph school, I never saw my former partner take a drink I never saw him exhibit that "burned out cop persona" that I had previously known. So the moral of the story, is always Be Careful Out there. Sometimes in the excitement of the moment of looking for or finding gold, we throw caution to the wind. Not worth hurrying back to an old patch with a new coil if you get rattle snake bit on the way, or roll your quad and get injured. I speak from experience. I have had a torn rotator cuff, and smashed elbow, that led to them cutting the head of my radius bone off. I have rolled my Toyota Tacoma. All this and I was trying to be careful and still there are dangers out there. I have seen guys out on the gold fields of the U.S. carrying their guns, which is fine, I carry mine as well. But before you discharge it, make damn sure you know where that bullet is going. Sometimes it's hard to remember we are not the only ones out there. God forbid, your round would hit a detectorist in a gully 10 ridges away that you didn't see. Sorry for the long story on a mostly off-topic issue, but I have been carrying around about 200 stories in my head that sometimes I have to share just for the sake of my own sanity. Doc

Thanks Chris. Doc

Dear Chris, I figure the new QWEEGLE™ Bungee is the logical compliment to your World Famous HipStick™. I am going to start including a little double sided tab of foam adhesive tape to put on the back of the wrap around strap on the rubber non-slip pad. The rubber non-slip pad does a pretty good job of keeping the rod adjustment part from rotating around on the rod, but once I figured out the perfect position where I wanted it to be, I used the double sided foam tape to secure it in place. Doc

Look at you Peg. Way to go! Doc

I weighed the Gold Monster Covers today and they are 2 ounces each so you could ship 4 to New Zealand for $13. Doc

Actually it's the same price $13 for shipping 2 as it is for 1. 1 ounce through 8 ounce is $13 They weigh about 3 oz each. So combining orders would be the way to go. Doc

$39.95 plus S&H $5 in the U.S.

Phrunt $13 USD to ship to NZ. Doc

Well they got the fit looking good. I am a bit adverse to black because it absorbs too much heat. Green seems to be the color of choice next to CAMO when I polled users. Detectorists are a stealthy bunch. There are some other features I included in my design. I don't like covers that shift around. So on the side panels, on the inside I stitched a tab of "HOOK" material on each interior side. Then I supply the opposing "LOOP" tab with a peel off adhesive back so you can mount that on the edge of the detector. That way the cover locks onto the detector, via the hook and loop and prevents the cover from shifting. 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