maxxkatt

7 hours ago, 1515Art said:

Yep, nothing but robbers thieves and misfits here in Vegas but we have some fine saloon girls…

opps, sorry man. Just a stereo type from the mob days. I apologize. I wish I lived out there in the western desert area so I could use my CTX3030 looking for nuggets.

One think I think we seem (or I) to forget that back then it was a pretty lawless time in those areas. Based on some of my readings about the Dahlonega and Auraria area the miners did hide their gold at night since being robbed was a very common occurrence in the 1800's and probably also in the early 1900's. It was well known that thousands of miners were in the Dahlonega and Auraria gold workings. Auraria was once a thriving town. Now it is just a ghost town with one old general store and a collapsed hotel. When the word about gold gets out, honest miners are always followed by shopkeepers and robbers, saloons and saloon girls.

Is it any different today? Look at Las Vegas and you will find the same mix of people except the miners are replaced by gamblers. Prospecting for gold like metal detecting is gambling your time for a good payout. Times change and times stay the same.

3 hours ago, Jim_Alaska said:

OK, so it sounds difficult to impossible for the general prospector to identify, unless trained to do so. Thank you, now I don't feel so stupid.

Back to topic.

I worked one summer with Larry Otwell a state Geologist for Georgia. One think I learned that most geological maps have most faults identified by type of fault. There are numerous types of different faults. But the key here is finding an ancient buried stream and pot holes or glory holes or kettles. I don't think there is any direct relation like where there is a fault there is an ancient buried stream. I am not implying that is what you are saying, but just putting forth my idea finding buried ancient streams and ancients rivers is a whole different matter. Speculation on my part is that maybe faults can alter the flow of ancient streams and cause the stream to move elsewhere and eventually the original stream being buried over time.

There are two major faults in the Dahlonega, GA gold bearing area running from the north east down to the southwest with a bulge around Dahlonega and tapering off down toward northwest Gwinnett county and down to Carrolton, GA area. We found it was rather rare to find any gold mines outside these two major fault lines.

Gold in this area is volcanic in origin and was formed about 360 million years ago when this volcanic area was in the middle of the Atlantic ocean and plate movements moved it to its present location in north Georgia. The gold in this area is in hard rock and in quartz rocks that have eroded and washed down into the steams and rivers and when the rocks are broken up by rushing water and rounded the gold drops out and settles in the bottom of the stream. The gold will move downstream until it reaches a deep place it cannot move any more. Of course we are talking about millions of years. In theory the process is still at work.

Larry Otwell (now passed state of Georgia geologist) taught me that some miners did not realize what happened when a gold vein appeared to vanish or played out. In many cases it was because of a geological fault that can move the hard rock many feet to the left, right or up or down. The trick is to find out which way the fault moved and start drilling into hard rock either up, down or left or right. Not an easy thing to do so they often just went on looking for easier gold deposits in hard rock or  panning in the streams. Digging in ancient stream beds seemed easier.

Some gold deposits in north GA have been found when drilling for wells. What a pleasant surprise.

That was what we were going to do with our map of possible gold deposits in the Dahlonega gold belt. We were going to hire someone to take core samples from the areas that our statistical program indicated were good prospects. We never got that far due to lack of funds. No, I am not looking for investors. But we did have fun with our project and I learned a lot about finding gold and my sons and I had fun back in those days for 2 years.

Our best method was to use the fisher gold bug metal detector to search for lead bird and buck shot in the small streams and branches and process the gravels we dug out in that area. We would get color and some small nuggets about the size of a bb or smaller. enough to cover the bottom of a small vial for about 1/8th of an inch for a days work. Not a lot, but still fun and it was found gold. Of course we were always expecting to find a thumb sized nugget. Looking for gold was cold work in the winter, but rubber gloves up to your elbows helped a lot. The biggest pain in the but was taking a 3" trash pump to the creek sites for sucking out gravels. We finally made a cart with old fashion balloon tire bicycle wheels. But that still did limit us to the  distance we could travel. 

Looking for gold using the fisher gold bug what got me interested in metal detecting after we stopped hunting for gold after two years.

Another fine gentleman that taught me more than a few things about looking for gold was Frank Moon who lived in the Dahlonega/Auraria area. He was a third generation gold miner. He showed me a pickled rattlesnake head that was as big as a man's open hand. And thanks to a nice lady who let us dig for gold on her property that included two gold mines and two gold bearing streams. We were so lucky to get that permission. Permissions are now almost impossible to come by in that area of Georgia now.

This journal is addictive that is for sure. And if you pay close attention you can really learn something about finding glory holes or kettle's as he calls them in ancient buried streams. Most fascinating to me.

For those new to gold mining, they are digging in an ancient river bed that is now dried and covered up. It was formed way before man looking for gold walked the ground. So what their glory holes are a natural bowl or hole carved out of eons of water falling in that place. Water and rocks falling and also gold dig the hole. Gold being so much heavier than rocks will not be washed out of the bowl, kettle or glory hole. Thus when they come upon a kettle or glory hole it is a huge concentration of gold.

gold gets washed into the stream and river upstream due to eons of erosion. This is the simple explanation of finding gold in gravel and rocks. Gold in hard rock is a different creature.

So enjoying this journal.

Maybe, but what would it be doing in Georgia? I think it was just a method that maybe a single black smith in the area used to make pick axes for the more than 10,000 miners in the area between 1828 & 1840's. Anyway, it is one of my prized finds.

Here is an 1828 - 1848 miners pick axe looked like. I found this many years ago near Auraria, GA which is about 4 miles sw of Dahlonega, GA. I was using my Fisher Gold Bug, and it went off real loud on that target.

One of my best finds. You can see this vintage pick axe was hand forged by a black smith. Of course by 1936 they would have been using more modern pick axes.

This is a great story. One of the best I have read. Thanks for the time and effort you put into getting the story to us on this great forum. Ancient rivers and creeks indeed do change their course and the old channels do get buried over time. But the gold remains in the pot holes or as you guys call them accurately glory holes.

A retired state Georgia geologist now passed, Larry Otwell told me of a guy from Canada who found a glory hole in the  Etowah and the Chestatee Rivers near Dahlonega and sucked out enough gold to be spread out on a full bed back at his motel room. Larry said he was there when they spread the gold out. He left a week later. This would have been back around the 1970's since Larry and I worked on a gold project  in the late 1980's. I got a great education about gold mining from Larry. Then a practical education also, it is hard work, but boy are you motivated.

Hang in there JN. Lost my wife of 11 years ago. You and I both know on the day of the diagnosis (she had stage 4  lung cancer) your world turns upside down. If it was not for my Brittany Springer (a birthday present from my wife) and my two adult sons I am not sure what would have happened.

Keep on keeping busy is all I can advise. 

Great story and great dad. Thanks for posting this story. Need more like them.

On 12/29/2021 at 8:10 AM, rvpopeye said:

Good lookin' coins.

Like someone dropped them yesterday !

 

(Possible evidence of recent time travel activity ?....) 

 

I am convinced that coins in that condition come from dad's or grandpa's coin collection from kids and grandkids. We all like the shiny at even an early age.

Grandpa's first mistake was showing off his coin collection to his grandson.

there were some errors on the original chart. here is the updated. 

specifically .25  tin /zinc breakdown should be .025 for each.

On 1/16/2022 at 8:53 AM, GB_Amateur said:

Despite some claims that the composition doesn't matter, it does to some of us.  I appreciate the effort in measuring the CTX3030 responses but the Lincoln Cents never had equal amounts of tin and zinc.  I have 6 of the 75 editions of Yeoman's Red Book, including the latest (2022) version and none of those six says the amount of tin and zinc were equal.

Later this week I will measure the dTID response of 95% coppter Indian Heads and Lincolns with the ML Equinox and will report here.  It will be ineresting to see if the response to the Lincolns (where there is known variation of tin and zinc content as I pointed out in the thread I linked earlier) will correlate to those contents. 

Needless to say you are welcome to use the numbers from that post -- they aren't mine but rather those of Q. David Bowers who coincidentally is currently the Research Editor of the Red Book and has been a contributing editor to more than 3/4 of all the editions of that excellent handbook.

I agree. On some years in the red book it said .950 cu and .05 tin & Zinc. So I just split the difference on tin and zinc. Don't really now the ratio of tin and zinc or even where to find it.

9 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

I assume when you say '0.25' in the tin and zinc columns you mean 0.025.  I'm curious where you got these numbers.  The tin&zinc numbers you show are inconsistent with what I've found for the Lincoln series.  I'm also curious as to what coins you used to determine the CTX3030 dTID's -- were they dug coins or undug?

I've been unable to find the tin&zinc breakdown for the bronze Indian Heads.  See post I made a week or so ago for the Lincoln Cent compositions by year with referecnes, some of those detailed in earlier posts in that same thread:

Correction to chart: 62-82 has .950 copper and .05 zinc. no tin. oops on my part copied it down wrong.

plus they should be .025

9 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

 

Ok, lots of corrections here. I should not have created this chart from the very small print out of "A Guide Book of United States Coins  2019 by R.S. Yeoman, 72nd edition when I had this head cold.

Here is the corrected file. I hope I got it right this time, I don't wish to mislead anyone with bad info.

The test was an air test on ground I cleared with my CTX3030  to make sure no other metal items were in the ground. Height was about 7" above the ground using Ferrous-Coin mode. My ground is moderately mineralized but that should not have affected anything since it was an air test.

Sorry for the goofs.

Ever wondered why pennies ring up so differently? Well you probably knew, but here are some more detailed results tested on the CTX3030 in the Ferrous-coin mode with the pennies on a patch of ground cleared of any other metal.

You can easily see from the data that the TID values change when the composition or weight changes.

On 12/12/2021 at 5:20 PM, ROCKINGCM said:

Damn Strick those are all neat finds.  Spoon fed or not great hunt.   Maybe you found the brothel dump?  

You are right great finds and yes looks like there were a lot of women present based on the nature of the finds.

Nice permission and hunt. Hmmmm, maybe I ought to offer to bush whack and mow some sites like that in exchange for a permissions. Sounds like a good way to get a permission.

When I used to hunt for gold in North Georgia streams I used a Fisher Gold bug to specifically find lead bird shot or buck shot pellets. Why? They specific gravity of lead pellets and gold are close. So finding corroded (white) lead pellets is a very good locator to where in a stream (in a gold bearing area) to dig the gravels as deep as you can and run them through your sluice and pan the results. Rarely failed for where I use to prospect.

Found old bullet 5-6” down near 1840’s homesite. It has civil war patina, about ½ inch in diameter, weight 26 grams or 401 grains.
I can see two rings clearly and faintly the third ring. It is a fired bullet. Any idea what type of bullet and is it really a 3 ringer?

On 12/6/2021 at 11:49 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

It’s just good hunting skills and a little luck. I’ve done it, and everyone that detects long enough does it. I can go into a park that’s been detected by thousands of people for decades, and bang, make a nice find. It usually gets ascribed to some latest new detector, and the “found good stuff in hunted out ground with new detector” theme is so old and repetitive now as to be a bit of a joke.

I can grab a 20 year old Fisher CZ-5 and go do the same thing. I might put the 5” coil on and head to the trashiest part of a park. Then get down and dirty, hunting hard and careful, the real secret being approach and coil control. Countless targets are masked by adjacent trash if swept from all but a single magic angle, and large coils contribute to this. Careful hunting in trashy areas with small coils and just getting lucky with the right angle and sweep, can almost always pull up another good find in so-called hunted out locations.

An old rule is to hit a good location from eight directions. North to south. South  to north. East to west, west to east. Then same deal with the diagonals, southwest to northeast. This entire concept is about the fact that a coin next to a couple pieces of trash will be masked unless hit with exactly the right sweep from the right direction. By definition these are “iffy” signals, as they will only respond from one direction.

My specialty is hunting hunted out ground. As a nugget hunter, I clean up pulling gold out of ground others walk away from because “there is no gold left.” Frankly, most detectorists are not very good at detecting. Most people simply don’t have the patience for extremely slow, methodical detecting. Coils used and coil control matters more than almost any other single factor in detecting, and is the main reason why coil selection is a number one factor for me in choosing detectors.

This is a rare sport where we give the credit to the tools instead of the players. In almost any sport the person gets the credit. Is a fisherman great because of the pole he uses? Is a skier great because of the skis, or a golfer because of their clubs? Does a great violin make a great musician? Sure, good tools help, but in any endeavor it’s the operator skills that make the tools work, not the other way around. I can make great finds with countless detectors, and people make the mistake of thinking the detector I am using must be what is making it happen. The actuality is detector companies send me detectors to use because I can make even a mediocre machine look good. What is really needed is more focus on detecting skills, and less focus on detectors, to reach the top of the game in metal detecting, just like anything else.

I find what Steve said to be true. But in addition:  “found good stuff in hunted out ground with new detector”

sure sells a lot of new detectors. Just maybe the detector manufacturer's PR machine keeps this theory alive.

wishful thinking. I looking for a Equinox 3090.

20 hours ago, Tometusns said:

Got out Sat for a relic hunt. The bottom two relics came from a different location we stopped at on the way home.

great finds. I wonder what kind ok kick a rifle had shooting a .69 cal like the one you fired. Would probably stop a bear.

23 minutes ago, calabash digger said:

No brass just glass today...

Now that is one sweet bottle. Amazing they can last that long and not broken. I guess it is hard to break them buried in a creek or river. As a kid we use to throw rocks at every single bottle to watch it break and see who had the best arm.

5 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

I assume you keep default recovery speeds (5 in park 1 and 6 in park2).  Thanks for the info.  Has your memory given up any more recollection about that video?

cannot find that video. Sorry. but easy to test. take pop tops and pull tabs. put on ground and poptop on top silver dime. in multi swing over target and see if poptop masks the dime. next do the same in 4 khz and you should see a tid for the time, not the poptop or a down averaged number for both.

On 11/23/2021 at 8:55 PM, Momokahn said:

Just like the college sports transfer portal, I too have decided to change my mind.😁  I was set on buying the new NM Legend.  Instead I visited a local MD dealer today and had a chance to test drive the dealers Equinox 800. The Equinox 800 checked every box and then some.  It will get me where I want to be in metal detecting.  The dealer was pretty impressed on how I was able to navigate through the controllers menus and settings. It is on order and will be here next week.  Now for the "goodies" getting thrown in for free.  Both editions of Andy Sabisch's Handbooks on the Equinox 600/800, a Minelab Hat (I love hats), and any magazine, current or past editions that are in stock.  And there are a lot in stock.  Excited is an understatement.

Clive Clynick's books on the Equinox are much better than Andy's. Andy's book on the CTX3030 was very good, his Equinox book not so good and in my opinion full of filler fluff. Do not  under any circumstances use anyone elses settings. Stay in the standard modes until you learn how to set up your 800 for your type of hunting and hunt sites. It does  not take much to get a setting wrong on the 800 and totally ruin a hunt by using a badly tuned detector. That has been my personal experience with 3 years on the 800.

Hunting coins in a park that is trashy with modern trash (aluminum) use park1 or par2 and switch to 4kHz. 80% of your aluminum trash is will be invisible to your 800. Some times pull tabs with out their tail and screw caps will still trigger the 800's roundness routine and report those as good targets.