tvanwho

so,whats your ring finding technique if you don't mind my asking? Dig it all or something better? -Tom V.

where do you get the small dry bag? Does it go on a rope around your neck or a carabiner to your belt ,or what?

how about if you put a sticker on the car that says anybody stealing from this vehicle will be cursed and some sort of nastiness will follow them the rest of their life? No doubt some bad apples will think twice as hard before breaking in and attribute any bad things happening to them afterwards to that sticker.. I didn't know about water ruining key Fobs? I had mine in the Wabash river in Indiana and it was ok afterwards but I was told dealers charge like $175 for a new key fob,OUCH... I am looking for a water proof cell phone and I see the new Apple SE for April 24,2020 release date, at only $399 is waterproof to 3 feet for 30 minutes? I tend to leave my phone in a shirt pocket and of course when one leans over, out it comes and down below it goes. And if you were leaning over to look at a spot in the creek, UH OH !!

way to go dude, gives me a little hope for 2020.

those are rubber floats, black as I recall. Hard floats are made of marlex plastic and don't need air. I trashed mine and got Marlex hard plastic floats from a place in Oregon instead.Worry free.

so where do I get parts now? I need the coil to rod connector bolts , washers, wing nuts for my Tesoro Lobo ST, like 6 each. -Tom...Ace hardware has the plastic bolts but not the large wingnuts or washers.

Indiana gold dredging

I read about old timers /Indians/ early settlers camping in spots in NW Illinois, SW Wisconsin and SE Iowa area from 1690-1900. Famous for galena. The ores were so shallow and in limestone crevices. They would spy a bit of shiny galena and dig it out with a knife and make bullets and trade it .Next thing ya know, somebody dug a hole and made a mine. I went down in one of these old mines in Plattesville, WI I think it was , in a town park /museum. Easy getting down the super steep stairway but took me 1/2 hour to get back up 50 feet it was so damn steep. I was out of breath after each short flight of stairs. I myself found what looked like greenish white rock going down the side of a hill on a relatives property. A rather steep angle , about 60 degrees and 2 feet thick layer. I sent a chunk in for an assay expecting copper maybe. Assay said no copper but .001 ounce/ton of gold and .002 of silver. Not rich enough to mine for free mill gold but at least I can say I struck a gold mine, of sorts. Even the galena diggings on this property had gold. I sent a galena crystal in for assay and it came back as 0.13 ounces a ton for gold. I often wondered if the old tailings piles, after smelting , might have a pile of gold in ? I guess I could always go and get some samples to send for more assays and find out?

what is a truck grove? will the tips work with my Nokta Gold Kruzer? i can't afford to buy one of every machine out there.

I dunno, I heard they imported miners from Cornwall, England who worked in coal mines, to work in mineral diggings in the states.

I always wondered how did the old time miners in the USA from 1799-1900 approx, learn what rocks had gold values after the placers were worked out? There were few books, no color photos/no internet on the subject or mining schools, so where did they get the info, school of hard knocks? After all, it is not just quartz that can have gold....there is greenstone, limonite, red clays, pyrites, sulfides, and many others that I only know about because of internet tips /books/videos from Chris Ralph,Jeff Williams, Steve H, and others. Maybe word of mouth was a BIG factor in the old days? -Tom

Maybe Steve knows the answer to this question? I sure don't understand it?

Good news, I have a blue Goldfox Trommel with sluice on its way, used but 1/2 retail price. I will supply the mats and water pump. These things never show up on Ebay or any other Prospecting stuff for sale websites .I was lucky the mfgr had 2 used ones. 650 shipped price with paypal. If it doesn't work out, should be able to sell it quick. Retail was 1200. The mfgr agreed to update it to all the features of the latest units. It will have 3/8 inch holes in the barrel, full set of legs.I will use my Johnson 2200 gph bilge pump with it that pulls a measly 7 amps. Will try some Dream mat or carpet and expanded in the sluice.

My shoulder aches lately are making it hard to do anything with detecting or shoveling. Atho, it almost looks like the pain is coming from the use of my computer mouse somehow? If my elbow is not supported, the shoulder pain gets really bad .At work its not an issue cause I sit up straight and have a desktop to support both elbows. At home, I slouch, and the shoulder pain gets really bad without desktop elbow support. Guess its my own fault I hurt sometimes but it makes mining a lot harder then too... Small volumes of dirt are where I am at in mining. under 5 buckets a day ,if that. Heated car seats work wonders on lower back pain I recently discovered, even better than advils. My buddy says to stop buying more mining junk as its a waste of money and more stuff to cart around. He may have a point there plus it gets expensive. I recently gave unused gear to our club to raffle off.Was hard to let it go but I wasn't using the stuff . No drywashers needed in wet Indiana and Illinois. I better quit rambling here. But winter is boring.At least its mild this year.Only 1 snow since October, extremely unusual !!! mid Jan temps in 30-50 range, should be 0-30 normally and piles of snow.

And a panning question? Why do the bigger bits of gravel work their way to the surface as we pan instead of sinking?

why did we humans go to such trouble to recover the yellow metal in the 1st place I wonder? Thanks for the history lesson.

I was just curious about the history of gold mining contraptions? How long have gold pans been in use?Who invented them? What did the Romans and other ancient people use to get gold? -Tom

does it catch more gold than a small highbanker ? Does it wash the rocks and clay better than a highbanker? The trommel barrel seems kinda short vs others on the market? What does the machine weigh? Sure wish somebody had a shootout between several of these little trommels/highbankers/ recovery mats, like they do with new car comparisons. Wonder why they have such long legs? I'd like to have it bank mounted and run a small dredge hose into the intake if its possible. Small dredges are no good for much lifting of material tho.

I have a demo Makro Gold Kruzer on its way to try out, fully waterproof and was told warranty will transfer. I will keep my Lobo and request it be buried with me....then the archaelogists in year 3000 can see what tech we had in the dark ages.

Found my note from Keith Southern on LoboST Mods but I fergot which way to turn it tho, CW or CCW, and just a hair at a time, not 1/4 turn !! It will chatter more and throw off the Discrimination...best mark the orignal position somehow for reference I am thinking....I heard Tesoro is out of business now so we are on our own I've read through my notes...It's R33 Pot not R4......still the one right beside the coil connector..in the corner..turn it just a tad at a time...it's tied in with disc.so keep in mind your disc dial will be off a bit for a nail...

Mine gets over a foot on a mens gold ring in all metal at the beach. The black sand mode is really handy when the chatter gets out of hand altho it cuts depth in half. I never got any deeper than about 8 inches on coins even with Keith Southerns mod. It does great with audio modulation on certain things like washers and steel bottlecaps which make a high pitch ,VERY tight signal, vs coins that are more mellow. Great machine for water hunting but must be careful not to lift control box above the waist as water can drip down the cable and into the control box and short things out.Had it happen 3 times. -Tom V., my LoboST is all beat up but I still use it anyway, will never part with it.Heck, better bury it with me when the time comes.

maybe a ziplock bag is all I dare take altho access to this place is right difficult and I've never seen a soul there besides me and a few beer cans...you can barely park a car and barely hike in, I almost fell over a 25 foot cliff,no warning signs at all...they seem to care more about trash than people...

I was hiking in an area in central Indiana not really known for hotrocks. I went to check a creek island out for kicks and found out it is covered with rusty red rocks, and purple and pink rocks.The island is roughly 100 feet long and 20 feet wide and 4 feet high above the fast moving creek.It is jam packed with these rusty red rocks. Downstream is all a sheet of bedrock and small gravels and NONE of these rusty red rocks. I was told I could not pan, not so sure about detecting unless maybe my Falcon Gold Probe? How does one use this detector to check for ferrous and non- ferrous rocks exactly? I need to get some small gravels/dirt maybe and pan offsite. So, why is this island , or my so called Hot Rock island , like this? We usually only find red hematites and black sands and white gravels in Indiana creeks and not very many of them. But gold is usually found where the red stones are at and chunky black sands. -Tom V.

I never get presents at Bday or Xmas anymore unless I give them to me from me....not that i need yet another mining related gizmo...but then again..

and it gets cheaper yet, might almost be in buy range now: MFGR quote to me: Yes the US Dollar is worth more so it is about $1200 ( vs $1600 Canadian dollars) ... Also right now there is a 10% discount code. Just type 10%off in the discount code box when ordering. And free shipping is included. Hmm, so the price drops to about $1095 US dollars and free shipping from Canada. I can almost justify it now?? Can somebody else do the math please and let me know what numbers you come up with? --Tom V.