tvanwho

My last name is a Dutch one by the way, Van xxx , but so far I ain't lost yet, even ordered me a refurb Garmin GPS with voice command for my car for this trip and a Garmin Forerunner wrist mounted GPS for the woods and I've got a backup whistle.

-T

Thanks guys,

I would post a pic of the spot I have in mind but better wait till after vacation, don't want some local to see it and get the jump on me possibly, after all these forums are not private. I will go to Menards tomorrow and get some smaller cold chisels to help with crack/seam busting and an extra pair of safety glasses and leather gloves.

Ps, I still have a prospecting accident reminder in my one finger from 40 years ago from a gold trip in Arizona. I was using my geologist hammer and chipping an arrow on a large boulder at a fork in a no name desert wash to mark where the copper prospect was where I had got some green copper mineral specimens. Next thing ya know, a geyser of red blood a foot long shoots out from my right hand. A flying rock chip had nailed my right index finger just below the nail by the 1st knuckle.Took me 1/2 hour of pressure to stop the bleeding. still have a black spot 1/4 inch diameter right there where the rock broke apart under my skin. The doctor said it was all fragments and he couldn't get it out. Wonder why it bled like a fire hose instead of just oozing out?

-T

Thanks Scott,

Guess I better take my MD 20 as well as GB 2 with 6 inch coil? I do have a scope like yours.Is it easier to hold underwater with the handle? How did you attach the handle exactly? I do have some of those tools in the photo.

How would I bust open bedrock that gives a detector signal but has no visible cracks? I have a geologist hammer and 2 pound hand sledge hammer and larger chisels with a collar on to protect my hands. Wonder if I should buy some small chisels at Menards?

Thanks Jim, will do and will take my GB 2 I got from Steve this past winter.

I am staying away from Mount Washington in New Hampshire for sure. Have heard they have winds so bad up there that fully loaded trains get blown off the RR tracks. And the mountain is only 6000 feet high, just a hill by western US standards.

Does anybody know how the winds can be so strong on this hill?

I will keep my eye open for tourmalines and aquamarines while gold hunting.

Maybe you can ask Lanny to post over here Jim? Be glad to read more of his stories. Is his AB location in Australia or is that Alberta, Canada?

-Tom

Our old buddy from AMDS, Lanny in AB, has an excellent thread on Crevicing for bedrock gold, tools, tips, etc dating back to 2008 and over 139 pages long, yipes...

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/metal-detecting-gold/69-bedrock-gold-mysteries.html

Wonder whatever happened to Lanny, hope he is still around? He had some amazing and well written stories..

-Tom

Thanks hatter, got a photo of one of your sabre saw tools with handle? are you in New Zealand?

Sure hope Scott gets me a photo/desciptions of his crevice tools ASAP? I may be leaving this Sunday for my trip.

lots of low cal Gatorade and calcium pills for my leg cramps and pointing your toes up stretches the calf muscles. Hot water in the shower seems to help with leg cramps too

-

ps, I got 2, 1/4 inch long flat nuggets in this creek years ago. They were both in bedrock potholes 5 feet above the creek flow. I dug out the softball size dirt filled holes in the boulder and ran the dirt in my sluice and there they were. Dunno how they got so far above the stream bed? I thought nuggets were sposed to be so darn heavy?

Hmm, I have a 2 foot long skinny plastic thingie with flexible barbs on it I used to clean my bathtub drain .It might work as a crevice cleaner too, can't hurt to try.

I hope to be up in Maine in the next 2 weeks and have my eye on a spot I found on Google maps and with my pendulum map dowsing for gold. There is a large slab of bedrock lying at almost 90 degrees across the gold creek. The water flows from a small mountain upstream,to the west, and has to cross this slab. The photo is not as sharp as I'd like, but am assuming there must be a pool of some sort on the upstream side of the slab and I can see gravel on the downstream side on both banks and it looks like the slab is somewhat eroded where the water washes over it.

Now, what would you guys do to go after gold here? I am guessing any decent nuggets would be on the upstream side of the rock in the pool perhaps and clean out any cracks in the slab where the water flows over top and then highbank the gravel areas? Would my Goldbug 2 with the small coil and chest mounted be of any help? I will just take my 1.5 inch dredge hose and 37 gpm pump on my mini highbanker since my 2 inch dredge takes up too much room in my Subaru Forester car. Maybe take a sucker stick for backup and a shovel.

Maine has a dredging season so no permit needed but have to watch out for their many new rules. Dunno if can even dredge the gravel bar yet.Been told by a local I cannot dig where there is any vegetation growing as that is what is considered the bank.

What crevice tools should I take with? I have a slide hammer, turkey baster,pry bars and crow bars, sucker stick, various tools with hooks on and still trying to find a super long spoon? They also require miners to put the streambed back together after done for the day. Cannot leave piles of cobbles stacked up apparently.

Thanks,and the creek is about 25 feet wide and guessing 1-2 feet deep and fast moving ice cold water, filled with small boulders

-Tom

Yipes, that Whippet looks like a great unit until you see the price? Only a measly $1400....

Do they make a cheap dust free dry washer for those of us with asthma issues? Why do they generate so much dust in the first place I always wondered?

-Tom V.

Is Mr Steve implying he is field testing the Macro Gold Racer even now?

Just saw a blurb about Macro Racer Bluetooth wireless headphones, Preorder price as $199, but not much info? Maybe Steve knows what this is about?

-Tom

gives me hope, great job, what do you figger your payback time to be with this machine vs the ZED?

cool, sometimes it pays to switch gears in the gold quest when something else of value falls into your lap unexpectedly..

Non stop rain in Chicago area last 10 days , creeks all flooded , so much for gold mining this year. Too bad we can't send it all out to Chris?

-Tom

Thanks guys. 2 years ago,I was standing on a small mountain top on north side of Phoenix, using a Walmart Next 10 cheapie phone, and could NOT get a signal, dang thing still said Searching.My new friend standing next to me had 4 of 5 bars on his Verizon phone and was chatting away.

I was up there to check out a spot I had map dowsed for gold on an aerial photo,plus my dad had just passed away, and I needed a diversion. I didn't get any gold that day, but there were green schist and white quartz outcroppings and float all over the gulley where I had marked and up at the top of the little mountain and just 20 feet below the top, was a large quartz outcropping with a greenstone schist area beside it that somebody had carved out a 4 foot deep shaft into. I was examining the quartz outdropping, and it was VERY sharp in spots. Hmm, I bet them old timers blasted this outcropping with dynamite and that would account for the large rectangular blocks in the gulley below?

I brought some of the green schist and white rusty quartz home with me, pulverized it, panned it out, but not a single speck of gold showed up? Maybe its too small to see? There is a LOT of invisible gold I am told. Them old timers musta got something for all the work they did there you would think?

One of these days, I will send my remaining sample rocks in for an assay and see what they say...

I thought Hydrofluoric could kill a guy from the fumes? Would Muriatic Acid work or even Clorox? Thanks for the tip. Were the red rocks very heavy? I threw away a super heavy, fist size black rock years ago, that my MXT was screaming on in Prospect Mode, even tho it sure looked like a nugget of some sort. Been kicking myself ever since after I found there are such things as black gold nuggets. They are covered with iron and manganese oxides apparently.

Glad to see you were smart and did some investigating 1st before chucking them rocks....

-Tom

And was also wondering what cell phones everybody is using these days and reasons why? Who has the best deal on smart phones with no contracts and minutes that roll over after 30 days?

-Tom

So, are those Bushnell Track Back mini GPS units any good? I think they are around $60 and have up to 3 tracks with a Compass pointer. Maybe I could handle one of those and at least get back to my car.

Heck, I was in the woods in Missouri years ago, metal detecting around this old Civil War era hotel foundation. We were told it was supposedly haunted and night was falling. I looked up and my 2 buddys had both left the area and needless to say, I was getting a mite scared. I sat down a minute as panic was setting in and thought it out and remembered the trailer we were staying at was at the top of the hill I was on, so I hiked up the wooded slope until I hit a dirt road finally and the trailer was close, whew....no GPs back in them days, only a compass, and most people that I know ,including me, haven't the brains to use one of those either.

Trouble for me is my brain is thinking in the slow lane as I will be hitting the 60 year old mark soon. Heck, I got lost repeatedly in Phoenix as soon as I got out of my parents driveway a few years back. It was rather embarassing. Even my father noticed and my 75 year old mothers memory was 10x as sharp as my feeble memory ability at 58. Simple is defintely better for me now,as in metal detectors ,GPS,and cell phones,computers. Yes, the old KISS rule along with Murphys Law I always remind myself of these days. Life was definitely easier back in the days of analog  knobs, switches,meters on our gizmos and fewer options to choose from...maybe thats why the GoldBug 2 is still around as its easy to operate and still gets the small gold?

Thanks guys , BUT I am still a holdout on a cell phone .The last one I had in my shirt pocket, fergot it was there as I was scoping out a new creek for gold,leaned over, and out it fell into the drink,ruined.

This time, am wishing for at least a water resistant smart phone like the Motorola Ext G phone or an Otter rugged watertight case to enclose the phone in, but since I am a cheapskate , am trying to find a plan that lets me roll over unused minutes/data as long as possible? A lot of plans these days,the unused minutes seem to expire at 30 days?

Needless to say,I know nothing about phone Apps to speak of? Are they free, almost free,how do you install them? If you have GPS on your phone, how do you keep the govt from tracking you, altho that could be handy in an emergency...

Steve,

I got my new used Compadre, shipped from Az for $110. Question, how short can the rod be without the control box causing issues with being too close to the coil? My Compadre came with a 5.75 inch coil. I will call Tesoro and see if they can put my 4 inch coil on it instead altho they may well hassle me for wanting to do so..but can't hurt to ask so I don't screw things up.

-Tom

Is it worth spending more money to get a GPS with a built in camera? Since I am not very good at marking waypoints and generally get confused on all the numerous GPS functions, I was wondering if the camera equipped units could record a photo of my current location and mark it for me automatically as a waypoint? Sure wish there was a GPS that only had basic functions, and a compass pointer and could still get me back to my car after a day in the woods and be water resistant and under $150? The camera units are upwards of $400-600 from Garmin, which is a bit steep for me.

I never understood why GPS, cell phone, and digital camera and camcorder makers have to pack in hundreds of functions on their gizmos, which mostly confuse the users?