Sasquatch

They are also tough enough to chop through a caribou antler just in case you ever need too.

Another vote for the Predator shovels, I think I have the Pirhana. It has been great and is the perfect size for keeping in a SUV or on the side by side.

Got a response from Mark at Keene. Thought I’d post if anyone else has an older engine pump. No parts for the old air compressor available, but the P150 pump takes the WPS2 pump seal and the paper gaskets can be replaced with part P104. Well I recovered 3 flecks of color from the first run in the backhoe bucket. Now the question is was that still in the dredge I had rinsed out twice already OR was it in the driveway dirt in the backhoe bucket? 🤔 Good to hear about the daisy mat, I had looked at that when searching for a miners moss type mat, local shop was out. I used a rubber mat under the crash plate and then a Walmart rubber backed ribbed carpet that seemed to work well. Might add some daisy mat in a section.

Thanks. Will get some miners moss. Got her started up and looks to be running great. Ran a small amount of rock, gravel and sand through it, and 10 flattened split shot, recovered 7 in the crash box, a couple in the first 2 riffles and one in the 4th riffle. Put some rubber mat under the crash plate, then ribbed carpet under the riffles. Added a rubber flap and tried adding a piece of lexan to the tail end. My thought is it should let me peek at the riffle action, will probably get scratched up in short order but thought it was worth a try. Planning on getting it out this week to try in the field.

Thanks, I tried searching but didn’t find much. I know I will be adding a rubber flap to calm down the water flow after the crashbox.

One more question are regular hose clamps appropriate for pressure hose or should these permanent clamps be used?

I bought my first dredge and it is an old one, have a couple questions if someone knows old Keene gear. It’s a pretty vintage 3” Keene suction dredge, crashbox, power jet, 14x48 sluice and frame that was strapped to inner tubes. The old Copper BS 5hp with an old Johnson 155 air that seems to be working. Changed the oil, gas, checked the sparkplug, removed the pump and she started right up and runs great. Everything is in suprisingly good shape. The pump is a Keene P-150, I assume pumping in the 200 - 250 GPM range. It has the old paper gaskets for the pump housing, will Auto gasket maker work to replace those if needed? I think the main pump seal is still the same as modern pumps. For the Sluice it has a plate in the crash box then flat red carpet under the riffles. What would you recommend running in there? Miners moss over carpet? Change to rubber matting? Leave as is? Should anything go under the crash plate to help catch fine gold. Would love some opinions. I did clean out about 20 flecks of color from the tiny bit of sand left in the sluice, so I know it can catch some fine gold. Anyone know anything about the Johnson 155 Air compressor? I can’t seem to find any information on it. Seems to be working but not sure if any spare parts are available for it. Last question is what to do for floats. I would need new inner tubes but I may try to rig up something with a packraft I have. Anyone used pool noodle floats? I’m sure the hard floats are best for fast moving water, but curious what other options there are. Would like to keep it light to be manageable by one person and able to be hauled with an ATV. Thanks for any info.

Thanks. Got a small scale and specific gravity is around 9 so probably nothing interesting. Another piece actually had a void inside so assuming welding remains, especially since all were found close together.

Good to know, hopefully will make it up there to try again. Still stumped on what the one nugget is. It is a dark silver color, very hard to scratch with steel tools, I can polish it but not take much material away with a hard green stone on a dremel. It consistently registers a 2 on the Equinox in air and is non-magnetic, not even slightly. Weight seems slightly heavier than the iron nodules. Any ideas? It’s too hard for silver or lead. Maybe just a beat up piece of non-magnetic stainless steel? But not sure how that reads on the Equinox.

Thanks for the tips and previous reports Steve! They were very helpful. The non magnetic nugget seems much harder than lead and definitely silver in color, not copper, also about as hard as steel. Will clean it up more and see if I can identify it. Thanks for the photo comment GotAU. Alaska is a great spot to do photography. Was great to see an owl in good enough light to capture a photo, usually they are just a shadow passing in the night. Besides the finds there is good rockhounding to be had along the Taylor Hwy. Found garnets in schist, some medium quality labrodorite, and dendrites. Here’s a couple pics of a piece of the labrodorite showing the bluish flash in the right light. Need to polish it up and tumble some other pieces I found.

Last weekend I made the drive from Anchorage up to the Taylor Highway and past Chicken to the Jack Wade public gold panning area. Look up Steve’s excellent posts on the area for more descriptions and pictures of nuggets, no gold on my trip. It’s still pretty early so Chicken wasn’t even open yet and some ice shelfs were still along sections of the creek. Got great weather, just some passing downpours but in a T-shirt with no mosquitos most of the time. I did take waders to cross the creek,as it was running a little high with snowmelt. This was the first trip I dedicated a lot of time as a serious search for gold and was just as much about learning the detector. Mostly I have worked beaches, campsites, a few roadsides, so I know it can find the tiniest bits of melted aluminum can, bullets and coins. As expected I dug a lot of trash, but I did find some interesting nuggets that are definitely not gold. Most are iron based, magnetic, but a couple look very noduly, and one is not magnetic. The others are probably just rusted bits of iron. There were some sparkles I thought might be pyrite but I think is just dust from the surrounding shist as even the nails and bits of wire sparkle under the right light. Take a look at the pics and see what you think, maybe just welding or torch cutting remnants. They were all in the same area. The area has been heavily worked by detectorists with lots of dig holes around. Equally lots of unexplored tailings but many so overgrown that swinging a detector is impossible. I put in about 16 hours of exploring and detecting on the tailings. Covered a wide variety of terrain and tailings, new, old, tall, short, and along some bedrock sections. On to the Equinox: I tried both Park 2 and the Gold 1 settings. Obviously, my ear is not tuned to the Gold 1 program, it was providing way more chatter than I could process, even with sensitivity turned down to 15 or so. I would have turned it down more but I could run in Park 2 at 20-22 sensitivity and thought I may miss more in Gold 1. I was using the 11” stock coil. Is it normal to have to run at a much lower sensitivity in the gold modes? Most of the time I ended up running in Park 2 with -7,-8,-9 turned off, which may have been a mistake. With how worked the area is, the best chance is probably digging all the iron and hoping for a nugget that might be masked by the trash. In one area I did have some trouble with hot rocks, they would sound as a fairly small but round 12 with iron nearby but after digging out would end up as a -6 hot rock. Was curious why it read so high. All in all a great trip. No gold, and not much wildlife but got a nice shot of a Short-eared Owl on the drive out the Taylor Hwy. Photos of finds, handful of magnetic nuggets, close up of the non magnetic nugget (maybe lead or silver?)

I've been reading Clive's book on the Equinox and he had an excellent section on the numbers jumping around as you described, and I have noticed the same thing. His said that the Nox is actually reading not just ground and targets but even within targets, so bottle caps, alloys, are actually sounding on the individual components of metal alloys, some tin, some steel, etc. With bullets they are lead and probably other metals to adjust hardness, sometimes copper jackets, casings can be brass, aluminum, filled with mineralized dirt, or have a different metal for the primer. First detector, so still trying to wrap my head around how the detector actually works and how to fine tune everything, but his book has helped me understand a lot.

I love the InReach, now owned by Garmin. I have used it all over Alaska without issue. Two-way communication by texting is far superior to a one way transmitter like a regular beacon. Saying your in trouble is one thing, being able to communicate what is going on to family, friends, and rescuers is invaluable. If you trigger a Beacon, the first thing they do is call you to see if it was accidental, then your emergency contact and tell them you are in trouble. Then it is hours of stress and worry for friends and family who know nothing of what is happening. Also you cannot alert rescuers as to what is going on, are you stranded? are you injured? is there a medical emergency? Also nice just to be able to touch base or send folks a location to where you are camping, etc. The lowest monthly plan is fairly reasonable and there is a newer model that incorporates a fully functional GPS.

DId you try changing the battery, mine started acting up as the battery got low, new one fixed it. Are you guys getting much use out of the Iron function? I find it does the weird chirp when far away but detecting the object, gets steady as it gets closer, then if ferrous it goes chirpy again, but usually by that time I've dug it out and am going to see what it is anyway. Maybe it's just another thing a newbie has to train their ear for, but doesn't seem to be a big benefit to me. Otherwise I have been happy with it though.

So I ordered the Deano's protector and saw he also has an arm cuff cover which I ordered as well. I really like it, the first day I had my detector in the field the arm cuff pad was peeling up at the edge from taking my arm in and out. Deano's cover is a simple stitched neoprene that slides over both sides of the arm cuff. Comfortable, stays in place, and easy to remove. Really happy with it. As other's have said the cover fits well also, and quick shipping on both.

Thanks I have been out twice searching for nuggets and had challenges with the deciphering the noise I got in Gold Mode, did notice it would quiet greatly with 20k or 40k. These tips will help. I know the detector is working because I managed to find very small nuggets of molten aluminum and a tiny grommet for a shoelace or something, one aluminum scrap was so hammered and funky I thought it could be a small silver nugget but feels like aluminum. Otherwise, bullets and casings seem to be the most common Alaska finds, I have found those everywhere I've been. Also just got Clive's Equinox Book and started reading that.

Was just searching and came across this thread. I just picked up a couple pairs of these that I am really liking. http://www.majesticglove.com/3437 They seem to fit my hands better than most leather/stitched gloves, thin but grippy coating, excellent finger feel/dexterity, cut resistant. They were about $8 at AIH in Anchorage.

This is exactly what would happen, I like my 800 though and don't want to give it up!

Good point, there is a lot of history up here and you never know what can be found. Unfortunately there is a lot of land too so the density of history is much thinner than Europe. The other unfortunate thing is percentage wise there is very little privately held land. State, Federal and Native Lands are all strict on historical artifiacts which can be anything over 100 years, amazes me how miners can come dig up acres of land, leave all their trash behind, then all the sudden it is a historic site and can't be touched, seems backwards to me, there should be a bounty for cleaning up the litter. Actually there is some very acient history, maybe even metal based. Talked with an archeologist the other day that found a Pleistocene Age find, not sure what, but with native copper abundant in some areas, there could be very old stuff found, might have to see if I could accompany them sometime.

I'm not sure if my wife is going to get into this or not but she is keen on finding stuff, I've been giving her the pinpointer to dig out finds when we wander out together. What would you guys recommend if I was going to get a detector for her in addition to my Eqx 800? Seems silly to buy another of the exact same model but is there anything else in the price range that would be as easy to use and versatile as the Equinox's? At least a waterproof coil and ability to detect wet saltwater gravels and sand would be high on the list. Would an used Infinium LS be something to consider? Thanks

Good call Pseudo. This one looks only slightly different from Unearth's. Neat find, what part of the world are you detecting in? https://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=80510

Not sure why they don't work for you, but I can't wear standard earbuds because I'm deformed ? and don't have the little piece of cartilage that holds them in my ear. But I do find the actual in the ear canal ear buds or the Bose earbuds with the extra rubber both work pretty well for me.

The Equinox 800 is my first detector so I have nothing to compare it to. But the reasons I went with the 800 over the 600 were: 1) I'm in Alaska, so Gold mode seems important since nugget detecting is a goal, and resale value will probably be better if I want to sell at some point. 2) When I went in to look at detectors, I saw the Wireless Module retails for $269, so you get the gold modes, better headphones, gold modes and user setting modes for less than just buying the Wireless Module. I don't use the supplied headphones though, they are comfortable but up here it is important to keep an ear out for moose and bears so I prefer earbuds and leave one ear out than over the earhead phones. The WiFi module is nice because I can use any regular wired headphone with it and don't have to go buy an Aptx Bluetooth set. But I haven't compared it to regular bluetooth headphones for latency, so not sure how much of an improvement wireless over bluetooth is in practical terms.

Reading some of Steve’s posts in other threads seems I shouldn’t be afraid to tone down the sensitivity and play with the target accept/reject to filter out the nails around here. Alaska, is like New Zealand, too young for all that history, but I am curious to try the beaches up here, have to be old cleats and anchors from ship docks and sunk ships that aren’t old enough to be historic but would make for nice nautical sounvenirs. Would be really cool to find a porthole. Is amazing how little you notice the rain once the detector starts swinging.

No luck this time. Went to Crow Creek Mine, but couldn't cross the stream due to high water, will try again in the late fall. Walked around all day, just getting a lay of the land, seeing where trails went, trying to see where the different layers were between the stream and cuts in the hill. So much iron around, many large pieces of iron read back high numbers, really wanted to get out of the tailings and trash. A large portion of the claims were blocked off and a no tresspassing sign hung up, so couldn't explore as much as I would have liked, did find lesser used trails and poked around a lot of cut banks. Then visited a friend that was camped out there and showed his son the detector and we found a few coins and nails aroud the campsite. Today detected around the house and found interesting trash, a stud from an old studded tractor tire, few ammo shells and bullets, ring pulls, bottle caps, quarter, old Carousel soda can.