rumblefish

The biggest concern I would have is actually getting the gold out of the country. All it takes is someone in the airport to confiscate it and all your hard work is gone. You could fedex it out perhaps, but I'm not sure what the regulations are. Mayalysia is a beautiful place, but corruption runs deep. Only recently the Prime Minister was cleared of receiving a $681m "gift" from Saudi Arabia.

Interesting article in The Guardian today.

By my calculations Klunker, 39% of your forum posts contain the word "40%", so you need to post at least one more to make it a nice round 40%. Happy New Year everyone! My resolution: get a flea collar that works!

Hey Nenad, I still have one of your SDC headphone adapters, going strong. Welcome to the forum. You can put away the blueberry bush camouflage disguise now...

Merry Christmas everybody! I sound like Noddy Holder from Slade...

From what I understand it's the number of electrons that are free to move, and thus create the current. Metals such as Copper, Silver and Gold have increasingly larger and heavier atoms (with more electrons in them), But each has a free electron in it's outermost shell, which is why they are good conductors - this electron can be freed to create a current. However because of the way that electrons shells fill up, silver is the most conductive of the three, because its outer electron can better escape the pull of the nucleus (positive charge). You could in theory make an extremely fine wire from gold, because it is so malleable (think how thin gold leaf is). That would help the weight issue, but the cost of doing so would probably be too high and the conductivity of gold is lower than copper anyway. You'd probably have more gold in your coil than you would ever find by using it haha!

Conductivity in metals is a result of free electrons. While many electrons are bound to individual atoms, some are not, roaming freely around the solid. When a potential is applied, these electrons move accordingly, producing a current. Conduction is defined as the ratio of that current to the applied potential. So what makes a good conductor? You'll notice that the top three conductors (Ag, Cu, Au) share a column on the periodic table and have exactly one valence electron which is easily freed from its "parent" atom. So why are these metals better conductors than say sodium, which also has one valence electron? The reason for this is the total number of electrons in each atom. With sodium and other light elements, even the outermost electrons are somewhat close to the nucleus and feel its pull. As atoms get larger however, more and more electrons are between the nucleus and valence shell, shielding the outermost electrons from the nucleus' influence. This is why silver is a better conductor than copper, it is a larger atom with a more strongly shielded nucleus. Curiously, the best shielding is actually seen with the d-orbitals (elements in rows 4-5 of the periodic table) and once f-orbitals are introduced (rows 6-7, i.e. gold) the conductivity is slightly less, even though the atoms themselves are larger.

Amazing to see how little the technology has changed. Very nice present. Even more so, knowing that your own grandpa used it all for years.

Wiliam Lyne. Mild mannered prospector by day. But at night, he steps out of the shadows as golden caped superhero... Nugget Man!

Do I get the award for Detector Prospector Mutt of the Year? It's not easy typing with paws, you know! Congratulations Paul. Can't think of a more deserving and selfless winner, and I've never even sniffed your leg! Talking of smelling things, haven't caught a whiff of Professor Hester since March. Very odd.

**Apparently I can't link to a flickr image, so I have no idea how to upload the photo. Sorry. I ran my SDC2300 over the beach here in Barcelona a couple of months back. Never used it on the beach before, but since it's portable and waterproof I thought I'd give it a blast. What you may or may not be able to see, is all the crap I found in three hours. I also found 2 euros worth of coins. Mostly 2 and 5 cent coins in various states of decay. I ran the 2300 over the beach from right in the mouth of the water, back up to the showers. Most of the nasty looking hooks and big lumps of metal were found about 10 metres from the water. I expect that might be the high water line. I was detecting at low tide. The tide was quite strong so it was hard to detect and dig out quickly before the water washed back over me again. I'd agree that the 2300 is quite bouyant, but on the other hand for detecting on the sand its a bonus, because it's not so heavy. The detector picks up everything. Anything bigger than a tiny shard of metal makes it wail off the scale. That was the easiest way to find the coins. The signal is so strong you just know its something dense. However it gets complicated on tiny specks of metal. The SDC is so sensitive that it sounds off even on the smallest scraps and these often fall through the sand scoop and then take an age to locate. I guess it's just practice. It was a fun day out. I just dug everything to see what was there and paid for a beer in the process. So all in all I came out even. That said, I'm glad I cleared some of those big hooks out. Those could have been really nasty if a child was running or digging in the sand. The beaches here are regularly "cleaned" by raking vehicles and the people from the council, but you can see what gets missed.

Ah, I see what happened! I got the KHz confused with the MHz! Now I understand. Thanks!

Great review Steve. Very thorough. Ok, now I have a stupid question. Why is this called a VLF detector if it's running at a higher frequency? Shouldn't it be called a VHF detector?

I'm 3' 4". Is that small enough?

I was actually thinking the opposite. That the find was advertised precisely to drive people to the area. The two people featured in the article obviously having the most to gain. I'm just not sure that nugget was found there...

Not sure why, but having been to Wanlockhead and Leadhills several times, and knowing people who have prospected that area for years and cleaned the rivers back to bedrock, I find the original article a bit fishy...

This is very important. Whatever technology you are upgrading (computer, metal detector, smartphone, etc) ALWAYS make sure you have a backup of the data/original system before you install the new one.

That's really cool Chris. One thing I don't understand - I thought the GPZ was effectively a GPX5000/SDC2300 mutant, and then some. Does the GPZ not detect small gold as well as the SDC?

It's a beautiful guitar. The things you wait longest for are always the ones you cherish most. Bit like those elusive nuggets...

Yes, but goes it go 40% deeper than a Fender Telecaster?

Mine's a real one, just checked. It also has the serial number printed on the sticker on the battery cover. Not sure if the fake ones have that.

The real one is the top one. The decal is typographically correct, not some half assed photoshop job. Now I have to go and check mine, becuase I've always had doubts about the odd "sweet spot" it has about half an inch up from the tip on the opposite side to the decal. Unless the target lies against that spot, it won't always detect it.

You also mentioned searching over lode mines. Be very careful entering old mines, especially if you are alone. Apart from structural weaknesses which could leave you trapped and unable to get out, you could encounter dangerous gases, deep pools of water and rattlesnakes. As some of the others have already mentioned, the people who really know what they are doing can make finding gold look easy. It isn't. It's bloody hard work. Not made any easier by the fact that so many other experienced people over hundreds of years have already searched and cleared many of the places where the rest of us are going to start looking. But there is gold still out there. If there wasn't, this forum and others like it wouldn't exist. You just have to have realistic expectations about what you are likely to find and how much. The best advice i can give you is to start in a place where people are actually finding gold now. Talk to the people, join a club and learn from their knowledge. Because once you know how to find gold where you know it exists, you will find it easier to locate in places where you are winging it. Good luck.

If you could travel back in time to the moment that nugget was deposited, it would probably make more sense. You can look at a gold bearing river today and more or less predict where the gold is likely to fall, depending on the flow of the water, the obstacles in the river, the depth of the course etc. But come back to the same spot in the river 500 years from now and you'll be lucky if the river is even there. Landscapes change significantly over time. What originally caused that gold to drop in the place that you find it now, will have disappeared long ago. So all you see today are the results of the gold being deposited, and not the original cause.

I think I read that the two guys claiming to have found a train (they never said it was the train) reported the find to the authorities via their lawyers because they believe there are mines in the tunnel/siding where the train is stationed. This would make sense as it explains why they didn't just go in and search it themselves without telling anyone. If there is any gold there it will be very difficult to redistribute because the world and his wife will make a claim. And many of the people who are entitled will either be dead, or have no means of proving what was stolen. Probably the best thing would be to donate it to Amnesty International or Unicef. But that's never going to happen.