Reno Chris

While real diamonds were found in California, I dont think what this lady found is one. The picture in the article is decent and I am about 90% sure this is a small quartz crystal. I've seen a lot of raw diamonds, and this just does not look like one, though it does look like quartz.

I got out yesterday with the Gold Monster and got a nice specimen with a few dwt of gold, but my GM (with the large coil) began falsing on everything that touched it - a blade of grass, a rock, a twig - anything. I had to hold the coil far enough above the ground that it touched nothing. It was not like that at the beginning of the day. Turning the gain down did not seem to help much. I will fiddle with it some more today and see what happens.

Getting an ounce of gold is bad enough, imagine trying to collect an ounce of neutrinos........

Thanks, John - I hope to do more videos in the future.

Jerry Keene of Keene Engineering has passed away. The ICMJ got a note from the family: Dear Friends, Family and Valued Customers. It is with deep regret and sorrow, that we inform you that Jerry Keene has passed away due to congestive heart failure. On Friday morning, July 14th. He was preparing for work as usual when he experience a shortness of breath and all of a sudden, had a heart attack. His wife, and daughter tried to revive him but, he was already peacefully gone. He did not suffer and he did not have pain. Jerry was at home doing his normal routine and passed the best way possible. Jerry Keene was a great man, husband and father. He enriched every person he touched and was very well respected by all. Jerry worked with his two sons Mark and Patrick every day and adored being part of their lives. Being with them each day at the company was one of his greatest joys in life. Jerry Keene was a wonderful man and touched everybody with his kindness. His last days, he was feeling great and was excited about building a new home to make his life easier for him and his wife, Che’ and daughter, Mell, who took great care of him. It goes without saying that he will be deeply missed by his entire family, vast number of beloved friends, as will the thousands he had touched throughout his life. He is and will always be, “The great innovator of the Modern Day Gold Rush”. We will all miss you very much. The Keene Family

It does sound off on various hot rocks, volcanic hot rocks and larger bits of magnetite (which are the worst of the hot rocks at the place you mentioned). Like a normal VLF, you deal with that by turning down the gain, or in a worst case, switching to discriminate mode. It is a excellent VLF, well designed and easy to operate, but it is still subject to the advantages and disadvantages of the VLF technology.

Glad you liked it - I'm going to do more on metal detectors but I am also planning to do a set on treating hard rock ore all the way from rock to gold button.

Well, the final, part three of my videos on the Gold Monster 1000 are complete and up loaded. In this one I am giving hints and tips on how to get the best performance out of the GM1000. I focus on the types of places that the GM1000 will perform best and some suggestions to prospectors on how to increase your chances to find gold. You can see its a funny opening still picture - I'm going to have to change that frame. It makes me look like I'm doing some kind of Zieg Heil maneuver. Actually, I am explaining how if you dont overlap swings, you may miss gold - I have no idea why this was selected by Youtube (done automatically), but I am sure you can change it. Doing these videos has been an educational experience and I will be doing more in the coming weeks.

I'm 90% done with part 3, and about 50% done with part 2 (in the field) - but I still want to do a bit more filming on Part 2. Part of the delay is that I have never done any of this stuff before - I have video editing software I bought a couple years ago, but I am figuring it all out as I go. Part one took 3 times longer than it should have only because I am learning as I go. So the teaser delay is accidental and in truth I am a marketing moron. Steve is the guy who knows marketing inside and out. To film the portion of part 2 - the "in the field" - the segment which is already completed, I went to a place with real bad ground - really ground unsuitable for a VLF in my opinion, and banged out a 3/4 gram nugget with the GM1000. Not to say that the GM1000 is immune to bad ground as it suffers the same as other VLFs, but with the good disc and auto ground balance, I was able to make it work. I have fiddled with VLFs before a this spot, but have never been able to get any gold. Although I've gotten many ounces here with PI detectors and some with the GPZ, this was the first gold with a VLF at this spot. I'll be releasing Part 2 and Part 3 at the same time.

Its not the area behind my house, but I consider most of Northern Nevada to be in "my backyard". I got gold from not too far away from that spot in "my backyard".

Greetings fellow prospectors! For a more than a year I have thought about doing up some Youtube videos on prospecting and I have finally gotten off my backside and done it! This is the first video of a 3 part set where I will be taking a look at Minelab's new Gold Monster 1000 nugget oriented metal detector. This part one video is an introductory discussion about its various features and settings. In the next couple weeks I will put up part 2 which will be on testing the GM1000 out in the field and then part 3 will cover some practical suggestions for prospectors on getting the most out of your Gold Monster 1000 and a discussion of some of the best kinds of places to use the GM1000. I will publish those other parts soon, but for now, here is the part 1 video. The quality here may not be perfect, but there is a lot of good information and content in this video. Additionally, now that I have the ball rolling you can expect other videos on different prospecting topics coming later once I have completed these 3. - Chris

I dont understand that. We know millions worth of detectors are being sold every year in third world countries across the globe. When I was in Africa, I saw lots of Fisher First Texas brand detectors, plenty of Minelab brand, a few Whites, but I dont remember a single Garrett detector. It's a funny thing to see for a company that was at one time a prospecting leader, but since they replaced the ancient Groundhog with a good, modern VLF prospecting detector, I guess they figure their product line is good to go for another 25 years.

It would be a lot more useful video if the sound track and video were better matched - made me wonder if it was filmed in French or something - even with swinging the coil over the target, the sound you hear and what he is doing seem to have little or no relation. Still there is no question that a high frequency coil will see small targets better - including hotrocks and mineralized ground.

It might work if most gold was on the surface exposed to the sunlight, but even a quarter inch of dirt would hide them. Unfortunately, most gold is buried at least a little. If you put a quarter inch thick wood panel in front of the people in the picture above, the people would disappear, and you'd see only the wood panel.

The short answer is no, there is no such technology to directly detect gold from 30 meters and greater distance, and those who claim they can build a long range locator to do this are lying. That said, there are geophysical devices to detect soil conductivity and resistance, the magnetic characteristics of rock as well as other geologic characteristics that are used by geologists for exploration of mineral deposits on a large scale - many of these are done by flying over the deposit in an airplane, helicopter or by a drone. So if your goal is finding buried treasure or placer gold deposits, then no, LRLs dont work, if your goal is geophysical exploration for large mineral deposits, then some of this equipment to indirectly detect the characteristics of rocks does exist, but this is probably not a good place to get more detailed information on them.

I've used the GB pro quite a bit and its a good machine, but you do give up quite a bit of sensitivity on the tiniest gold to the GB2.

Those look like they came from the same general area we talked about in Vegas (not saying where that is), but that's some nice looking gold.

I've seen winters when you cant get back in there until after the fourth of July, so I expect this winter to be worse.

The 24 bit processor is mentioned in one of the mine lab videos. It is also mentioned by Kevin Hoagland in the video of last week's GPAA gold show broadcast, so zero new info in the ad which was not already known. However it's not too much longer and the folks who are not talking will be freed to speak.

Or is it that the nut did not have threads put on it? Either way you should return it.

So while lots of folks were able to make the Las Vegas GPAA gold show that concluded Sunday afternoon, many could not make it. This year the GPAA has experimented with a couple things including a live broadcast of interviews with various dealers and other folks. Some of it is pretty good, while other parts are so-so, but its easy enough to fast forward through parts you dont care about. There are a lot of interesting people at these shows and they got some very interesting and entertaining interviews. There are interviews with Bill Southern, the Pomrenke boys from Bearing Sea Gold, Shannon Poe from AMRA, Debbie Smikoski from Minelab (who talks about the GM 1000 with Kevin), Dave Variboff from Goldbay (who sells millions worth of gold specimens) and lots of other folks in the mining and prospecting business. On the second day, because they were running out of good people to interview, they even interviewed me. There is a lot of good information here and it is all saved, but the way facebook archives this stuff, its not that easy to find. So here is how you can find it if you want to look in - Go to: https://www.facebook.com/pg/GoldProspectors/videos/?ref=page_internal The videos are not fully labeled, but if you hover over them with your cursor and look at the length, the one that is 1:25:17 long is the one with me in it, I appear at the 45 minute mark, Debbie Smikoski from Minelab follows me at the 1:07:39 mark. A lot of the time before me on the video is Shannon Poe from American Mining Rights Assn. (AMRA). Other folks like Bill southern, Dave Variboff and others are all on the other videos from this weekend. Its worth checking out - its not all 5 star entertainment and information, but there is some really good stuff there.

No worries - messages get mangled all the time. I once logged onto a forum a few years back (not this one) and saw a post lamenting the passing of Chris Ralph who used to write for the ICMJ Mining Journal. I reached over and pinched my arm and all seemed normal. I asked my wife - Honey, can you see me siting here? She said yes, so I concluded I must not be dead yet. I responded on the forum that the rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated. It turned out another gent who had written some articles for us but had been in poor health for some time had indeed passed (and I'd heard of it), but the grim reaper hasn't got me yet.

Unless this is something that just happened in the last couple weeks, I think you might be mistaken. He was still with them a few weeks ago when I last saw him and I've heard nothing since. If you've heard something in the last week or two, let us know.

Although the US has a few large states, as a whole, most of the states of the US are much smaller than the states of Australia. The US states include a number with very unfavorable geology - just as parts of Australia are unfavorable for gold. If one updated the chart that Steve posted to include the last 50 years, Nevada would be the leading producer - the Carlin district alone has produced roughly 100 million ounces - an amount about equal to the entire state of California up to 1965. Unfortunately, the great majority of Nevada production is microscopic in size. It processes great with cyanide, but you can't even pan out visible dust that can be seen with the eye, let alone nuggets large enough to detect. Some places in Nevada do produce coarse gold and nuggets, its just the majority is this microscopic stuff - and that is why the old timers missed it for the most part.

Yep, but so many have little batteries on their motor scooters - they can clip the terminal clips to those to charge - I also saw guy charging phones with a solar cell panel.