jasong

I bought a 4500 right when they came out. The GPZ still has more number and weight for me though, but its probably close. The 6000 is catching up in number for me, but will never catch weight.

Just a heads up, now I'm hearing some refiners are halting gold buying entirely just like they did for silver. I'll have to call mine on Monday to see if they have changed the 7 to 10 day hold to a total halt too, hopefully not.

What? Building a GPZ or 6000 level detector from scratch is many orders of magnitude more difficult than just capturing and reprocessing their raw data via a simple inductive coupling method (if it worked). Who knows if it works until tried, but I think you are underestimating the convenience of having a premium grade detector already manufactured and tested in your hands vs how much time, effort, and money it'd cost to build an entire new detector on par with the existing flagships. I'm not sure if the 6000 coil chip encrypts the data it sends to the control unit or just serves as a validator/authenticator to prevent unauthorized aftermarket, but the GPZ chip is in the connector so data could be sniffed before that.

I use Elemetal as my refiner. They pay 98% spot on gold, same day. And they have offices around the West so I can take in person. Denver, Phoenix, etc. You need a commercial account though, and they generally dont want really small metal lots but at these prices probably an ounce of gold is ok. That said, refiners almost all are declining silver right now. And when they weren't the fees were raised to 15% spot at most places. Elemetal just instituted a 7 to 10 day hold on gold payments now, due to price instability. Guessing other refiners are doing so too soon.

No idea but worth a look, easy enough to do with a scope. IIRC some coils do have something like a choke or ferrite in them.

Have you tried inductively coupling to the coil cable to see what sort of signals bleeds through the cable shielding? Basically just put a solenoid around the cable at the box end and see if you get any signal bleedthrough. Or even just a small coil taped onto the control box. I know my phone and other electronics next to the cable or box can affect the detector so the shielding isn't perfect. The connector may lack shielding too on some models and be a coupling point. Might be a way to capture raw signal data without inserting your device physically between the coil and the control box. Unsure if the detector would complain or not though, would have to try. And then you can process raw signal data instead of audio. The audio processing really doesn't do more than a very experienced detectorist does already. The raw signal data would give more.

10,000 feet is within doability depending on the local pressure and temperature gradients. We drilled 26,000ft with the big ole rig Unit 101 back in 2007 or something when I was a directional driller. Depends on geology. Close to a caldera 10k might be in lava, in a big old deep ancient basin it might have stable oil. We fracked the 26k foot well no problem though, so you can overcome pressure with fluids pumped in from surface, gravity helps too. Fracking is viable with oil at $60/barrel. Not sure what the costs for doing something with gold would be - to me the primary probablem would be the host rock. If you gotta drill 10,000ft through gneiss or granite, that's a world of hurt in terms of bit costs, wear and tear on pipe/tools, and sloooooow drilling so tons of rig costs. And can you even frack that stuff? I dunno. If it doesn't have natural fractures already then I don't see in situ working if no fracking, and that's the main challenge to IMO.

Maybe he wrote this article I read? ICMJ used to have some really good writers going over cool stuff. One guy wrote on platinum group refining and I wrote to him with some questions on the process and it turned out he was a chemistry professor at University of Texas, and I was like man you could write a book on this and sell it probably. Most the exploration stage stuff still is proving heap leach viability though. I sold one project in Gold Basin to Canex about 6 years ago, and that was the way they were going. They are trying to take over Gold Basin Resources (Cyclopic low angle fault stuff), and just brought in the guy involved with getting the Moss Mine (down by Bullhead City) producing. My guess would be open pit and heap leach still. Might be an interesting project to watch, I'm not involved anymore but it could turn into a good sized Arizona producing mine, dunno.

I mentioned this somewhere, can't remember if this forum. But scanning these old ICMJ's in, I found a mention of a sorta forgotten gold leach fluid in one from the 70's - thiourea. After AI got better I found more history on it, and then worked through some chemistry. This one has some potential for in situ leaching IMO. Thiosulfate too. I bought some to experiment with as a more environmentally sound leach (still toxic to some degrees though), but got lazy and it's sat for a year.

I just did a search and all I see are two development stage mines with no production yet - Florence and Van Dyke. I don't see any record of an operating copper ISR mine in the US. Copper leach is way less toxic than gold leach though. Sulfuric acid vs cyanide. Acids will neutralize if they contact limestone or similar, maybe leave sulfur (from what I saw, they are using this in sedimentary formation in Arizona). Cyanide will still be there as a deadly poison. Water table communication would be devastating with a gold leach, and potentially permanent. Again - I really think you are confusing heap leaching with in situ leaching if you are talking about the preferred method of recovery for many mines. I didn't say this but I looked anyways. There are quite a few pilot programs that failed due to this when I did a search on Gemini and ChatGPT. Searching on Google confirms it. Give it a look. That's why I pointed out that the Chinese deposit might potentially be amenable to such a thing, but would be toxic. And that in lesser regulated areas, greed and money can be powerful motivators. I wouldn't be surprised if gold keeps going higher that this sort of thing isn't on the table for some company there, dunno.

That's a new one on me. Are you sure you aren't confusing heap leaching with in-situ leaching? Most US large gold mines heap leach. Uranium is the only one that is in situ leached commonly to my knowledge. That's because uranium deposits tend to be placers in loose formation that naturally circulates water, and the fluids are not as toxic. There were some pilot copper ISR projects being permitted, not sure if they made it to production yet though but I haven't looked for a few years.

If the rock is fractured or can be fracked there may be a potential for some kind of in situ leaching at 10k feet deep. We do this fluid based in situ mining with uranium in Wyoming already. Though, at much less depth and the fluids used for gold leaching are far, far more toxic than what is used for uranium, so not sure that is really feasible or not. But money and greed can be powerful motivators to some I guess.

What I'd have paid for is a cellphone case-style snap on TPU or rubberized control box protector, which would be lighter than these ill fitting, clunky fabric cover kits and allow for changing coils much easier on the GPZ. Mine is so scratched up already that I don't really need one anymore though. But if the next detector suffers from similar lack of protection, that'd be the thing to make and sell IMO. Wouldn't void a warranty either. It could be 3d printed too. 3d printing anything not made of TPU intended for hot climates and rugged use is a recipe for failure due to layer bonding and deformation, but TPU is the one material without either of those issues.

I didn't get a PM, but my box always seems to be filling up and not getting messages, no matter how often I delete stuff. I have a place to use the resisitivty but it's kinda hard to get into with equipment, even on ATV you gotta go down some gnarly stuff. Have a friend with an easier access claim who might want to see if it can show some buried structral bedrock traps or potentially discern stuff like buried larger vein structures from the country rock, I'll ask him. Merry Christmas/New Years!

Hey Jim let me know if you need a bucket of unprocessed gold bearing dirt next summer to test with with a good mix of gravel, dirt, and fines to tiny pickers, and some garnets and probably scheelite too, if you want to give it a challenge to see if it can capture gem density and heavy fractions slightly more dense than hematite. Could get one with some monazite too if you want to try it at rare earth recovery. If I'm out and about I'll keep one at my RV if you want it. I've tried making a lightweight portable dry sampler with no luck. It'd be awesome to be able to see gold in samples without packing a bunch of bags back to camp to pan, if that's what this device would do. Also great, if you want another project haha, would be a recovery device that just captures black sands really quickly and effectively (not just the magnetics). Something to capture everything with an SG between 4-6, or selectable SG recovery. It's almost easier to mine and refine black sands for various things in some places than it is for the native gold! Right now a jig seems best, but looking for something faster with more throughput, even if it loses the fine gold entirely, especially if it can work dry.