jasong

Nice, any word on coil weights around the net yet?

I'm in the doubting camp regarding halos. The well known weakness of PI detectors is detecting exactly what people describe the "halo effect" as being - detecting finely disseminated particles. And chemical leaching into soils is about as finely dissemenated as it gets, it's on the molecular particle size level. That reason alone makes me doubt it exists. But there are other reasons too. The only copper mineral I've reliably found to give a "real" target response at any kind of depth beyond say 2 or 3 inches so far has been chalcocite, and only when in massive form, not diffuse. The "halo effect" is often brought up in terms of edge of detection (or beyond) targets - that is to say - targets which wouldn't normally be thought to be detectable at the depth they were found. Yet, these diffuse sorts of oxides and sulfides when on ore chunks are almost always (in my experience) limited to close to surface effects on a detector and drop to zero very quickly at any kind of depth. And they are much more concentrated on the ore than they would be in a soil halo. So I'm confused how exactly they are presenting as target enhancers all the way down to the edge of detection in much more diffuse forms. Alkali and other salts are diffuse, and can definitely sound like conductive targets. But they are generally massively distributed and go from the surface down to depth, and when damp are basically one giant conductor. Whereas the halo around a nugget is very localized, and must contain much, much less conductive material than the nugget itself in most normal cases. I don't see any measurable or repeatable evidence for the halo effect IMO, but I do see a clear, measurable, repeatable effect that target geometry and orientation has on edge of detection targets. And even on targets at any depth. I think this is the most logical explanation personally since we all agree it exists and can be measured. But I'm always open to learning something new, I'd love to see someone show some kind of evidence that the halo effect exists. Leaching can be sped up in situ, so it's testable. Actually come to think of it, it's testable even without speeding up leaching. copper and silver oxides and sulfides must be present in fairly large quantities to be detectable on a metal detector. These quantities would show up as massive Ag/Cu soil abnormalities on an assay. So a person could pretty easily send some soil samples in from target with the "halo" effect, and some without, and compare.

There used to be a guy named Wet/Dry Washer that posted to forums about 10 years back who built a similar type device. I was skeptical of it, but invited him onto one of my claims and he used it with a fair degree of success on the picker size gold and up, but it did get some smaller stuff too. His was much simpler, from my recall it was just basically a plastic tub from Walmart, a bit of steel angle, and some various Harbor Freight parts like roller bearings, etc. It was a lot lighter and easier to set up than a drywasher, he was in his 70's and hiked it around.

The first gold specific detector I bought was to detect bedrock cracks in my dredge holes after seeing the "Golden Optimist" (Leonard) post about it on a river I was also working at the time. I never had any luck with detecting gold nuggets in rivers myself though. A blaster nozzle + dredge nozzle always worked much quicker. There is nothing quite like the solitude underwater combined with the ASMR-like clinking and clanging sounds of gravel going up a dredge nozzle, watching layers get removed and occasionally seeing a flake or nugget exposed that you can just pluck up with your fingers, cleaning down to bedrock. It'd be the most relaxing thing I could imagine if it wasn't simultaneously the hardest work I've ever done.

I believe both Sioux and Cheyenne frequented this area in the 1850's, along with a few other tribes too like Arapaho, Shoshone, probably Utes too. I wonder if it's possible to tell from the shape which tribe created it, or if they were so widely traded between tribes that it's hard to say? This got me curious and there does seem to have been a few battles nearby in the mid 1800's, though they were not at this exact spot. Could have been some flanking, or retreats outside the known battlefield maybe? I just assumed it was a hunting stray but I bet you are right and it would have been collected back up on a hunting trip, so maybe it was from battle? There is also historic record of early prospectors getting chased out, and killed in some areas here, and not coming back until the 1870's/1880's after the forts were more established. It could have been something like that too maybe. There is a well known lost battle site in Wyoming, as well as an unknown burial site of cavalry soldiers from that battle that archaeologists have never been able to locate, it's part of early Wyoming pioneer history, I'd love to be able to help search for it but unfortunately I can't get permission from the ranch to cross over their land to get to where I think it must have been.

I don't usually find any relics worth posting since I'm usually just after nuggets, but this was a fun find for me. I was doing some scatter shot style prospecting with the 6000 around the base of a mountain searching for new gold zones and got a screamer in an area with very few targets of any kind at all so I dug a target I'd normally ignore, just to see what was there. Turned out to be this guy. Been arrowhead hunting since I was a kid and never found an iron point before.

Thanks again. In my head something like a really simplified, watered down GPR was what I was thinking about in a way. Simplified insomuch as no imaging would be generated, instead it'd just be an indicator that "something" was there, much like a PI, but breaking out of the "coil on a stick" paradigm we have. And dig everything. Getting into arrays of antennas, much like radio telescopes lets one perform many magnitudes more levels of noise cancelation than with signal processing alone, such that extremely tiny signals might theoretically be detected. Scaling sounds like a problem for recreational users, but for more serious exploration I wonder if there are potential applications. Anyways, just something I've wanted to ask for years. I was wondering if it might be scaled smaller and be used to get rid of the detector weight problem all together, but sounds like not. Thanks again for the input!

Thanks, I was hoping you'd respond, informative answer as always! I have one more question that is probably stupid: when eddy currents are induced in the target, during this period of change, there must also be radiated EM occurring during the transitory (rising/falling) periods in addition to the mag field that detectors couple with. Is this portion of energy converted to radiated EM not useful to detect? Or maybe this part is too small and is attenuated entirely by the ground first and not possible to detect at surface? Reason I'm wondering is because in air, radiated EM decays much slower than magnetic fields. They also have an E field component in addition to B field, so more options are opened up for detection maybe. And for instance, with interformetry and other noise reduction techniques we can detect EM radiation from across the universe with some high degree of accuracy (for instance, with radio telescope arrays). So as long as some portion of the radiated EM escapes from the ground, now metal detectors are not restricted to simply a coil waved as close to the surface of the ground as possible and certain other design ideas could be implemented instead which don't make a person's arm fall off. I hesitate to ask this for potentially obvious reasons that get into bearing similarities to other..."devices". But still, I'm curious.

The raw inertia of the coil is a bigger problem for me than weight of the detector. A bungee, hipstick, etc do nothing for that. It's the back and forth motion, stop start stop start that kills my elbow. The GPZ gave me permanent tennis elbow, I have to get steroid injections this year to try to fix it. RSI is real and no laughing matter for sure! I hope the 7000 is the last of the heavy detectors.

I dont know enough about detector electronics design to know what exactly is required for design specs. But from a pure physics perspective there is another way to achieve a lighter coil and higher db/dt, and that is to use less windings (larger gauge) and a higher voltage, low internal resistance power source that is capable of supplying large currents. The larger the current the larger the B, and the less windings the faster B can change (dB), meaning dB/dt increases. Low inductance coils should be lighter since less windings, even with larger gauge wire, if one keeps the B field the same as before though. Plus they decay quicker. When I was researching coilguns, the way to do this was to pulse discharge high voltage capacitors through a coil with relatively few windings. One coil I wound only had 5 windings, but many thousands of amps of current. I'm sure there is some reason they don't do this on a smaller and safer scale with pulse detectors. But I'd be curious why since it seems like you could get lighter coil, higher sensitivity, and faster rise and decay times versus the low current, high inductance coils we use. Voltages/currents too high to be considered safe? Or some detector specific engineering reasons? FCC regs on radiation from the coil? Oversaturstion of the soil? I'm curious if a detector engineer could explain, as there has to be a good reason.

The green part is ok, but the red part that flowers grow out of in spring is way tasty. It actually tastes a bit like pear to me. But like with blood red orange Sanpelligrino soda and apple flavors too. Hard to pin down, but slightly familiar and good. The small ones in the Rockies are way more flavorful than the big ones in Arizona, I think. As you guessed, they leave tiny almost invisible microspines in your tongue (and fingers) though if you don't remove the skin entirely.

Ok. I've said my piece, you've said yours. We disagree on that topic, and that's ok but I am not interested in going back and forth about it on forums. I also quickly edited one part you quoted me on above right after I posted, since upon consideration I wanted to be as accurate as possible and I know that both of us support both large and small scale mining in different ways and my observation could be misconstrued in terms of absolutes. But I wasn't putting words in your mouth anymore than you've done to me here in a few different instances. So I'm good with stopping this whole particular line of discussion here before it gets personal. I respect your body of mining law knowledge and work with mylandmatters, I just happen to disagree with some of your opinions and interpretations, as you do mine, and there is nothing wrong with that. Anyways back to the original topic - I agree awareness of these shady claim sellers is good. I'm all for increasing it. But the problem is awareness only goes so far as people read or listen, and my observation is that most of these people getting taken in by these claim sales are not people that read forums. They usually aren't even people that read ICMJ or the GPAA mag. I've met more than I can even remember myself in the field. How do you reach them then? Raising awareness is good, but it is ineffective if it doesn't reach the people it's intended to reach. The BLM could send out notices or require them to be distributed with any new claims sales (like the lead based paint disclosures required for houses), Discovery channel could post on their gold shows, that might reach more of the intended audience. But then you end up with the same sort of boilerplate warnings and notices that everyone ignores on their pizza boxes, coffee cups, and shampoo bottles eventually and we're back to square 1. Sometimes you can't knock a brick wall down by banging your head against it for 50 years. Often real change involves a change of ideas and methods. The question. as always, is just how much it really means to people, and just how much they are willing to sacrifice (and potentially lose) to try to change things.

We can agree to disagree, as we always have there Clay. First: CFR's absolutely can be presented in, and taken in consideration in a federal court room. Second, the same discovery requirement is found in both US code (Title 30, sec 23) as well as the General Mining Act of 1872. They all require a discovery to be made, usually prior to location. It's not just the BLM that can invalidate a claim on this basis, claim validity can be challenged in court as well by a citizen. As you may or may not know, I am not just blowing hot air, I have personally been in federal court and pursued litigation involving topics (among others) surrounding this very issue which I'd like to be able to share since much of the precedent is very old and I have very modern experience. But I am bound by confidentiality regarding the mutually agreed upon and private outcome and while the tangential public matters can be discussed, it's the advice of my lawyer not to. So my ability to participate in this discussion with the level of detail that I'd like is simply not possible and so I'm at a disadvantage here. We have two different interpretations of mining law. It's likely that neither of us is absolutely or specifically right in any instance. Law tries to be absolute, but it isn't. Language by nature is interpretational and vague. Times also change. This is why even Supreme Court justices disagree and why we have 9 of them. It's one reason why we have courts in general to begin with - to present and consider different interpretations of the law. You seem to enjoy telling me I am wrong over the last decade or more, but I assure you, your interpration of the law is not as absolute as you tend to represent it as being. Anyways, my point was simply that a person can read, understand, and then potentially use the law to protect themselves in cases like these. I am always prepared to defend my rights and property, even if it means using all my resources to fight for what I believe in. I've done it, and I hope people understand there may be recourse available to them too, but it's up to them to educate themselves and determine if that is true first.

Well, no claim is valid until a discovery has been made on it (43 CFR 3832.11 part b) - and there is clear precedent showing that a discovery must be of economic (ie commercial scale) significance. There is a large body of precedent from federal courts detailing exactly what it must consist of (and almost no recreational/club claims I've seen would qualify), but I'm not going to get into the weeds on it. Still, one might find it interesting to ask the seller where exactly his discovery was, and what it consisted of, just out of curiosity. One might also read the entire body of current mining code (it's not that bad, I've done it) and maybe look into laws surrounding contracts too, and in there they might conceivably find a number of other items that could be helpful in a range of hypothetical actions, like civil litigation. This is not legal advice though, I'm just saying these things are potential things that might occur to a scam victim in such a situation. That said - and I'm not trying to be unfeeling here, there is no sugarcoated way to say this though - I highly doubt 2 guys with a Deus 1, who have no clue what a mining claim is, are unfamiliar with mining law, and apparantly don't even know how to mine or prospect would be found by the BLM to be holding and using a mining claim in a commercially economic manner nor could they prove to the BLM that the claim possessed commercially economic levels of resources, in which case their mining claim should be devalidated anyways. Mining claims are not intended for recreation, vacations, or recreational clubs and while I feel bad for the scam victims and despise the scammers, people need to stop dropping $12k on things they've done zero research on because they feed the fire, and that fire is making actual prospecting as it is intended by law more difficult every year.

Nice! Please post back here as soon as you hear about sizes and price, definitely interested to try one out. Also, is there an availability date yet?

Counterpoint: I agree with the idea that a good detectorist will find gold with anything and it's field performance that really matters in the end since tests can't replicate field conditions. But I find tests extremely useful and worth scrutinizing. And so do, I think, lots of newer guys who started in the same position as I did. That is to say: knowing zero other prospectors and having no good location knowledge to go off other than the stuff online that every other person has already seen. Why are tests useful? They build confidence in your machine and from confidence grows patience. The two keys IMO to successful gold detecting. Detecting is a game of millimeters already. That gets more true every year. And nowhere is that more true than when you are trying to learn and stuck in the old beatup goldfields because you haven't developed the experience to know what to look for outside them yet. It's a catch-22. Can't get the experience until you find nuggets, but to find nuggets you need to know where to look for them and you can't do that until you find them. So, people have to start where they were proven to be found, in the old beatup goldfields. And to do that you have to punch 1mm deeper than the last 500 guys that detected there. Detecting nuggets is about patience and confidence, and the only way to build that is to find gold and believe you'll find more. I think today few will disagree that finding gold was just much easier in the past. Building experience and confidence was also much easier. Hell, that's even true since the days I started. Gold was unquestionably easier to find in AZ and NV in 2009 when I really started to take it seriously. It was easier still in 1999. And easier still in 1989. Today, it's harder than ever. The one thing that helped me be able to have the patience to keep learning and trying when I spent months finding nothing at all was absolute confidence that what I was running was the best equipment I could. How? Testing and more testing. I eventually decided I wouldn't even use a new coil until I dug myself a test bed to understand the strengths and weaknesses of it, to have an idea what conditions it would excel or suffer in. From that I figured out the places I might use such equipment to accentuate advantages that other people did not have. Then it all clicked and the nuggets started coming. That happened because I had built confidence in my equipment and my ability to run it, and I knew if I got over gold, I'd hear it. I didn't start finding any kind of decent gold until the moment I became 100% positive that not only was I running the best equipment, but I was also understanding the language my equipment was speaking to me. Gaining that experience in success gave me the patience to expand outwards and start really prospecting for new spots despite repeated skunks. It was absolutely clutch and key. I'd have stopped detecting long ago without it. For those who start with someone who is able to put them right on the gold, into historic or even currently active patches - someone else is helping to build your confidence from the start. IE - you already have confidence there is gold there and the patience comes naturally. Tests are probably close to irrelevant. But for those who start with no such friends, you either have to be real lucky or find some other way to build confidence and patience, and the easiest way is to use the best tool for the job and test it enough in controlled conditions that you are confident you'll hear gold with it anywhere you go, if it's there in the ground. Just my view as a guy who started alone, and really never once had a "pointy finger" when I was learning other than "LSD is that way, Rye Patch is that way" sort of things.

This is a small thing, but one I totally agree with nowadays. Especially if the electronics are sensitive enough to require shutting my phone down like the 6k/7k are. I'm always wishing I had a easy to read clock with my phone shut off, and I don't want to wear a watch. On the phone subject and to add to the GPS discussion - it's not that I don't personally find GPS useful, in fact I find them critically important. It's that the functionality needs to be modern enough for me to find useful and that means to me having the capability to import .kmz, .gpx, topos, and aerial imagery (and a screen with good resolution to display them) since my phone must be shut off and that's where I store such things. Having it on the detector would be useful if done right, and prevent me from turning off/on my phone so much and losing detecting time. High resolution (unlike the 7k gps) is necessary to accurately track gridding too IMO. But adding such robust functionality to a detector might increase the cost unacceptably, and cost will be the major factor that sells a detector like this, which is why I just defaulted to "no gps".

I will note however here though on further thought - if it were a new metal detecting company with a new product no one had ever heard of (like X Coils as one familiar example), you can't really do a commercial like you posted above and be taken seriously. In those cases you haven't won over those 5-10,000 people first yet and so you need to get a good group of them using your product first. And the way to do that is with the sorts of videos that hardcore prospectors actually want to see - tests, data, results, and absolute dedication to accuracy and realism. Build that first, then try to appeal to the 1,000,000 later. Minelab gets away with it because hardcore prospectors all follow them already, trust them, and generally already know they want the product and have a lofty expectation of performance built in. So - a word of wisdom to any company who does eventually offer some competition to whatever Minelab's current line of products are: don't make commercials like this one above. Find a team of existing, independent, trustworthy, experienced users to instead develop that trust first. To be clear, that machine wouldn't be a 5000 competitor, but a 6000/7000 competitor, at this specific moment in time.

If you've given making vids for Youtube a serious go before, it's easier to understand why they do this. I don't make vids anymore but I did for a decade and the same theories apply there as to marketing when it comes to appealing to people wether it's to watch your video or buy a product. In effect, they are almost the same thing depending how you view it. Making a video that appeals to the current set of actual experienced prospecting detectorists appeals to maybe 5000-10,000 potential viewers globally. In the gold world - that's just about your max English speaking market, and there is very little growth beyond that. You can't stop there if you want to grow. Also: to do it right and show what detectorists want to see you end up with a visually boring and relatively action-free video that conveys very little about the actual experience or adventure. And in the end half of those 5000 people are going to claim it's BS and a shitty video no matter how much time you waste trying to cater just to them, and nothing was accomplished for either side. Making videos for hardcore prospectors pays very little, and results in a lot of hate. Making commercials for them results in few new sales, and a lot of hate. On the other hand, you can concentrate on the less technical and less realistic aspects and make something more visually appealing, faster paced, and interesting to watch for a general global audience and you'll appeal to many magnitudes more people, like 1,000,000+. Fewer of them complain about anything too. And these people are far, far more likely to not have heard of the product at all when they see the commercial, and thus likely to be new customers. Marketing is all about reaching the maximum number of potential customers. Almost every single one of those 5-10,000 hardcore detectorists already seeks out their own info and a commercial makes no difference to their purchasing decision. However, if you can interest just 1% of that 1,000,000 person larger demographic in a product, you now have doubled your entire potential customer base and are showing them something they've never seen before. They could do it easier, cheaper, and more authentically by simply just airdropping products into some of the larger Youtube channel's hands.

1) No 2) Depends on the UI. Color has advantages of better contrast/separation with more complex UI's. Needs to be visible in direct sunlight though, some cheap color screens suffer there. 3) Yes - this is preferred so GPX coils could be used. 4) Sizes would depend on the performance of the machine and the quality of the coils - as that would determine what I'd use the machine for. If it's about on par with a 5000 then: all monos - 10x6, 14x10, and 17" round. An option to switch one of those in the box for a 12" DD would probably be good for places with hotter ground. If it's compatible with GPX coils then an option to save money and buy just the machine with no coils might be useful unless modern Nokta coils are better than older coils in some way. 5) I don't detect beaches or relics, only gold. So my waterproofing needs would just be maybe 2-3ft on the coil (this isn't even necessary) and water resistance on the box for rain detecting.

1/2 oz is a pretty good score if you are staying in Gold Basin and Lost Basin these days. There are some places you can pull gold out with each new machine, but you kinda have to know where they are because the leads are all long gone and it's now just random chance to stumble on them. Even 10 years ago that was the case. Even the trash is largely gone from the old placer camp areas nowadays, so it's hard to find some of those more subtle ones. Man, there are some unsavory characters out there these days though. It used to be almost empty from Dec-Feb other than on the less windy weekends and occasional outings. Now murders, burglaries, fights, meth, squatters, bleh.

I'll third that opinion. I have been hoping to find more reasons to buy a 3d printer someday, a detector related library of designs here would be cool.

That's a logical thought. But it seems like it would be happening already if so since as Clay mentioned, these are futures prices. I read that Russia converted a huge amount of paper money into gold and other investments prior to the conflict, theory being to insulate their reserves against the inevitable decline of the Ruble and their stock market. A rise in gold prices would mean a rise in their war chest funds, effectively cancelling out the effect of some of the sanctions. Makes me wonder if the powers that be are potentially controlling the price of gold for reasons of that nature. Real tinfoil hat stuff though I guess though... I was considering holding rather than selling my found gold for the first time. But things like that make me wonder.

Not sure how tall you are, but if you repeatedly extend and retract the shaft fully when it's hot out (like 100F with direct sun), that seems to be when mine have failed. The heat softens the hot glue, tape, and shrink tubing just slightly that after enough cycles it eventually gets enough stress to snap that little blue wire. It only takes a little bit of movement to snap it. Luckily in both my cases, the hot glue kept the wire in place so no shorts occured, and I hope yours is the same! I think if I made another adapter I might try to see if I can make the blue wire slightly longer than the other wires so it's the last to experience any tension, if that is possible.

I drilled about 15 5/8" holes before my rotary hammer ran out of batteries. I prefer feathers and wedges over Dexpan because they are quicker though. And I find the tap-tap-tapping of the hammer and cracking of the rock to be relaxing. 🔨 Two of the feathers/wedges are visible in this picture. Next time I'm going to get some bigger pieces out with my concrete saw though, which is the opposite of relaxing to run.