jasong

Best thing to do is test it and see how the settings change the target, ground noise, and EMI. Here's how I do it: Find some typical ground similar to what you normally run in and bury a couple different nuggets down just past the point which the default settings no longer hear your targets. Now spend a few hours tweaking settings, first individually to see how each affects the target response, then in combinations to see how each setting interacts with the other settings and how the combo changes target, ground, and EMI response. Find what you think is the best combination, then again dig up and rebury your nuggets to the point you can just barely hear them and then try to tweak the detector again to see if you can brighten up the signal even more if you feel like really maximizing your performance. It may take a few hours, but trust me, it will save you weeks, or months of wasted time in the end. And you won't be left wondering if you left gold in the ground due to running inefficiently and thinking you need to drive back and redetect again. It instantly builds confidence in your machine too because you know exactly how it's performing on measured and controlled targets instead of always guessing on in-situ targets or waiting for one that just happens to be at the extent of your detection range. People will insist you can't gain useful info from reburied targets, but I absolutely disagree, give it a try yourself and see. Now you have a good combo of settings that work for your particular area, you can use these as a starting point and then adjust as needed throughout the day as the environment changes and you will have your testing experience to rely on now to make those judgement calls rather than guessing. Something like this should be done with every new machine before actually looking for nuggets IMO. It gives a good understanding of how the settings work, what they represent in physical terms. But better yet it helps you develop a "feel" for the detector way quicker, and that's important. Running the GPZ too conservative will render it equal to the GPX in some aspects, or in some cases even less deep, know when this happens and why it does otherwise there is no point in owning a $10k detector instead of a $2.5k one. Testing it will show you where it's better to cut back and where you absolutely never should if the conditions allow it.

The notch filters I was looking at were like $250 (I happened to be looking at them already but for a different purpose coincidentally), at which point I could just buy a cheap spectrophotometer instead. Which is what I did. Should be able to see all the elemental lines in it. Looking ahead to potentially experimenting with building a Raman spectrometer (hence the notch filter) or maybe even LIBS if I can find a cheap portable laser powerful enough to ablate any kind of rock or metal. It's something I've always wanted but never had enough reason to buy, so I figured why not. This is for general use. Concentrating on all sorts of minerals, not just lithium. For lithium prospecting in particular, I see that lithium carbonate is inversely soluable (if that's a term), it drops out in high temperatures. My idea to "pan" for lithium is to mix a soil sample in water just below freezing to saturation, filter, then heat to just below boiling and filter again since it should be mostly the carbonate dropping out of solution at that point. Then test that filtrate. If nothing precipitates out, then move on to the next sample. Not sure how big the sample size would have to be though, it might be infeasable, or require a microscope. The flame test with the notch filter sounds reasonable too, I hadn't thought about using the filter like that. But it sounds like the boom is on for lithium already, I was wondering about stuff that is underappreciated right now. There is enough competition from paper stakers in gold prospecting already. I still think REE's are where I'm going to concentrate. They contribute to the same green economy that is driving lithium, and there are zero claims on them in the areas I'm interested in right now.

What technique do people employ to prospect for or test for lithium in the field? A handheld XRF probably won't work on the low atomic number elements. Flame test probably won't work since I'm guessing there is a lot of sodium evaporites on the lake beds in much higher quantities than lithium. I guess you could just sample every lake bed and send each sample in for lab analysis, but that seems pretty slow and unaffordable, especially hard to do in a "rush". Or are people just paper staking with no discoveries? I'm not able to find a good test sample of lithium carbonate to experiment with, because it is of course a controlled drug.

Side note on spoked/solid - the 19" spoked Evo weighs the same as the unspoked 17x13. Almost enough motivation for me to make a trip west and re detect patches with that 19. Almost. There is remarkably little testing or really any videos on that coil for some reason. I wonder if it's not available in the US?

Just logically speaking, wouldn't you want 10x the information for only slightly more than 2x the cost by going with the coring program? Then you can more wisely place your $20,000 production shafts later. Assuming you can afford the coring program at least, and suspect your deposit will pay far more. Otherwise, you've spent $20,000 to sink one shaft and what if it comes up barren? Then you spend another $20,000 to sink another shaft, and maybe it comes up barren too...and now you have to keep sinking $20,000 shafts and hope to get lucky. I guess it depends if your deposits are lens-like, or continuous veins, how faulted the area is, etc. I really don't know, just thought it was an interesting topic that you don't see much here and I enjoyed reading your report.

Do you use a wireless mouse/keyboard and is there any other USB device in a slot adjacent to the rx/tx unit if so? I just ran into that problem, both my wireless ethernet and my new USB 3.0 stick caused problems with the wireless mouse/keyboard. Solved by moving them to the back of the computer.

Thanks, it's nice when I get a good feedback on vids. I'm glad to see on retrospect now that some time has passed that after all this time my assessment ended up more or less accurate now that many others globally have used both. It takes a lot of time to do these and generally receive more criticism hate than anything else in the end, but Youtube can be like that. At the time, this was the first test on video of the new spiral wound coils, at least here in the states (I did it on day 1 of the US release). I think I deleted 10+ comments that were just insults with no constructive input on that one. One thing I want to mention though is that when testing and standing in place, swing speed on video can look faster than one might think. It's also hard to gauge inconsistencies and slope in the ground from that far away over the course of a swing on video. It's been a while since I did this so my memory faded a bit but I thought I tried to do a fair variety of swing speeds, approaches, and angles to suss out a signal with each target. I'm a fast prospector for sure, but I do slow down in patches. Still my idea of slow may differ greatly from others. I just know what works and gets me the gold. For others it may be different. Depending on the nugget, ground, and EMI sometimes faster works better to get a quick rise, poking and prodding and taking different angles (it happened a couple times in that video from what I remember), sometimes a slow steady approach with a nice mellow rise and fall is what does it. I think I tried to do a good variety, or at least enough that I felt confident the signal was not going to get better with those particular EMI conditions and that ground. It'd be nice to have a second person for tests who has an opposite style than I do though, to see if each other are missing anything. I can only say what I observe personally, but I'm definitely not a proponent of the conservative setting methodology, at least not when I can run in Normal. Every single test I've done, without exception, has shown me that running hotter is better for my style. Of course up to a point, adjusting for changing environments sometimes this isn't the case. I wrote quite a few posts here on this during the first few weeks or month of the GPZ release, at a time when almost everyone here in the US was running in Difficult and low sensitivity, mine seem to have been forgotten for whatever reason though as other people moved into running hotter settings later on, but I spent much of the initial weeks of the GPZ release posting about running hot and I never really changed the entire time I owned a GPZ. To me though, 18 sensitivity is about the maximum. Unless I was in a spot with very little EMI then I usually found that 19 and 20 added more noise than it did depth/nugget sensitivity. It's like the noise/depth scaled linearly until 18, then after that the EMI increases exponentially and the sensitivity still only increases linearly. It's the same with the 4500 to me for 15 gain, I rarely run in it, usually just 13 or 14. So, if I was in a place with even more EMI then I'd probably back the sensitivity off more again and that may be why conservative settings work better in other places, I'm not sure. That said, I can't remember if I explained it in the video or not but I did try a bunch of different settings, including conservative ones, until I found the combination that gave me the best results and they were pretty much the same for each nugget, and that's how I settled on what is in the video. I also tried even hotter, and I think it was slightly better but much noisier.

In the field I find the plumbers propane/oxy torches do pretty well for those who can't afford a furnace. They'll melt buttons way quicker than mapp if you are just using a crucible in open air. Gotta be careful though, too hot and you can vaporize gold! Mapp wouldn't melt the gold to make this 3 ounce slug after like 15 minutes of trying, but I went out and bought an oxy torch and the oxy torch did it in a few minutes. Made a little custom "doubloon" (in my hand next to the other smaller buttons) using the old fashioned cuttlebone casting method too, that's another fun thing you can do when melting gold, cast various things. Like Jen said, if you don't like it just melt and make something new!

Going to a bookstore or prospecting shop is probably a much further drive than a library, though I don't know your particular location. But even most small towns have libraries and you can do interlibrary loans and get almost any book you want to your little local library, including USGS publications and maps. Not to mention almost all libraries today have free internet and computer access if you don't have a computer. For instance, that Maureen Johnson book is in the public domain and accessible for free online. But every prospector and their dogs have read that book, if you want to do real research you need to look at stuff more obscure. I lived alone with my faithful dog in a little tin can hours away from towns too for the last 5 years, all throughout Arizona so probably near you at some point. It's doable, I made it work and anyone can in the Western US too. Sorry to sound crusty, but it just sounds like asking for people to give out free locations without doing the work. Otherwise, it's just a pan, shovel, and boots on the ground if books and computers are a no-go.

...say what?

How much production do you need? For $2k, if you had an axle or old trailer frame you could weld together a 3 tray towable unit, especially if you got the trays used, not sure what they cost these days new. It's possible, I found 3 used trays on AZ craigslists all at the same time about 3 or 4 years ago when I was going to buy and old one that someone else built. But after looking at it I was pretty sure I could build it myself. Here is the unit I was looking at, at least I'm pretty sure it was this one or maybe just a very similar one, the guys in this vid are on this forum occasionally, or at least one of them is.

Nope. I feel I was born to do this, but I don't live near goldfields where I can go out for fun. I love the freedom and adventure, but that alone doesn't buy food unfortunately. I'd do more of what I'm doing now and diversify my search into other minerals closer to me and start mumbling a lot about the "good ole days". The only exception I could see is if they loosened regulations significantly where I could roam around with a backhoe and dozer like they did up until the 80's, and do some actual prospecting for commercial grade deposits. Or if they came out with something a leap ahead of the GPZ even.

Would you say there is any mineral sector you see as underexploited right now as gold was back then? I keep eyeballing REE's because it sure seems like global energy/auto/electronics industry is headed that direction now and for the future too, plus there are no active mines left in the US (unless that one in CA reopened?) and they are mostly in China (or were until recently anyways). Not easy to prospect for though like gold. But some of the associated minerals/elements are easier to prospect for such as thorium. What do you think about that sector? edit: this thread split and this question answered at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/3286-prospecting-for-lithium/

Hmm yeah it seems like the mining companies try to avoid this happening these days by just blanket paper staking any historically commercial level mining areas and then 2 miles around them just to be safe. Ran into it happening a couple times in the middle of nowhere NNV, both times were just crews of kids not long out of college for surveying or geology, who weren't even making real discoveries, just pounding stakes and hanging paper every 20 acres as contractors for some big companies they wouldn't name. Have you had any luck finding and then selling claims to mining companies after like 2012 or so?

What was involved in proving it up? Like run a small placer plant or process a couple tons of hardrock + assays? That was my goal too but I never really found anything that seemed commercial to me and they all played out when I was trying to prove them up. Do you have mining industry connections or did you just contact the companies directly with a proposition?

Quick question - I haven't really browsed much via phone until lately and I just realized that often when I touch the screen to scroll it turns the little flag in someone's post blue. Does that mean I've been flagging a lot of posts as objectionable on accident?

I replied to you in my trade ad before I saw this post, but here's what I typed since I doubt many people will read it there: Tom - It's a question I had too before I started detecting for gold, and the answer is that it varies but you might be surprised that sometimes there just is nothing but nuggets. Some patches have almost nothing under half a grain or so but then others are worth drywashing. You'd be surprised how many great patches weren't even worth drywashing though. The only somewhat consistent exceptions I've found are "patches" in fairly active seasonal washes or on benches, they tend to be worth drywashing maybe around half or more of the time. Just my experience, I'm sure it varies place to place and also by what a person considers "worth it".

I remember reading the biggest diamond found in Wyoming was something like 20 or 30 carats, and seems it was one of the biggest in the United States too, but I forget exactly the numbers. Doesn't seem like that would be much bigger than a marble so that's probably a good idea with the classifying. I'm having trouble ID'ing kimberlite from internet photos, it seems to vary so much - sometimes it looks like porphyry, other times it looks like cement, other times it looks like basalt. Seems like something hard to ID in the field due to the inconsistent and non-homogenous nature of it too (streak, hardness, etc are often meaningless on rocks, especially ones with many inclusions and different makeups). Anyone got any tips for positively ID'ing it if you've never held it before in your hand? The local geology museum didn't have any samples to check out unfortunately, which is odd because there aren't many geology museums in Wyoming and there aren't many other states with commercial diamond deposits. I think I'll donate some if I end up finding some good representative types, for other people wondering the same thing.

Seconded on posting the vids. Any idea what ID range square nails, rusty old tin can bits or old pieces of blasting caps (if you happen to have any of those) ring up as compared to the pickers you have at 30 and 55k? How easy is it to switch between frequencies? Can you configure it so it's like 1 button/trigger push, or does it require a lot of scrolling through menus?

Awesome, love seeing found gold by the handful!

I gave up on my drone because it was too much work to pack around and all the mods I had to make to get good distance kept breaking. But that new Mavic Pro looks pretty sweet. It packs down to nothing and gets great range out of the box, I'm waiting for a price drop and thinking about getting one for work in the mountains the summer where hiking would take too long. The thing I wonder is if you can point the camera straight down so you can make custom aerial maps, that was the thing I really liked doing with the P2 but the stitching software won't work if the camera isn't straight down and some gimbals stop at like -170 degrees or something.

I could see it being useful for gold in a "reverse" case where all the trash is nice and linear on the plot and the gold is generally squiggly yet both ring up in a narrow VDI range similar to each other. Having never used a machine like this I have no idea how often that happens though, but I do know there are some really trashy places I'd like to hunt where most of the trash is just 1 or 2 different types of items. I love that there are features like these on machines, even if they aren't useful in the end. This thread almost makes me want to not wait for the elliptical and just get the round Deus so I can start experimenting with it in parks here when the ground thaws.

I'm not sure what it is, is it like a series of jigs and grease sluices or something? I'm just gonna go low tech and look for topographical depressions, blue ground, and chromian diopsides/pyrope in the pan.

Did you stake a claim?

That's it. Setting aside a couple weeks to go diamond prospecting here in Wyoming this summer then.