phoenix

I certainly hope this turns out to be the real deal but to me that coil looks to be about the thickness of a rice cracker. ?

Yeh my original WM12 is coming up to 4½ years old and it started to get slow to charge about 6 months ago, so going on that I`ve got about another 2 years and I`ll have to do my other WM12.

Minelab have the battery in their spare parts list, (I know this thanks to Steve posting a link and pictures), but nowhere could I find the Minelab part. I figured it was 30 bucks to try a aftermarket battery or 380 bucks for a new WM12, so on the open-ended Richter scale I give this battery a 9. (I had to take one off because the wires were too long) This is the link to what Steve originally posted https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/5080-problem-with-gpz-wm-12-wireless-module/

I finally got round to replacing the battery in my dud WM12. I run twin WM12`s and the good one would charge in about 1 hour but the sluggish one could take 5 or 6 hours or longer. I`m not real good with the fiddly little stuff but this was pretty straight forward and now both wm12`s charge in the same amount of time. The only 2 things that may be drama, you need a bit that fits TT10 Torx screws and somehow I had one of those, and the battery I bought the black and red wire were about ½" too long and I had to bend the wires a bit to get the plug to go into the socket. The top picture is how the red and black wire looked before and the bottom picture is after I fitted the new battery. You can see I had to bend the wires. And don`t believe you`ll get it in three or 4 days. This mob is in England and it took about 3 or 4 weeks to get mine.. If you get this battery from these people the model No. is CS-MLC100SL and the part No. is 0303-0036 Good luck finding the battery anywhere else, this was the only one I could find. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Replacement-Battery-For-MINELAB-0303-0036/302942371755?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

I`ve got a couple of propane burners and a little kiln and Wikipedia tells me propane and air burns at 1980º C and gold melts at 1064º C and, like I said, I`ve never done it before, but I think this little setup will probably work. I`ll know in a couple of weeks ?

I checked that Tarnagulla specimen again today and it`s just about disintegrated, all that was holding the quartz together was the brown rock. You can`t really see it but there is a fair bit of powder gold in the pan. When I first sg`d it the sg said about 1½ ounces of gold but I doubt there is that much. I`ve put the pieces back in acid to get rid of the last bits of brown rock, then I`ll crush it all up and have a go at making my first ingot.

About 100 yards from the piece I got yesterday I came across a raked area about 30x30 ft and just about every raked area in Victoria tells you somebody got gold there. This piece was about 10 ft from the raked area. Still not a great deal of weight but it looks nice and about twice the size of yesterdays piece ☺️

I got out to Tarnagulla today for about 2½ hrs and as I was detecting back to the vehicle I got a birdshot sounding signal where someone had done a light scrape of the ground. Down about 1" and I really thought I was chasing birdshot, but when I had it in my hand, until I put my glasses on, I thought it was a rusty piece of steel. ?

Probably not intentional but Minelab have copied bits from the tv series Mars and that great movie Excabilbur. It`s uncanny how much the voice over in this clip copies the voiceover in the first couple of Mars episodes. I like this clip ? https://www.minelab.com/anz/vanquish October 2019 Edit - the Minelab Vanquish has been officially introduced. See this thread for the latest news and information.

That`s pretty impressive on the test bed. One of those targets, and I cannot remember which one, is very tough to hear with the 7000, but the 32" hears them all no worries. I reckon this could be a killer coil in the wide open spaces of WA. Not a lot of ground around my way would you be able to use it.

That`s pretty impressive. It looks well made for a hand built job.

No mate I`ll probably leave this one as it is. If I were to acid clean it not much more gold would appear ?

The 7000 mate. It was only a couple of inches down and a very iffy signal, but once it was directly under the coil it screamed.

Most of my finds pale into insignificance compared to some of the great gold that is displayed on this forum, but it is what it is. I got out for a couple of hours yesterday and got this piece about 10 mins after I got there, then nothing. The good thing about this spot is there is not a great deal in the way of rubbish, so I`m going to spend a bit more time there and hope a few more pieces pop up. Dave

Thanks mate. I had to go back and re read my post to work out what "taking the wife more often" meant. Gave me a good laugh ? cheers Dave

That`s because we`ve got so much gold over here Mitchel. I was walking to the shops the other day and tripped over a 5 ouncer ?

I worked for a dangerous goods transport company up to about 10 yrs ago and during a safety meeting we were told about a chemist in WA that spilt Hydrofluoric on himself in a lab and I remember we were told, within minutes this man immersed himself in a swimming pool, and the poor man still died. The day I heard that story I decided I would never work with Hydrofluoric and if anybody had insisted I work with it, I would have quit. I always wondered whether that was a true story or something they made up to scare us so I googled it today and found an article on the incident. https://www.fluoridealert.org/wp-content/pesticides/fluoride.poisoning.1996.pap.htm

Fantastic photos Gerry and great story ? I always liked that 15x12 Commander but used to complain about how heavy it was, but I dare say if I were to use it today, compared to the 7000, I wouldn`t even notice the coil was there. Dave

No GB. This one I dropped it in hydrochloric acid. I don`t play around with hydrofluoric acid. Bad stuff, but there is the tiniest trace of hydrofluoric in the Ali Brite I mostly use.

Gerry what a stunning piece ? I don`t think there is any chance mine will end up looking like yours because it seems to me that 99% of the gold in mine is in the brown rock, not on the quartz. Dave

About 3 or 4 years ago I ran a post about a specimen I got at Tarnagulla at about 6" with pretty well no visible gold, and the sg for quartz said there was maybe 1½ ozs of gold in it, but because there was rock other than quartz, I really don`t know how much gold there actually is. At the time, I dropped it in acid and then promptly forgot about it till I came across it today. ? The main body of it is about half the size it started and there is now gold and gravel in the bottom of the jar. I`ve taken this photo of the biggest bit remaining, renewed the acid and dropped it back in. I wont forget it again (I hope). Sorry Mitchel, back to the dime ?

That speci I got a couple of weeks ago, I dropped it in Ali Brite about 5 days ago and it came up pretty good. After it was cleaned the SG came down a fraction, it now sg`s at 2.082 grams gold ?

I`ve also noticed that, faint targets get louder once you`ve detected them, but I`ve put it down to I keep moving the coil forward or back a little bit until the target is exactly in the sweet spot of the coil. Dave

Thanks JP, I tried that yesterday, I always figured that balancing out the ferrite would also ground balance but when I pumped the coil off to the side the ground balance was way out ?

Andyy I`m still pretty clueless as to which coil is which. Is yours the spiral wound type or the DOD type? Dave