flakmagnet

Just finished building a new raised bed, putting together a new hen house and (using my gold pick), making a level path along a slope in the bottom yard. This sheltering in place is not for sissys.

Your effort to inform is always appreciated. Thanks. It's pretty hard to imagine being able to go out near where I live and being able to detect. The information on Saturation and how to deal with it is fascinating.

With the 5000 I pumped the coil after every loud-ish sound whether it was a signal, a hot rock or a false…ground balance is everything.

From your statement to ML's R&D dept...

Thank you, I join you in wishing everyone good health in a safe place.

I am on my second coil cover if that says anything (I am not out all that often until lately). I also remember JP recommending having the coil off the ground i.e. not scrubbing and there was a reason for it but I can't remember if it was to keep the detector from being oversaturated. JP?

I would rather defer to more experienced people than me as to what is best. For myself I vary what I do. Sometimes I basically scrub the coil and sometimes I keep it 1/2 of an inch or so off the ground. I don't know which is better, I find gold using both methods.

Mistaken post :)

Weight? (beautiful find Norm)

Bad joke, but as it happened we were both wearing gloves.

I agree, that tracks closely with what I have experienced. But your explanation is much more concise.

After sheltering in place for over a week, my son and I escaped to the desert to refine our social distancing. Instead of playing with settings on the 7000, I decided to work on my personal hunting technique concentrating on swing speed, 'range of motion' as JP calls it, coil control and listening for faint, vague changes in a steady threshold. My son took off to hike while I clambered down a boulder strewn and treacherous hillside with all my gear. I tuned up at the bottom and began to slowly cover ground I had already gone over in a previous post. Almost immediately I got what sounded like a small EMI tone-change in the threshold. But as I made my first boot scrape I saw my son waving from the top of the hillside and motioning for me to come up. I took off my headphones and heard him calling to me to come and help him. Now I am advancing in years and that hill is not for sissy's but he was insistent. A few minutes later I stood beside him out of breath and slightly put out, but when he pointed at a near-by prospect hole and said "can you help me get him out?" I was honored that he had asked me to come and help. Somehow a desert tortoise had fallen into the excavation. My son clambered down, lifted him out and handed him to me. We put him in the shade for awhile to let him calm down after being lifted and carried around. After awhile, refreshed and emboldened, he took off, snacking on Spring flowers and grass shoots as he went. My son continued his hike as I made my way back down through the rocks and resumed my hunting. My first faint change in the threshold produced a flake so small that, if it didn't go off on the detector, I would not have believed it was gold, it looked more like a slice of silica, but it was gold. (0.01g). The next flake was beside a basalt rock and I made out the signal in the midst of the sound the basalt was making. That's where swing speed (slow), and coil control makes the difference between finding a bit of gold or passing it up and moving on. Anyway, all in all, 5 stupidly small flakes - but all of them were found because I had decided to focus on what I was doing rather than what the detector was doing. Best to everyone in this strangest of times.

Sometimes it seems as though the signal jumps out on the third or fourth swing. It's been faintly repeatable up to that point which why you're on the third and fourth swing. My experience many times.

Seriously Dale, you guys continue to amaze.

Nice social distancing Rob...

Reg your suspicion's were, of course, correct. Those shows are tightly scripted. Have many friends who used to work in 'reality' shows, there is nothing real about them. Best...

If you are talking to me, I wasn't meaning you, I was only answering Fred. Best...

Yeah Fred, the concept of not ganging together doesn't seem to have caught on quite yet. It's starting to come tho. Hope you are doing okay.

You do find amazing specimens.

I first went here in 2005. At the time and for years following this is where Chris Gholson and Montana Bob used to go to test every new detector that Minelab put out. They knew if they could make those detectors work out there they would work just about anywhere. At that time there were always people out there. It has been claimed by all manner of clubs for years and years. They had outings and cook-outs and coin hunts, they dry washed, detected and dug. In the early days the place was overrun with it's first wave of prospectors…the guys who really knew how to spot the indicators and work a hillside - and as I mentioned above they didn't miss much. But we have these magic machines that can see what they could not and I am blessed with a little time to enjoy what is now mostly a forgotten and evocative place where the souls of those earlier men and women look over my shoulder and marvel at the ease of my endeavors. I have had my ounce days both detecting and dredging. I have had gold fever and recovered. The best time of the day is first thing in the morning when anything is possible. The worst thing that can happen is you have a great day out in the desert. It is an amazing "hobby."

haha Norvic, that is what I believe with every swing. Thanks…!

Sadly those are considered good-sized for this area…it's my classroom...

I wear gloves (except for photography). The dirt has a lot of silica and stuff that cuts your fingers to ribbons.

Hi Phrunt, to be clear, that was a rare amount of finds for that general area. Usually I am happy if I find one in the same time period. I attribute it to the fact that this small area resembled the larger area most people usually hunt in but was sort of out-of-the-way…but that's a guess. Although the area is vast, there are only very specific parts of it that are gold-bearing. As well as modern-day gold hunters, the old-timers by the thousands combed these hills. They didn't miss much.

Firstly: I am using an aspect of JP's fantastic thread (among others as well), - the way he sets out his posts - because it is so instructional, I decided to give it a try. I had been thinking about why hunting in known areas is sometimes beneficial. Here are some brief thoughts based on yesterdays hunt. I was able to drive to a spot I have been an incalculable number of times, to spend four hours doing what we all love. My only human contact was my son who accompanies me but then disappears to hike and sketch. The area is close to the Los Angeles area so, as you might imagine, it is incredibly worked - I decided to look just on the outer edge of an area that has a similar "look" to where everyone usually goes. This is the geology of the general area. It is strewn with basalt, iron stone and a number of other types of conductive rock. It takes a lot of concentration to pick out targets among the myriad of inputs. I used HY/N, no Smoothing, conservative settings for the rest. I tried Low Smoothing which was nice in one way; it lessened the amount of ground feedback - but it also mitigated the target signals enough so that I switched it off after testing each target with it before I dug. These are not spectacular finds - they are to show two things; one, that working outside a known area sometimes can be successful and two, working carefully and yes, slowly - can pay off. There were a number of dig holes in the 40 yard square area from a long time ago, they missed these. found just beside the basalt stone. this was about 6 inches down and a really faint signal at the start In contrast, this was found after two boot scrapes - but had the same faint tone as the deeper one above -go figure. Below are some other finds from the day. As you can see, these are nothing to brag about, but for sharpening skills this area has been perfect.