1515Art

Went out to gold basin yesterday for a long day of hunting with the 7000 For meteorites, gold and collecting hot rocks, I saved about 30 #’s of interesting (to me) for crushing at home in a new cast iron 1qt dolly pot from Royal Mfg I just ordered. Two of the specimens I have question about the first I’m wondering if this is hydrothermal pyrite in quartz like matrix that may in fact be other than quartz?

 

the other hit very hard on the 7000 is only very very slightly magnetic looks like a densely packed conglomerate with very small quartz pebbles cemented in the matrix and lots of mineralization weighing almost 13 #’s, is this worth the time to crush and pan?

21 hours ago, 2Valen said:

Sorry for thinking that it might be grease, so please look up a 1953 Chrysler type car, and you should have what you are looking for.

Since my neck and shoulder has been hurting my eyes have given me fits.

Good eye you know your Chrysler’s. Anyway it looks a lot like the center piece from one of these.

These are replicas for a Mercury I think, could be this with the center emblem missing?

Nice hunting the bloodhounds are on scent more treasure awaits🤞👍.

45 minutes ago, dogodog said:

I'm going with the water powered rock/boot cleaner thingamajig. Although it could be a paint stripper, Usually if it has a pole its a stripper 😂

It looks a pretty efficient way to strip bark.

It doesn’t look super old the green side covers look salvaged from something like an old bench grinder from around the 1950’s by the shape and color, almost the same color as my grandfathers 48 Chrysler Town and Country. Looks like something jerry rigged you could use to clean sticky clay off the bottom of your work boots.

I’m shocked and saddened also to hear of this news, I was fortunate to meet Fred up at Rye patch a few years ago and he was as personable face to face as he was on forum, his kind heart and love of the wildlife, the outdoors and never ending devotion to helping and encouraging others his absence will leave a giant hole in our hearts we can only try and fill with the wonderful memories of the life we were fortunate to share, with a tear in my eye farewell my friend farewell and a toast to you of my finest tequila, Cheers.

Cool YJ having the turbo bumps up the horse power pretty good I’ll bet nice setup, the only complaint I have with mine is fitting all my stuff into the limited space and trying to keep it all organized by the end of the day everything usually in a bit of a jumble with detectors, drywasher, tool bucked, power sweeper, portable winch and 4WD gear, picks and all the other misc crap there’s no way to accommodate camping equipment without sacrificing mobility by pulling a trailer of some sort? I put a shelf in the back that helps but it’s still a challenge so I haven’t decided what I want to do for for overnight or multiple nights out?

EGO makes garden tools that do the job with some impressive run times the hedge trimmer cuts all my hedges front and back on one 2.5 amp-hr battery same with the sweeper all the dirt that day was on one battery it amazes me just how well they perform compared to corded equipment and even gas powered versions, so far I really have no complaint hopefully the service life is comparable as well. 

No gold but these were other targets from the old patch area, on the 7000 I was running sen-6, vol-8, high yield, Normal, audio smoothing off, thresh-22, semi auto GB, no other filters on the 7000 and the steel phase. their was just a bit of atmospheric emi making me retrace my swings a little and I was going very slow with a second pass in some areas on deep timings just to see if anything popped out.

2 hours ago, DDancer said:

Thats one way to remove overburden, hot rocks and scare the heck out of the critters 🙂  I'd suggest and A-frame attachment with two wheels on a single axle just behind the power head for more control on depth and stability similar to what you said about a wheel.  Does it kick a lot of rocks into your shins even though its throwing forward of ya?

Surprisingly, no it throws everything to the front about 3’ or more and with wheels it’d be easy to control and take a heck of a lot less punishment, now I need to grip it about a foot behind the guard and hold it up pushing forward It’s a bit of a workout. in the Soft soil it digs down builds a pile in front of it self you then have to shave down, but it throws the rocks pretty good, bits of gold too I imagine if they are there.

I ordered a battery operated sweeper attachment for my EGO power head this is a rotary bristle brush one of a number of different attachments available for this device, the supplier instead sent me the rubber brush instead with paddle like bristles intended to sweep soil, gravel and rocks. Although not the one I wanted, I figured it might be useful out in the gold fields so threw it into the Jeep for a quick run. This line of garden equipment is really powerful but sweeping gravel off the lawn is one thing moving dirt looking for gold much more demanding so while a fun experiment I didn’t expect the results I’d get out at gold basin to be promising or practical. To my surprise this little sweeper managed to perform much better than I expected. In a wash it easily moved 5” or so of dirt from a small area in just 5 or 10 minutes, in the other picture I used it to knock down a small tailings pile from a dozer push, although a little challenging to control because it wants to dig straight down if it had a bicycle wheel attached behind the spinning broom you could easily sweep 1” inch layers off in 21” wide strips and go down in larger areas more evenly. The brush attachment runs $250 and the power head $150 bare bones without battery or charger, it managed to survive the day without breaking and might have use patch cleaning but I’m really unsure about it holding up out there with regular use? 

FedEx showed up at my door with my little Royal Explorer drywasher late Tuesday, the Jeep was loaded to head out to gold basin in the morning so I made a quick trip to Home Depot to pick up a 3 inch air hose to connect my 56v leaf blower to the drywasher. sadly Home Depot’s not really a hardware store any more so it’s hit or miss sometimes finding what you need and I had to settle for a 3” clothes dryer connection for my test, they were also lacking in any suitable adaptor so I was also stuck using the leaf blower nozzle for my reducer for my test while the dryer connection worked it’s less than ideal for regular use.

setup was easy and the battery powered leaf blower worked perfectly powering the drywasher, the fan speed was very easy to control and I wound up using a low medium speed similar to the setting in my time test, the leaf blowers controls made subtitle adjustment easy. The battery operated blower is much quieter than a gas blower, no fumes, weighs less and starting and stopping is just a flick of the switch. 
 

im having trouble uploading videos to YouTube so for how here’s a couple pictures of the setup.

I did email EGO directly to let them know their leaf blower might be desirable For this use and consumers have been requesting a shop vac version hopefully sometime in the future they develop a shop vac/blower version similar to the gas powered vac/blower units in use now.

Made it back out to gold basin today and managed to pick up a couple more little meteorites the largest at 10.4 grams and the smaller one is 5.3 grams.

This other stone also gave a nice signal the crystals show better in the sun, I think is a basalt with olivine?

Primarily my time out in the desert is spent detecting on the chance I’ll find something larger, but checking different spots for fine gold I think might help with that too so I’ve been looking for a little Drywasher I can fit in my Jeep and will be portable for sampling different spots without to much hassle. Every time out I bring home 5 gallons of dirt from promising spots except my choices haven’t been very good yet and getting rid of the dirts a hassle so I’m moving the show to on location. Coincidentally starting with their mower I’m building an inventory of the EGO 56v garden tools some with batteries some bare bones and now have 2, 2.5 amp-hrs and 1, 5 amp-hr battery all interchangeable. In the collection is the leaf blower they claim out performs equivalent gas models and it seems to be true. I’m sitting here testing it now on a low medium speed with the 5 amp-hr battery I got 90 minutes and with the other two batteries on hand I should have somewhere around 3 hrs continuous run time total. They also sell a backpack contractor battery for over a $1K I think must be around 28 amp-hrs (correction) if you need long lasting power. Couple days ago I ordered a Royal Explorer Drywasher the size was right, wasn’t to expensive and seemed what I was looking for to pair with the electric blower and then will head out for a real test although I suspect this will be perfect for what I have in mind. I’ll post a video and pictures when I get a chance and have the little dry washer in hand.

On 4/10/2020 at 4:22 PM, kiwijw said:

Hi there 1515Art, Was that a bush fix on the swing arm? JW 🤠

JW, fell off while I was loading the Jeep to go hunt bush fix worked just as good as if it wasn’t broken at all I contemplated just to keep on using it, but instead will keep it for an emergency back up for when it breaks again🤒🤪.

Wow, Chuck garden is looking spectacular you sure do nice work.

Really nice clean job recessing that magnet Simon looks like it works really good at picking up those pesky scraps of Ferris, the only reason I didn’t do something like that I’m trying to keep as much metal as far from the coil as possible otherwise I hear the coil A little every swing.

Brian, thanks I watched the guys over in heaven, er I mean Australia many use that or something similar I’ve seen,  think I haven’t bought one because I have to many picks now and don’t want to make them all obsolete.😀

1 hour ago, Nevada Brian said:

Clark, I would like to see a picture when you have time of the reversed shovel blade with the long spike please.  
thanks,

Brian. 

Brian, Here’s my pick line up each has it place, the reverse shovel moves a lot of dirt and handles roots pretty good but not so much for big rocks that’s where the yellow handle shines is in the hard pack and rocks, all around general digging I like the Apex is less tiring to pack and still digs great.

clark

3 hours ago, mn90403 said:

That looks like the Leland pick that I use.  I carry it in my left hand and use a bungee for the coil.  That long handle on the pick sure saves on the back for scrapes and deep holes.

I’m not familiar wit the Leland, this ones an Apex Talon Extreme it originally came wit a 36” handle that just like JW said was a problem launching me off cliffs sort of so I cut it short but out in the desert I’m up and down on my knees too much and think this will be better, everything’s a trade off so now I carry three or four different picks, one tiny Apex, A monster I bought a a club meet it’s a bit heavy but digs really fast and another I bought at the club outing with a reversed shovel blade and long spike I like.

5 hours ago, kiwijw said:

Hi there 1515Art, Was that a bush fix on the swing arm? You can get replacement ends for that squiggly flexi bit, I know because mine broke & I got one. & you can get replacement skid plates too😉. That one you are showing is beyond belief 😲 What I did on my first skid plate on the ML 14" coil was when it showed signs of wearing through I took the skid plate off & turned it 180 degrees. I guess that is obvious...but just thought I would mention it. I have found that all my skid plates that I have gone through always wore in the same place, no matter the size coil. Must just be the way I "favour" the coil when I scrub the ground. I use the detector in my right hand & the top left, on the underside of course, is where the coil covers wear.

JW 🤠

Hey JW, thanks for the tips on the GPZ, I finally just got around to ordering both of those things from a Rob of Rob’s Detectors and he has them in the mail for me already. The pick I’m switching to a holster up between my shoulders connected to the harness just over my right shoulder blade that should keep things out of my way although you’re right if I’m on a ledge or something I’ll probably pull it out and use it like a walking stick as I’ve stepped down off big boulders before and almost been surprised like you mention😲😬. Carrying the pick on my opposite hip every swing from left to right I hear the 7000 moan as the coil nears the pick head keeping it up higher quiets it down I’ve even before carried a pick on my hip and a rake up in the holder over the shoulder blade and it felt comfortable enough.

• Time for a little tool maintenance that’s something to do, ordered a new skid plate for the gpz14 not that I needed one but it seemed like a good time to take care of that and a new guide arm hinge while I’m at it, although the orange cord was working just fine for me.
   
• The handle on my favorite pick was cracked so I decided to give the old digger a face lift and redressed the business ends, ground off two of the three magnet holders I prefer just the one magnet and crafted a new longer handle from an old hoe blank I had on hand shaped to fit me and got a pack of 1/4 x 2” steel rivets on order from granger to pin the head with. I’d ordered a 40” Italian grape vine replacement handle then decided maybe straight style handle might be better and if not I can switch it later. I’m figuring with the longer handle ( the new ones now 41”) I might save myself a little energy getting up and down so much and maybe last a few more hours out there or at least speed things up a bit😀.
• 

Thanks fellas for the likes and comments good thing it’s about the adventure that’s the best part and I’ll remember my encounter with the rabbit as much as I will the gold, all that aside finding a little color now and then sure makes it easier to keep looking for the big ones and patches (someday) as does sharing our pain and successes. May the screamer under your coil be yellow and metal and 3 inches down, happy hunting.

3 hours ago, strick said:

Nice work Clark. You will have to start carrying a bag of carrots around with now and your luck will increase ten fold. 

Strick

24 of’em 

2 hours ago, fredmason said:

nice gold, nice meteorite and pleasant conversation with MR. jack!

fred 

I’ve never seen a rabbit so mellow I took it As a sign, hope he wasn’t just sick. It was an animal day earlier I’d picked up a rock to move it and there was this bright red and green tiny garter snake taking a nap.

Made for another long 10hr day in the Arizona desert out my front door at 0430hrs  and searching dirt at 0700. After about an hour picked up a little 1.7g meteorite high up on one of the ridges and after a another couple hours finally scored a little .2g piece of goodness in a tailings pile on my way back to the Jeep, I raked down the remainder of the pile but nothing else except tiny bits of rusted tin. Drank a cup of coffee and munched a little trail mix while driving a couple miles to a new spot and after a few hours walking up a small wash I spooked a large jack rabbit he darted out a couple feet and then stopped looking at me about 10 feet away so I started talking to him asking where I might have some better luck. He seemed to understand we were at peace together and relaxed standing up and stretching as he listened to my query flopping his long ears side to side he sat back down and peered up the wash in the direction I was heading as if to say just a little farther up. I poured a small pool of water from my bottle on the ground in case he might be thirsty in thanks and continued on my way, my rabbit friend calmly watched as I took his advise Walking slowly swinging zed. After about 10 min in the middle of the wash next to a small bush I picked up a mellow hi lo tone and scored a slightly bigger .7g piece. It was now nearly 1700hrs and worn out from my long day I decided to call it and headed home for a long night of leg cramps from over doing it, but with a little bit of yellow to show for my efforts well worth the pain.

Mitchel, that would be great when all this craziness ends, I think one... the smallest now even tinier from all the grinding I think is good a start anyway, the others hot rocks on closer inspection your eye is well trained. Fred, lunk slightly better pictures but my eye phone camera’s not working like it should last year I dropped it and broke the camera, apple replaced it but before the macro was amazing now for some reason the macro won’t work, thanks for the help.