1515Art

I've been hunting up around the Sonora area and hitting a bunch of different gold claims in the southern mother load with out much success other than the pure enjoyment of the great outdoors and some needed exercise, but it's nice to occasionally see a little new yellow. so this trip I only ran the GPZ for about half a day on some hillsides and spent the remaining 21/2 days running a sluice on the river just off Highway 49, the little bit of gold represents more 5 gallon buckets of dirt than i care to remember but a great workout none the less and a bit of color in my pan also my first picker in the sluice, i would have liked to see a few more pickers in the sluice, but was thrilled to see this one land on the black matt.

i wonder just how sensitive the larger coil will be to very tiny ferris trash like the small window screen stuff that is blowing around in the desert and hits so hard on the standard coil, be interesting to see if things balance out with the give and take. by picking up large deep gold and not being as hot on the smaller surface trash we might find some added advantage, realistically the zeee is so hot that the large coil will probably still hit hard on everything.

I pretty new to most of this mining stuff also, so this may be completely wrong way to go about crushing rock and it took a few times using it before it stopped shedding zinc particles in the crushed rock powder. it's also not particularly fast, but the crushed rock eventually ends up in a fine powder and all stays in one place. i crush, screen, crush, screen... until it is all to a fine powder and then pan it out.

Comstock gold prospectors have claims in the blue wing area wonder if this will affect their claims also?

Wow, great story and cool finds from the past and some of those old buttons can be pretty valuable. I'll bet the old guy has a few more stories waiting for you, you need to put a detector in his hands so you can hunt more undistracted when he's around.

This was my day here in beautiful Sonora, the weather was perfect, so nice in fact I decided to Leave the gold in the ground for tomorrow.

looks like a scene from "honey I shrunk the kids, while metal detecting"

"The bike looked electric to me....needs fat tires..and a shade"  

and a cup holder...

I'm in the market for a new machine, should take a look at one of those "Lark Models"if they made it in 4 wheel drive with a turbo... my oldest son was visiting from Colorado for a couple of days and i've been getting him excited about doing a little nugget shooting while he's living there, so as he was getting ready to head to the airport I gave him my "Whites "SST" to take with him back to Colorado. He had no problem getting through airport security with the control box and coil, upper shaft in his backpack and he used the extra long lower shaft as a cane and TSA paid no attention to it. He had it all put together this morning and was hunting some spots that were clear of snow in his back yard when I talked to him today.

That's a serious beach machine, all he needs is a little back hoe attachment that'll work off the pedal pto...

Alex, those are beauties great job, soon you will be the teacher!

Ray, very way cool... Hooked for life and in another 10 years he will be the the star of some discovery channel treasure hunting show for sure.

Great job on that one...

I can only repeat what I was told by the guy who sold it to me, his name was Greg and he was a longtime buddy of Jimmy Sierra and helped with input of the design. he said they borrowed circuitry and programing aspects from the MXT, MX5 (M6? I'm not sure) and GMT and although it has very few features the ones that it has are optimized for mineralized conditions.  Turn it on and go, the ground balance is super fast also and can be locked to prevent tracking out a target with a switch flip, this feature also lets you use the detector as a broad large target deep searching detector by ground balancing with the pinpoint mode and then locking the GB, hits deep water pipes really well this way.

On 2/3/2016 at 7:14 PM, auminesweeper said:

That makes a lot of sense, If and when you get one it would be good if you could test it in some of your more challenging spots just to see how it stacks up against the Racer or fors core. I am struggling to get fired up over this one, I guess it is the treasuremate looks that just do nothing for me, waterproof or not it is just not talking to me,

I know it is claimed that it is fast than the XP machine so I am wondering how it stacks up against the F75 speed wise.

watching the videos  the sport sounds and seems to react to targets much the same as my SST in terms of recovery speed and tones. That was one of the selling points for the SST the recovery speed was supposed to be improved over the MXT having taken settings from a couple of different models and it is very fast and it will separate and show nonferrous items in a bed of old nails. 

I had a friend his name was Tony, who went on an adventure gold hunting someplace in south america, he was a diamond dealer and an adventure buff of sorts for an older guy and his son was really into gold prospecting at the time and had a couple of poor paying claims in the southern California mother load. Anyway they headed off on foot into the jungle for a couple of weeks and although they had no problem on this trip with any of the people, the jungle and bugs made the trip really unpleasant for them. they only found a little gold (probably why they were not messed with), in the order of a few grams at best and after getting back Tony almost died after coming down with some strange parasitic infection from the time in the jungle and spent about 6 months under some pretty serious care. He said he'd never do it again, but when he said it there was this strange glint in his eye kind of like he was trying to fool himself... the power of gold.

Nevada1616, there is an add in the San Francisco Bay area craigs list for a GP3000, asking $1200.00. I don't know if this is what you had in mind, just thought id share this in case it is something that might work for you.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/ele/5424080734.html

YIKES!!!

jasong;

I don't know where to start on this topic and once I get started there is no place to stop. To restrict me from offering an opinion here is like saying I can't have dill pickles with my ice cream. Does the Code of Federal Regulations Supersede the 1872 Mining Law? Do Forest Rules Supersede the 1872 Act and CFRs?

I have a long history of working with the USFS in timber and mining so If your looking for something a bit more specific I would be pleased to help but you might have to endure some of my opinions and I would have to describe the particular situations (anecdotal) to make any sense.

And I promise not to rant or b#%*h.

How about ice cream with jalapeño, that's not a bad combination kinda like a klunker rant, a little spicy and it gets ya there quick and satisfied... I must say jalapeño and vanilla ice cream is pretty good.

Go to AMRA home page. Watch the video of forest service agent Clint , trying to shut down dredgers in Idaho...making stuff up on the fly . Shannon Poe schooled him.

I joined amra the other day, that video is pretty amazing, the one where the Forrest service agent is trying to prevent the club raffle under the grounds of conducting business on federal land without a permit is also another example of stretching a well intended regulation beyond reason.

https://americanminingrights.com/videos/

I would like to ask you, about your new book. I can find useful information there about places where I can use my metal the detector for search
gold nuggets.

Hi Alex, 

Best bet is to join a prospecting club(s) that have claims in the areas you want to prospect, you can search the internet and you will probably find something that works for your needs. Most all clubs also sponsor events and you can join in on some of the group hunts and learn from the more experienced at these gatherings. Many of the members of this and other forums join these clubs to gain access to claims to hunt on, myself included.

Best of luck, Clark

If you go with the ATX, check out the classifieds in this site, Steve has a good deal on a big coil that would be great at the beach.

hay Bearkat, thanks that was fun... I know John Woo, next time I see him I'll slip him a link, we'll get Jackie Chan for the sequel.

when i was a little kid, back before modern medicine... i had a friend that was supposed to be very allergic to poison oak and the doctor back then gave him some poison oak oil extract to drink. he put a couple drops of this stuff in a glass of water and drank it once a day. he did this routine for about a month drinking a glass of water with these oil drops, didn't seem to cause him any harm at least not any blistering rash in his mouth and id guess the other end of the pipes must have been ok cause he never complained of any ill effects there. don't know if it really worked to keep him immune from poison oak, but i also don't remember him getting it again and the stuff was all around us so it might have done some good.

Hi Barry, thank you and I'm excited to see what Steve comes up with also, I really love his work it's "feichang piaoliang" Chinese for  very beautiful work. 

I took it to a local pawn shop and the xrf machine they used had a door, they put the stone inside and it was connected to a computer the readout on the display screen was iron in the 99% range with trace other elements.

I don't know how long it takes pyrite to oxidize, but these two carvings must be around 3 months from when they were finished and the surface has not changed yet.

Here are two more rings carved in black nephrite, spider and a bear.

years ago I did some wild land firefighting and like what was said before washing with soap and water asap has always worked for me, I usually start with cool water and soap first and toss your clothes in the washer. Calamine lotion will help relieve the itch and will also help the rash to dry up if you get a poison oak rash, I have been lucky and not had it since I was a kid but I'm careful.

I had a friend of mine visiting from China and we took her on a hike at some Japanese gardens in the Santa Cruz mountains. She had never been around poison oak and despite the warnings managed to get her neck and upper chest exposed by brushing up against or touching some by accident. anyway I didn't know she had touched it until about 3 or 4 days later when I noticed she was repeatedly applying some kind of Chinese skin oil on this really red rash on her neck and I asked her how long this had been going on... 2+2= my friend and wife all now know what poison oak rash looks like, I got her some calamine and the rash cleared up in a couple of days, but felt better once the calamine was applied.