1515Art

bookmarked all of them, thanks Steve

course, now I have to read em

nice find paul, congrats

nice hunting and great photos, thanks for posting!

the photos one of the protesters vs the one of the traders was a powerful contrast so different in their world and culture, yet the passion in their expressions fighting for survival each a universe apart, but somehow still very similar.

WOW, mind boggling find!!!!!

beautiful nugget and great video of the z in action.

thanks, Steve

compared to the MXT, I've been wondering what if anything for the areas I've been hunting (old sierra trash areas and parks) would i want to be able to do with my vlf that i can't. it is the only vlf I've every used so i have nothing to compare it to, and so few were sold that very little information is available from other users, I'm talking about the Whites SST one of their mystery detectors made for the western states and never marketed, with almost nothing to adjust, but set for hot soil and fast recovery. i don't mind the all metal hear everything other than that performance is the question, if I had the mxt just for comparison would i likely just run it the same as my SST anyway for gold country?

Cabelafella,

instead of trying to take a close up photo another approach that works well is to just take as clear of a regular picture and then use the crop feature in your photo editor and you will get a much more clear close up of the object you are photographing. you can experiment with just how close or far from the object with the camera gets the best results in your picture.

my wife was telling our friend a story about some ceramic art I was working on when I walked into the kitchen at the studio and showed her the picture of that giant rock, as soon as her eyes hit on it she was struck speechless for a few seconds while mentally calculating how she could fit it onto her finger in a ring. I told her not to worry, if that one wouldn't work out they found two more just a little bit smaller, for a second i thought this just might be trouble... luckily she was able to regain her composure.

It's a great cover

good pay dirt!!!

the riverside inn, not the creekside inn thats the place, creekside inn was in the santa cruz mountains my memory is getting fuzzy must be breathing to many kiln fumes. Mike and Nancy run the place they are a really nice couple and its always nice to share a cup of coffee with Mike in the morning before heading up the hill.

i'll bet there is some pretty rich ground under a bunch of those old buildings in Downieville, the old stories talk of ounces of gold being swept from the floors that was dropped for various reasons by the old timers when gold was a plenty.

I always stay in Downieville when i go detecting up in that area, usually at the creekside inn or the carriage house, Verizon has good coverage in Downieville and both of those places are comfortable and have WiFi. 

I have very fond memories of both Sierra City and Downieville from the time i spent up there with my grandparents when I was a little kid and the towns haven't changed all that much from back then. Everyone is always very friendly and driving on the roads is refreshing, people are a lot more polite behind the wheel up in the mountains.

this web cam link is a handy view on the weather conditions up in Sierra City, I always give it a quick check when I'm getting ready to go on up to the high sierra along with the other reports on conditions.

http://www.sierracountrystore.com/the-sierra-city-webcam#today

mine also did this just one time and it was after the update. it happened around mid day, i restarted and everything was fine and my sound returned to normal. i don't really remember much about it, but I am pretty sure i was playing around with the settings. At the time i just chalked it up to a software hiccup, i also did not change my settings as much after that happened and crossed my fingers, so far everything has stayed normal.

I had the same issue and minelab had me send everything. I boxed it up like new shipping and insurance were about $150 or so and minelab sent me a new replacement 7000 in about 5 days total turnaround.

...that would be the coolest place to work if you wanted to do a little experimenting with your metal detector, want a tiny coil for your gpz, like a special pin pointer... you could just build one. only problem is i'd probably just want to be out hunting all the time looking for giant Aussie nuggets and getting lost in the outback, sure be fun.

That is a first rate place and its not very likely someone is gonna out "R n D" em from their garage in some little town. Pretty cool look inside the shrine, thanks for the video.

here are two other jade rings the pink stone is Dushan Yu (Yu, means jade in Chinese), Yu can also mean fish or octopus, my wifes Chinese first name is Yu, so the carver made her the octopus ring for her birthday as a gift. the skull ring is nephrite i think.

Hi Clay, Thanks for the info, i'll bet your mom had a chance to see a lot of nice jade and gems back in the 70's and prices were a bit different back then.

i asked for some of the rough material hopefully my friend will be able to bring some when he comes over around the end of the month. then i can see/show what the rough stuff looks like before being worked. this material doesn't look treated and shows the scratches from very fine sand paper polishing on both the stone and metallic areas, but i'll find out more soon.

as far as the concerns your moms friend had about treated material, in China every valuable (desirable) jade, gem, lake rock and everything else is also faked, copied and simulated in one way or another and many of the fakes are really good, so its difficult to know if her concerns were about that piece or all pieces of that type. Knowing the studio this jade came from it is difficult to imagine they would bother to carve any stone not of high quality or treated in some way as to risk their reputation.

Chris Ralph could no doubt answer in more detail but the short answer is something he said to me recently. The most abundant minerals in the earth's crust are the silicates and so quartz minerals in all their forms are virtually everywhere. Chrysoprase and other chalcedony are just massive or cryptocrystalline forms of silica. Not surprising then that where you find gold you tend to find quartz type minerals but unfortunately the reverse is not true. Very similar to the situation with magnetite, the most common black sand mineral. Since it is found almost everywhere you of course find it associated with gold, but there are countless locations with magnetite black sands where there is absolutely no gold.

Some cryptocrystalline silcates are occasionally associated with gold when they are mineralized in banded iron formations from my experience. I've (very rarely) found nuggets with dark red jasper inclusions and found layers or pods of it or chert in situ in abandoned gold mines.

 

I've seen chalcedony in layers in areas with gold bearing quartz veins and pockets but I've never found it directly included into (or vice versa) gold itself and it generally looks like it came later to me.

 

But like Steve says, it's everywhere. Associations might be concluded in very specific areas, but to use it as an indicator anywhere would probably test a person's patience. But if you find BIF and jasper or chert together you may want to give the area a closer look.

some of what you are telling me is sounding familiar with what I'm reading, but I'm so new a lot is still over my head. here are some more pictures of the property and a vast area is largely wilderness so its hard to know just what a person would find if he looked around, the oldest temple in the area is also located on this property as are other old structures. 

XinMi lies around the top right edge of what is called the Qin Ling Fold Belt on the attached map, thats the main sedimentary rock hosted gold district according to the map legend.

Pictures are of the jade mine, some mountain property and one creek area and the tunnel short cut across the property through the mountain and passing a motorcycle inside the tunnel. (a good place to keep cold beer is just inside the jade mine shaft as its icy cold, while the temperature outside was over 100)

Steve, i wanted to ask you with regard to chrysoprase and other chalcedony, like quartz is it ever an indicator for locating an area likely to produce gold?

i'll try and find more about this jade, first I've seen it was yesterday afternoon and I don't even know what the rough stone sells for.

the jade is high quality and desirable material I'm sure, occasionally language and cultural factors confuse things a bit so it well could be some form of sulfide or something they call gold.

That is some top notch material. I would love to make some jewelry with it. If you could ever lead me to a source, I would be indebted. Thanks for sharing.

I have another friend visiting later this month and i will ask him to bring some if he has access to any, if i can get some i will send you a little piece.

having not had any of this tested i can't tell for certain what the metal mix is, but this comes from the studio of a guy who is very famous for his carving and i'm told this is gold by my friend who has written a dozen books or so on China's master jade carvers. she just flew in this morning from shanghai and brought a bunch of stuff for my wife from these guys for the jade jewelry book she is working on and i thought the jade with gold was pretty cool looking and was a good fit here.

This is the first of this stuff I've seen, it comes from the Xin Jiang area in China same as that giant gold nugget found by the farmer while plowing his land. That doesn't narrow the area down very much, for a comparison Xin Jiang is an area about the size of California... its all very tight lipped as they don't want a billion people swarming into the gold fields looking to get rich.

Xin Jiang is also a major jade producing location too, Chris Ralph could tell you all about the relationship to the gold and mineralization I'm sure... I'm not far enough into his book to do the subject justice.

My friend in Xin Mi has chrysoprase mines located near some of the largest gold producing area in Central China, the property covers a couple of mountains and valleys. It has been in his family for generations and never been prospected for gold in the time his family has farmed it, jade mining has been fairly recent. next time I'm there ill take a little time and look around a bit, might even bring the zed along. Angela, my wife asked our friend about hunting for gold on his land and he was all for it, said it would be OK any time... just, seems not likely if none has ever been stumbled on before that his land would have gold on it.