1515Art

it looks like it does in the pictures

I thought everyone might enjoy looking at some interesting nephrite jade, this snake necklace and leopard ring were carved by a friend in China from untreated natural dark green nephrite jade with naturally occurring gold.

Let's put together a crew and go find gold in Nigeria, the discovery channel could film the whole hostage situation...

got this golden opportunity in my jade website, they must have looked at links from one of the prospecting forums i am a member of, anyone else getting these? I could take the GPZ to Nigeria, it's swimming with gold, seems pretty safe anyway what bad could possibly happen to an irish italian boy from California prospecting for gold in Nigeria.

Good Day,

Please i need a good reputable company interested in investing in mining of
raw gold in Nigeria. i have about 12 plots of land swimming with gold
(available for inspection anytime). if you are interested just contact me
on +(redacted phone numbers). ONLY SERIOUS INVESTOR NEEDED
thanks

 I'm betting they've been working on some kind of salt mode for the GPZ (if it's possible with ZVT) and if so I'm guessing that should make detecting around vegetation a lot more pleasant if such an update is released.

I think you are right there will be much more to come as the software is refined. the gpz has a definite language, it's just a matter of time until ZVT evolves into the features available in VLF technology now and the zed backbone has passed the first update test with flying colors.

It's OK to use either software version without the Ferrite, personally I'd go with the latest version of software because it's so much more refined. Without the Ferrite just make sure you perform the walk and sweep method properly in all the Gold Modes you intend to hunt in. Another thing of interest is the GB now dumps all its info when the Quick Trak button is held in for more than ten seconds, so keep the walk and sweep less than ten seconds or if you want to improve on the result release QuicTrak and then hold in again to further improve beyond the 10 second mark.

 

JP

i don't remember reading about the 10 second re-set for the ground balance? is that published in a white paper?

I only used the ferrite at start-up and the version 2 software seemed to run just fine without reusing the ferrite later in the session, so my guess is you are better off with version 2.

from the CDNC

THE HORN SPOON.

Protpectlns for Gold In Judge Hunt's

Court-room.

Judge Hunt's Court-room was turned into an impromptu mining camp yesterday and a showing of the color found. Some time ago A. T. Brittoa brought suit in the Superior Court to recover $10,000 from W. C. Childs. According to the allegations of the complaint, Childs purchased a half interest in the Valentine mine, Amador county, for $60,000, and paid thereon $20,000 in two payments of $10,000 each, agreeing to cay the remaining $40,000 out of the two thirds yield in the mine. After working the mine for a while, Childs shut down on the work, on the ground that the ore extracted from the mine was not paying. Dnring the hearing of the case yescerday an old miner, Andrew J. Field, was called as an expert to test the value of crushed ore taken from a drift in the mine. In the presence of the Court, counsel and spectators the miner placed a handful of the pulverized rock in a " horn spoon " and proceeded to wash it out in a basin of water in a corner of the Court-room. After a process of filling the spoon with water, shaking and turning off the water for a time in the orthodox style of placer pan mining, the residue was submitted to Judge Hunt for examination. It was found to contain a " color " of gold, which the expert said would yield $15 of gold to a ton. The process of testing with a horn spoon is common among prospectors, but was somewhat of a novelty in a Court. The spoon is made from the horn of a beef, about nine inches long and four inches wide and shaped not unlike a wide Indian canoe. The horn is split and when heated is moulded into the desired form.

I'm jealous you have tractors to play with...

 DANG IT 1515 ART!! I have been avoiding using the GPS saying it was an uneccesary waste of time and added cost to an already over priced detector and was able to create about a thousand other reasons why the GPS was silly. BOY YOU SURE RUINED MY FUN.

 Now I have to admitt that I'm just technolgically dissadvantaged mentally.

it wasn't easy, but my garmin was turned off and the only thing i had was the trails on the zed... really tough to follow until i got the hang of it and even then it was still slow and go, its great for keeping track of the search area but id plan on it as a last resort for navigation.

the weather up in the sierra was great, it had rained the day before so the soil was a little damp. it was cloudy the first day, sunny and a little windy on the second and clear and calm on the third and in the high 60's all three days... perfect weather for walking in the hills and digging holes, my favorite time in the mountains. when i hit that little .38 i was running fine gold, normal, sen 16, tresh 15 smoothing off volume 12 auto tracking, it was noisy but this area is cleaned out so any signal is of interest and i was OK checking a hot rock here and there. the little picker was a sharper high low than the hot ground, all my small gold (thats all so far) has been a high low tone.

went up to the sierras for a few day of hunting to test out the zed after installing the new software update and getting my yellow ferrite. my take, the update made a noticeable difference in the behavior of the GPZ, in basic settings it was much more stable and slightly more sensitive, so much so that I was choosing to run zed a little bit hotter. the ground chatter was readable in a way thats hard to explain and tiny targets were popping, although some subtle signals may have been masked. still i was recovering some of the tinniest pieces of trash and bird shot yet and recovered a .38 gram piece down about 3 or 4 inches, that gave a clear signal after a little boot scrape from a very very pounded patch.

i almost had one little mishap while i was wandering through the forrest, as i was walking along stepping over dead wood and rocks it became apparent my pick was not banging on my leg. somehow it came unstuck from my holder and i didn't notice it falling off... so, s**t... i have no idea when or where it went and I've walked quite a ways since my last dig. luckily my ZED gps trails were on and after about an hour of walking with the gpz backwards and upside-down i was able to retrace my steps and with one last effort before daylight fell, found myself looking down to see my pick at my feet, I'm gonna paint the handle orange so its easier to find next time.

i don't really understand why minelab would keep the ferrite as a part of the ground balance procedure when it would make more sense to me if they just tweaked the software to ignore that ferrite mineral in the first place. again in my ignorance and if it can be explained in simple terms, what is the advantage in using the ferrite all the time and letting the GB software exclude that combination of minerals vs just writing it out by programing, because it seems the end result is the same and it would be simpler not to deal with the ring all the time.

I tried mine out in the CA motherload, and couldn't tell any noticable difference either.

thats 40% disappointing... at least the software update is easy to install, so this is a good start. 

My wife was in the jewelery business for years and the best way to get killed is to keep anything of value in a safe in your home. Bad idea, always use a safety deposit box.

i feel so bad for the guy, it just makes you sick. hope the guy who stole it is real stupid and trips up some how...

great video, thank you 

thanks, just understanding a problem better makes it easier to deal with.

I'm anxious for this update rumored for the gpz, my gut says its likely more than a minor tweak as that could have been done fairly quickly and with all the hype and energy that went into the initial release of Zed quickly followed by nothing at all... well something should have been in the works to ride the wave from the release of this new technology, Coils, the long life battery? Something to take advantage of the press while they have it. 

my hope is this release is something that was already in the works prior to the initial release at the beginning of the year, something intended all along. wishful thinking I'm sure, but this detector was engineered to upgrade, the initial release seems fairly basic in its extraordinary way and something surely must follow?

tortuga, i thought it was a wedge for a minors pick to hold the handle to the pick head, the curve is the thin side. I've had some old picks around as a kid and they had similar wedges, but you could also be right a dimple for the set screw in a plane blade could look like that, this would have been a curved gouge if it came from a plane.

Yup, andesites and basalts plus moaning/groaning in the alkali. Yet nowhere so far in my experience to be more than an annoyance. The rocks tend to be surface or very shallow (though not always!) and the alkali areas I have done quite well in by just slowing way down.

yes every one has been boot accessible and for me its only been a few area of one mountain thats given me trouble, there are just to many of these andesites in one place and the high low pitch is constant while my coil is in motion. this has to be some of the worst ground anywhere and I'm not experienced enough to deal with it.

I like your summer wrap-up a lot better than mine and although a little embarrassed with my tiny gold, i did love every minute of the hunt. Lunk you are an inspiration and seeing how you magically pull the yellow stuff gives me hope that someday (next summer) i'll learn enough to find a little more, WTG. 

some of my hard earned trash...

most of the time Zed runs really good and when there is a little salt groan it really does not bother me that much. there are a couple of places where i haven't figured out how to deal with the hot rocks in the high sierra. its a green rock and i'm finding it mostly on the hillsides where the top soil is washed away, it gives me a clean high/low target response when the coil crosses a rock. large boulders give a very broad high low and are easier to identify as a hot rock, only a few areas have enough of these rocks to be  a problem so when I hit a patch i just move on. I've tried ground balancing on top of them and can only quiet the target pitch a little for a very short time, it seems to come right back.

condor, nice work and very nice nuggets. thanks for the report on your settings, i have been running my threshold very low, now i'm going to try lowering it all the way down. I've also been running with audio smoothing off, were you using any smoothing? difficult? high yield?

quite a nice lump in that scoop chris, i'm going to have to give the rake some more time.

went out to the gold fields last week, but i didn't use it much, last couple of weeks I've had some tendinitis in my right elbow and it kind of hurt to try and swing the zed with one hand and use the rake with the other. the little i did use it, the rake seemed to work if the trash was on the surface or near the surface and not to many things were blocking the way. on one spot down in some old ground sluice workings i hit a strong signal that seemed to loud to be anything other than trash, i jammed the little rake into the area and came up with two square nails stuck to the magnets.

also this trip i did a lot of walking and i like to use the guide stick with the zed, it was inconvenient to carry the rake, pick and swing the zed, so i wound up not bringing it with me much. if i had stayed and worked a small area at a time i think it would have been more useful, also the area i was in had a lot of big rocks and this little rake would be better out in the desert where things are more open, or in the washes where rusted tin has polluted and concentrated in smaller but good trap locations.

hope that helps, clark

i already spent the quarter...