mn90403

Congratulations on that first gold ring. I've seen a page of jewelry marks some place. Let me try to get it. I looked up the one I was thinking about and it is for silver and you have gold so try this: http://university.langantiques.com/index.php/Category:Jewelry_Maker's_Marks Mitchel

Jason, You have asked for comments based upon government regulations and the effects that it has on the mining industry. Of course those are great and the basis for our lawsuits and objections to the BLM, Forest Service and other agencies cited. There are other, perhaps more controlling laws than those issued by the government. Those are the laws of economic reality (profit and loss). I started going to Gold Basin in 2011 to look for gold. My drive was from Santa Monica where I live and I made this trip several times. I joined GPAA and started hearing about the mining claims and regulations that controlled the land where I was prospecting. Miners seemed to be mostly against the BLM but I didn't know why. While taking this trip at odd times of the day and night I noticed that a place just off the interstate (Mountain Pass) was going 'gangbusters' with activity. Many new buildings were being made, earth was being moved and thousands of workers were all over Whisky Pete's at Stateline, Nevada. Something was being mined and I didn't know what it was. I didn't look it up to understand the project at the time. As it turned out the project was about rare earths. The project was Molycorp's Mountain Pass mine. It became a multi-billion dollar project to extract rare earth metals from deposits in San Bernardino County. Many of the deposits were on company land but there are also mining claims on BLM land surrounding the project. (I'm sure there is someone here who knows a lot more about this project than I do. They may have been an investor or a worker there.) The company was 'allowed' to make a massive project involving public and private lands as stated here: http://www.techmetalsresearch.com/2011/10/is-this-the-site-of-molycorps-new-heavy-rare-earth-prospect/ Why was this economically feasible at the time? There was a price bubble on rare earths. Prices were high. Supplies were stated to be low. Time to build a new mine. The budget says 'go for it' and we have investors! Fast forward to last year: http://www.hcn.org/articles/the-u-s-s-only-rare-earth-mine-files-bankruptcy The reasons the company went bankrupt was that more supplies of rare earths have been found, many of them are cheaper to extract, the prices for rare earths dropped even as they were building the new mine and engineers redesigned products that require the rare earths. This doomed the company and the mining project. Based upon everything I have read the company got all of the government approvals that it needed to mine on a very large scale but it was unsuccessful because the economic laws caused it to run out of money. In the end it did not make economic sense or cents!

Steve, Can you put this on your belt or pouch and still use a 7000? Mitchel

Lunkster, Does that make 4 ozt Quartzsite? Well done. Mitchel

I'm not going to get a second 7000 for my wife. Too bad about that Scott.

You must have seen these: http://www.rd.com/health/wellness/poison-ivy-home-remedies/ Also saw these: Comment from: adam,Published: April 12 Tooth paste. Apply 1 hour before bed let dry then cover. Shower to remove toothpaste in morning. My poison sumac was gone in 2 days. Comment from: Liane, 55-64 Female (Patient)Published: September 05 I have poison ivy in my garden at the cabin. I've had good luck with scrubbing my arms and any other areas I might have exposed with dish soap and cold water - as cold as you can stand. I got this advice from my plumber! It seems to work. I used some GooGone when I had it years ago.

Root, Can you tell us more in another thread? Can't imagine they would be drilling BART so close to the bottom. Mitchel

A calculation is made using the air/dry weight and then the weight of the specimen in water. This takes advantage of known specific gravities for gold and quartz by themselves. It is an estimate. Quartz and gold vary from place to place but it allows you to estimate the gold content. I used a more 'simple' method at the time I found it. I looked around for a piece of quartz that was about the same size. I weighed that and subtracted that weight from my specimen weight. It was within 5% of the later calculated value using this method. Specific Gravity Tests For Specimen Gold

Think about the gold vein they could be chasing!

Scott, I like the Ass but that big guy is going to kill him! I hope it doesn't have metal shoes. Mitchel

klunker, I was helping rusty. Now, you have taken my good and valuable info and spread it over your expenses and you want to charge me! I think this is a violation of some right I am supposed to have as it relates to theft of good and valuable directions and business advice. I choose to ignore your assessment but I still expect my 15%. mn90403

Tortuga, It was difficult to pinpoint with the 18, the 3030 and the pinpointer. Funny thing is that I have used it since I found it in training. I've taken it and some other gold and non-gold and covered them/hid them and had people swing on it with their coils and many can't tell which is the big gold. PI's get so loud that everyone thinks it is trash. I was told if I heard that big signal later in the day after many 50 cals I would have skipped this signal to. I was glad to find it about 9 AM in the morning on a cool day. Mitchel

There is hidden gold all over the west. Some from bank robbers. Some from hoarders. Some from miners. Pick up any book about the west and you can read a story about someone putting gold into the ground. Long before a gps gold was put back for you to find. Now, go find it. When you find some of it, send me my cut.

I have some magnets I use in my wire baskets that I use at the beach. They collect a lot of my trash and black sand. A good thing to do is coat them before use because they do rust. They are still useable but clean up is difficult on a rusty magnet. I use my clean strong magnets with the magnet sticks you can buy at Harbor Freight when hunting for meteorites on dry lakes.

Steve, Good story and most states in the west have some minerals to prospect. Try some of both. That is what I think this year. Gold Hound, Amazing stuff. I want some. Mitchel

Norvic, You are a good clue reader. You see what is in the clues and what is not. Are you sure you have not been to Arizona? Since no one else has 'chimed in' on this one I'll post a few pictures. If you look closely you can see the find/specimen is already in the picture. (Can you see it?) At the time I found this I only posted a picture of the find and it got put up on other forums. I haven't posted it on Steve's forum under 'best finds ever' threads but some here have seen it and hefted it. I was going to write an article about the find but didn't do it yet. The location was not shown as I was still checking the area for more for a few months. Only a couple of small nuggets were found other than the sunbaker I found before this one. A difference you may notice between this wash and the other one is that the cobbles in this wash had been locked into place for many years and they were also larger. I guess with those things being said I'll answer questions if anyone has any. This one will let you know where it is in the first pictures. Some color showing. Some water poured over it to remove dust. Cleaned not far from the hole. The specimen as it still is today. (8 ozt/20.5 ozt)

Norvic, Just for you. I did have a Garrett pointer. It started sounding off in the air in the hole. Same with the Minelab. I did have a couple of targets before this. I thought I left it in the final version. It was trash, a couple of 50 cals. Also, I didn't have this find in mind when I started the other one but similarities now compel me to tell this find story also. Mitchel

Several of you looked at my recent dig hole in Quartzsite. That thread is What do you think I found? http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/1514-what-do-you-think-i-found/ A couple of years before this hole and before I was on this forum of Steve's I was in a similar situation. I was in the Arizona desert on Thanksgiving Day a hundred miles north of Quartzsite. I had spent the night watching meteors in my Isuzu Trooper (I miss that SUV) near a wash/gully that I wanted to detect. When the sun came up in the morning I started again as I had done the previous year. This was now my 3rd or 4th trip. There have been many meteorites found in this area. I had found one on my first trip. It is a large strewn field that had been hunted for at least 10 years before I went there for the first time. In addition to the large number of meteorites in the area, there is also a lot of military trash in the form of 30 cal, 50 cal and the clips that held them as tanks and aircraft used the area for WWII training with Patton. When I got up from sleeping in the car I just started detecting. There was no one around (or at least within a couple of miles) when I dug a couple of trash targets. About 45 minutes into the hunt I got a signal and dug. I dug more and more and the hole got bigger. (At the time I was using a 5000 and I had recently bought a used 18" Nugget Finder coil. This was the first month I had used anything other than Commander coils on the unit. In the summer I had purchased a CTX 3030 and it was with me.) This hole got so big and I got so tired I had to take a break and go back to the Trooper about half a mile away and bring it closer to the hole. I got the 3030 and tried to use it as a pin pointer. It registered as a good target (not iron) but it didn't tell me where in the hole it was. I expanded the hole by lifting out the objects on the sides and the target was out of the hole. I didn't see it. What do you think I found? (I'll add the find pictures in a couple of days.)

Norvic (and others) I like the discussion that has evolved from my posting. It doesn't seem to be a hijacked thread. Keep up the discussion. Mitchel Condor, Your description about digging is a constant for me at the beach. The wet sand fills a hole faster than I can dig. Sometimes they are abandoned because I don't have my BIG scoop. I've broken several smaller ones. It was one of the reasons I left this hole the first time. I thought it was trash and I was willing to live with that determination until I thought about a deep target. This hole reminded me of another desert wash/gully from a few years ago. More on that on another thread. Some holes I wish I never started. But some beach detectorists find amazing things that are deep. Sometimes nuggets are found in deep washes but you are right ... more trash is there than gold. Mitchel

Norvic, I think the DNA of the CTX keeps it quiet on the beach and ignores hot rocks. I like it for those reasons. The CTX didn't 'see' the foil as it 'blended' into the ground/background ... or it fractured the signal so much it didn't seem like a target that it excels at such as coins, jewelry and steels. It is not a metal detector I will use for meteorite hunting because some of them imitate hot rocks. The 7000 is an excellent meteorite hunter. (That is how I got find of the month from Minelab!) The GB Pro will find them but you have limited coverage with the small coils. Mitchel

I'm somewhat convinced if you have gold in an area you will be able to find it with various settings from 5-20 on the sensitivity. I was working under some high power lines and had to go way down on everything but I was still finding trash, bullets, staples and wire. If there had been gold there I would have found it. Gold first ... settings next. As your friend did at 10.

Condor, Each day when you start, do you want to keep the settings from the previous trip? If you do stay under the 10 seconds. I have not timed the startup sequence at power on with the ferrite to know how long it takes of holding the button in but I would want to exceed 10 seconds when I start the day in a new location. Mitchel

Wow! Very eventful couple of days. WTG Robin. That girl sounds very Lucky.

Sad and glad realities await us if we are lucky enough to survive a premature end to our hunting days. Let's all hunt long and prosper. Finding is both luck and preparation. May we have both.

That is nice but it sure looks bigger than .597 grams!