nebulanoodle

So that is in a sense "black sand," but what you have there is a quartz rock containing a high concentration of iron minerals. Sounds like it's magnetite, a very "hot" iron mineral and a very common one in the goldfields. It is also true that gold may be found nearby as it is an indicator of mineralized rock bodies in the area that gold may have hitched a ride up with. There is a saying that goes, "gold rides an iron horse." Meaning essentially that gold occurs often in setting where iron occurs. They are both heavy minerals, and heavy minerals in general are an indicator of possible gold concentrations, but iron is much more common with the planet Earth than gold is. So there is going to be a lot more iron found than gold. But it looks like you're on the right track in that area. It's specimens like that in your photos that sometimes are found to have gold in them. I'd say stick to it. You'll probably hit a heck of lot more iron nodules/hot rocks before/during/after finding some gold. But this is the labor of the detector prospector. Remaining diligent in detecting habit regardless of nuisance targets. Because you only find gold if you dig at targets, so take every non-gold find as a check-up that your detector is still working and that your attention span hasn't wanned and you will eventually swing that coil over something exciting 😉

It is what it is.

Well I would agree with you on the 90 degree X pattern, seeing as the X you speak of above is about a 120/60 degree X 🤣

Hey! Thanks! Pretty interesting stuff.

Ah! It seems my lack of attention to detail brackets me into a: No sunbaker! As I did not see the gold before I disturbed it, but the specimen tells the story of presenting the opportunity to have. ...at the end of the day, it's gold! 😏

I nabbed a pretty neat find the other day and I think it was sunbaker... Is it only a sunbaker if you saw it before you disturbed it or is it still a sunbaker if the rock that it's lodged in tells a sunbaker tale? Every dirt dog can tell what half of a float rock was in the ground and what half was face up. This is a rock with a nugget lodged in it that tells one of those sunbaker tales. Is it a sunbaker? -OR- Was it a sunbaker? -...OR- Is it not a sunbaker? It's wedged in there really good! I haven't tried to yank it out because it's so unique as a sort of specimen of a bedrock nugget trap. I've picked at it and got no movement, plus it survived getting tossed around in my pack on my hike. An interesting find too! One of those days, patch hunting a new area (this new area hasn't met the three nugget threshold). All I had in my pocket was trash and my nug jug only held my test nugget. But lo, another signal! Few and far between, they are out here. Giving the spot a boot scrape moves my target. Probably surface trash, a bullet. Gotta know. These 4 rocks. These 3. These 2. That one... it's not a hot rock? Turned in hand to reveal a little smooshie stuck in a crack! WHOA!!! My strongest theory is that this "specimen" is a remnant of the bedrock that trapped some gold, all the bedrock having been eroded away. The gold since washed down the hillside and into the main drainage, perhaps all the way into the basin... But hopefully it has only travelled just past where I stopped detecting for the day and I get a whopper bonanza another day! 😂 Yeah right.

While awaiting my plexiglass that I ordered off Amazon, I found an alternative for my idea since I was chomping at the bit to get out and mark some targets! I found an old plastic cutting board/sheet and cut it into little 1.5" x 6" strips. The one I had happened to be a bright green color and it worked fairly well. I started at the site of the last nugget I found on a previous trip and bound them up in the branches of nearby creosote bushes to line out an area to thoroughly detect. I only got two signals while I examined this area and neither of them ended up being within the area I marked off to search, but no more than 20 feet outside of it! Anyways, it was nice to be able to just toss down a flag on the signal and walk away, only to come back when I'm tired of staring at the ground and have some fresh, sweet, juicy signals to dig up. I chose to go freestyling around in an attempt to expand the patch to the south and no longer did I have the patience to mark my signals. I dug each one, but left a flag on top of the hole after recovering the nugget to see if they would reveal for me any more insight into this deposit. The clues are there, now it just requires a bit more work to see if they'll produce any more golden tones for me!

I just interpret the strong gusts that seem to point me in a new direction as mother nature giving me the pointy finger at some gold I would have otherwise walked right past and I keep on going, wondering all the while if she was actually protectively turning me away from some nuggets! 🤔😂

Totally relate with you on that! Different detecting techniques=different detecting moods. I've been pretty curious lately about marking targets before I dig them in a patch clean up experiment. Thinking it will also force me to take the time to track off gps squares on the map of the area I just examined.

I'm imagining this device to produce for the user something like a highly interactive VR type of GPR video in time with metal detection but almost in a way that those super fancy stabilizing binoculars work to smooth out the shake that I can imagine would be inevitable in a hand held device. By interactive, I mean that you can very comfortably, reasonably, and with much ease, be able to visually search the depths of the ground beneath the [search coil?] in the display when a target response is located. Maybe the display is passive as well! A VR headset that you put on for target recovery??? It'd go like this... wOoo Hooo... "Oh a target! I will now visually search and identify the size, shape, and depth of it." **Manipulates controls of state-of-the-art, cutting edge, advanced, Jetsons Treasure Seeker** "Ah, I see it must be a nail due to the straightness and dimensions!" --OR-- "Ah, it appears to be the shape of a stone! Perhaps a specimen? I will dig this up."

I ended up blowing something in my 5k. Pep Boys got me back in business. In my experience, the GPX is real touchy when it comes to keeping up on the fluids.

Can't wait to see this technology applied to treasure hunting. It must be coming up here in this century right???

Excellent idea! A HUGE THANK YOU!!! I've been feeling quite hung up on what to mark targets with lately. It's all about staying in that smooth groove while detecting. I was just about prepared to buy some rolls of pink flagging and just tie a length of it around a rock on top of targets. But I like the idea of using something rigid to mark with. I'll try cutting a sheet of solid colored plexiglass into multiple 1.5-inch wide "rulers" to squeeze between rocks over targets. Loving the technique.

You bet and you said it! Many thanks, and here's to the next ones! 🍺

I'd love to! Let me know when!

Here are a couple things I've run into detecting lately that I figured I could share here for some motivation! This first one comes from a patch where the trash is elusive and the hot rocks are warm at the worst. This one gram specimen is the first specimen I've ever found at this location. I found it detecting a small gully on a big hill sitting near the top of a cut bank about 2 feet above the surface of the bed of the gully. It was the first gold find on that particular outing and in an area near my main patch which I hadn't yet found gold, let alone detected much at all. What's more special about this little guy is that all I had found up to that point detecting new areas was trash (bullets and bits of steel). When I started detecting this gully, all was silent for about 20 minutes until I swung my coil over something that screamed really loud and sharp. After I moved it in one boot scrape into the gully, I knew it was going to be a .22 shell or some nice chunk of a bullet. But I gotta recover it right!? Whether it's just to remove the trash to clean the area up or to find out for sure if it's trash. Well, these finds are the most satisfying type! KNOWING I found trash and then somewhere along with all the nudging around I somehow managed to perform some alchemy and it turned the bullet into a nice little chunk of gold! So dig it all!!! Bringing me right into my next reality checker find! Back to a very old patch where there is a lot of old diggings, trash, and black hot-HOT rocks! Here I am on this trip, 13 hours of detecting, 0g of gold, 10oz of steel/aluminum/brass, and 50kg of HOT iron nodules kicked and/or tossed behind me until finally, I get back onto some gold missed by who knows how many enterprising prospectors. Now it's about enough to drive me mad and hopeless with that much skunk! Is my detector working? Yes, remember all the small bits of steel found at depth and how well the detector responds to air tests today. Is all the gold gone? No, you're still digging targets no one else has bothered with in old placer diggings that you've found gold in before. Should I stop digging at signals when I can see a hot rock sitting on the surface under my coil? No, what if it's masking a nugget! Well, it happened! I moved one of those hot rocks, still a signal... Another hot rock! I'll move it... Still a signal. Another hot rock!? ...finally 8 inches deeper into the hot rock hole and I'm dealing with a steady signal, no visible hot rocks, and not much hope. But out pops a little smooshed nugget! PERSISTENCE!!! Excitement, energy, and conversely, fatigue all culminating in this moment, I must still stick to SOP. Recheck the hole. STILL another steady signal. No way... YUP! Another gold find, same hole! I ask myself, "Can this hole go for three?" The hole responds with... well it doesn't respond... But if I wouldn't have moved those hot rocks, I would have never heard those little nuggets hanging out beneath them! And if I wouldn't have rechecked my hole, I would have left one behind. Could you imagine how it would have made that nugget feel, being unearthed for the first time in it's life and being left behind all alone! Stripped away from it's partner that got taken... Coulda been a shame. BUT IT WASN'T! Anyways! I'm looking at ~50 fun hours on my 14x9 Evo and I'm very happy with it! So here's a little Evo motto pic with about 3dwt of gold for everyone to enjoy!

Dang... He oughta just re-work some silver around it just like before! What's done... It did look spectacular before cleaning...

Ah, nothing quite like a wholesome story of kindness and good fortune! Thanks for sharing!

Whoa! Love that bad fish looking iron!!

Wow! Very cool stuff! All this recent talk about meteorites on here lately seems to be giving me a slightly familiar feverish feeling 🤪

Wow! Imagine what kind of cost you'll be looking at to have a processor that intelligent in a detector!!! Worth it. Amazing.

Awesome results!!!

Very fine looking workmanship! Admiring the constuction of the digger head.

To the OP, I'm not extremely far from you if you're in LA. Maybe we can meet up if no one else is closer and willing and we can see if we could collaborate a better idea of what might be going on. Shoot me a PM if you're interested, though we do have some rain coming I believe...

Thanks guys!