sevastras

 

Does somebody go out and restock that burn barrel area--it has got to be the most pounded area in the Rye Patch.  

Not unless they are digging down 8-10 inches and wedging them between the shale and then figured out how to replace the dirt in a manner that looks undisturbed.    All with caliche attached.  

 

Sevastras..congrats..I took training with Gerry there also and found gold but with an EQ 800. My question to you is, " what area of the country were you having "trouble" in"? Where I live, there are a multitude of "hot rocks" which always caused me trouble... and still do with the EQ800 so I sometimes have to go to single frequency. What did Gerry recommend for when you have trouble please? What settings did he say might work in that situation on you 6000?

That was in Idaho.  The issues I was having was just trashy and was not suited for the 6000.  The 800 with a 6" coil was a better fit because of the smaller area and discrimination/identification.  Unless I wanted to go around and clean up all of the trash, there really isnt a way to take the 6000 through that specific area.  As far as the 6000 and hot rocks, from what I understand, the 6000 does a pretty good job of getting rid of those on its own.  The machine is really a lot more simple than the 800.

I purchased the GPX 6000 from @Gerry in Idaho a few months back and had only taken it out once for about 45 minutes and had to put it away because it was screaming at me due to iron scattered everywhere. Fast forward to this past weekend, I went down to Rye Patch to @Gerry in Idaho's training to really get out and try this thing out.  I ended the trip with 8 pieces totaling 3.7 grams, cleaned.  The biggest piece was pretty cool so I am including pictures of both sides of that one, 1.5 grams cleaned.  All 8 were found right around the burn barrel area. Thank you to Gerry and all of his staff for a great time and knowledge! @Lunk  @afreakofnature and the rest of the team.

I will give my perspective, being I first picked up a metal detector in March.  I purchased an 800 just to find cool stuff and hopefully something of value.  I kind of equate the beginning of my metal detecting as someone who buys $1 lottery tickets, probably not going to win that $5000 but there is that glimmer of hope of doing so.  I have found some fun things and enjoyed being out and alone in my own head.  My next purchase was probably premature, because I didnt have a full grasp of how to work the 800 or metal detecting in general.  As we say in my line of work, you dont know what you dont know.  So the Excal Il has about 20 hours on it(it should get more this winter), but I probably jumped the gun a bit on that purchase.

Then I went to Gerry's training at RP this springish with the thought in my head, I am not really looking for gold, I just want to learn the 800 better. I did learn a ton about the 800 and machines in general.  BUT, then I kind of got the bug a little and after a few months of deliberation purchased the 6000.  I have exactly 3 hours on the 6000 while owning it for a couple of months.  It isnt that I dont want to take it out or it is too confusing, I just havent had the time because I am busy with the things that actually afford me the ability to purchase almost $10k in machines my first year in.  I have dedicated some time to go to Gerry's training in Nov down at RP not just to learn the machine, but to get some of what I paid for, time to myself in my own head.  

So to answer your question, I buy the best machine I can afford to give me the best chance at success for when I do go out.  To define that success, pickers are just fine as long as I am finding something and am getting that time to just do what I want to do when I want to do it without worrying about anything else except maybe my next meal or next beer.  That may change as I get more time to go out, but for now, 1 more than I get is what I really want.  I think I read somewhere on here about Irish miners, "Never leave a mine until you have dug at least one more foot"  or something like that(I have started reading this forum from the back toward the front cover to cover, so who know when and where that quote was).  That is me and time, darkness and bugs are my biggest enemies.  

42 minutes ago, nebulanoodle said:

I can’t be the first one to think this… but doesn’t that OKM thing seem like the scammiest scam that could ever be scammed up? What is the deal?!

Buy one and do a review for us 😉

9 minutes ago, SeaScene said:

https://www.kellycodetectors.com/okm-exp-6000-professional-plus-metal-detector

Yikes!!!   And still there are 30,000 reviews of buyers

Im sure the 30,000 reviews are for Kellyco and not the 6000.  

I would imagine an OKM eXp 6000 should work?  But if a 7000 is too expensive then the OKM is way too much. On the other hand, 20 ounces of gold would pay it off. 
I would defer to others with more experience, as I have never actually used an OKM but their claims on the website and the few reviews do seem impressive. 
Another option is to give me the exact coordinates and I will report back on if there is any gold. 😁

I was at the training and have to say that it was pretty impressive.  I only got to swing one for about 20 minutes or so and only found a piece of bird shot but the ease of use, weight and what I saw from the performance has definitely got me thinking about one.  I ended up with 5 pieces with my 800 @Gerry in Idaho @Lunk thanks again for the great weekend.

That would be over $10,000,000 in gold, buy the most expensive set up possible and hire a crew! If it is actually there of course.  I would wait until the water goes down later in the summer and wade.  Also, knowing your area pretty well, it isnt too far until you hit pretty solid rock on the bottom of any of those creeks so I doubt much depth would be needed at all.  I would bet on gold stashes in the lava fields before the creeks, but I would break an ankle or get bit by a snake before I found anything.

13 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Personally, I think concretions look just fine the way they are. There is rarely anything thing inside that is any better than the outside.

That goes for most of the rocks that show up in the Rock ID category on this forum. Why is hitting a nice looking rock with a hammer the first impulse?????

Very small gold scattered throughout a host rock that isn't solid quartz.......I will definitely be tempted, however.

Because to me it is just a rock.  If it were a ring, a silver coin or a petrified alien, I would be much more excited about it.  To me, it might as well be a beanie baby.  If it has value to someone else, I would sell it, if not the dog can play with it.

14 minutes ago, DDancer said:

Concretion, you can see the layering in the pic's and the grainy structure of sediment.  As Jeff said sometimes they can sound off depending on how much iron is concentrated in them.

So hit it with a hammer?

@Steve Herschbach One more for you.  This one has been kicking around my house for years because it looks weird( a turd emoji shape).  I also figured it was iron, but does not read anything on the Nox.

12 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Looks like a waterworn piece of vesicular basalt, not a meteorite.

That makes sense with the iron content.  Thank you for the help!

Good morning!

Hoping for a little help with this rock.  I found it with my Excal in the Boise river(South West Idaho).  It was a faint dull sound with the Excal so I picked it up and tossed it in the bag hoping for some gold after I rinsed the sand off later.  No signs of gold, but it is quite odd.  Got the Equinox out at home and it reads -6 to -8 but faint.  Maybe a meteorite of sorts?  It was in an area of the river that has a fairly strong constant flow.  Approximately 58g and 6cm x 3.5 cm x 2cm height.

Appreciate any help!

On the Minelab website is a find of silver bars with the CTX 3030 in Mexico with the possibility of it being Spanish.  Value is estimated at over $100k USD.  https://www.minelab.com/community/news?article=289984

I wouldnt turn that over to Mexican police or government and I sure as hell wouldnt turn it over to Spain.  

I have however lost sleep over how I would get it back to the US.🤷‍♂️

(I have concluded that I would higher a private jet for the $20k or so it would cost)

12 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

I like how you bolded the lead phrase when you quoted me but basically ignored the rest of that sentence which basically addresses the situation in your news clipping...

I don’t know if EMI signaled the imminent failure that resulted in the stray voltages that caused the cattle to become ill, but I did say that would be one of the cases where the power companies would care.  Thanks for cherry picking a portion of my statement out of context to use it to make a point I already made.  Weird.

 

They are not the same thing but often EMI is generated as a result of the component failure that would cause the stray voltage issue.

But the opposite is not necessarily true.  EMI can be generated by electrical equipment that is functioning perfectly fine.  In that case the electric company isn’t going to do anything about that just because it interferes with your metal detector or AM radio.  That was my original point.

Relax, you simply reminded me of a lawsuit that I find particularly interesting.  If I could remember where I read about ghost sightings being attributed to poor electrical and high amounts of EMI messing with peoples brains, I would have added that article. 

13 hours ago, Badger-NH said:

 

Are stray voltage and EMI the same thing? 

 

They can be.  EMI can be cause by the powerlines, cell towers, lightning, sun flares among other things.  Interestingly enough, there is actually an "emissions" of sorts on manmade EMI causing things.  

22 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

I think Mul

First of all to answer one of your later questions first, utility companies do not care much about EMI unless it is signaling an imminent component failure or if one of their industrial customers complains that the EMI is causing some sort of plant operations issue.  Other than that, it is just a something detectorists have to deal with.

I think the issue with Equinox is that Multi IQ is the susceptible to EMI in general because the input signal filtering has to allow a wide frequency bandwidth of signals into the signal processing "circuitry".  To mitigate EMI the steps you should take are (some are obvious, I you probably already know this):

1. Noise Cancel
2. Ground Balance (technically doesn't mitigate EMI but ground noise)
3. Lower sensitivity as necessary.  If you feel you have to lower sensitivity TOO much then:
   1. Try increasing recovery speed.
   2. Switch to another Multi IQ mode (modes which use higher weighted frequencies tend to be less susceptible to power line/transformer noise like the "2" modes and Gold modes, sometimes the Beach modes are also less susceptible even though they have lower frequency weighting - there are no absolutes so try all the modes to see how they do - remember you have to noise cancel each mode separately)
   3. Switch to single frequency (higher frequencies tend to be less susceptible to power line/transformer noise, remember to noise cancel for each frequency you try out).
   4. Notch offending TIDs (kind of a last ditch effort if you simply want to try detecting the site)
4. Visit the sites at different times of day.  Sometimes the noise is more intense during a normal working day and sometimes weather/humidity causes more arcing an EMI.

HTH

Pretty sure Idaho Power takes EMI seriously after losing a $17.5 million lawsuit

-https://www.emfacts.com/2005/11/rf-on-powerlines-175-million-court-case/

"

TWIN FALLS — A local dairy that claimed its cows were harmed by stray electrical currents has been awarded nearly $17.5 million by a 5th District Court jury.

The lead attorney for the dairy said that, to his knowledge, the award is among the largest ever in Twin Falls County and is also a record for so-called “stray voltage” cases in the United States.

Following a 10-week trial, the 12-member jury Tuesday found that antiquated Idaho Power Co. equipment caused cows at the dairy owned by Mike and Susan Vierstra to become sick and reduced milk production over a period of several years.

"

At the top of the page is downloads and then if you go to books, Steve has lots of useful books for free there.  @Gerry in Idaho has written some excellent articles as well that he has on his website.  It will take a good bit of practice and education.  If it were as easy as buying a metal detector and getting out there, all of the surface gold would be gone.  If you look at places like the Rye Patch in Nevada that has surface gold, it has been thoroughly detected for decades but still produces.  

I was lucky enough to pick up a Coiltek 14x9 about 2 weeks ago.  While I am brand new to metal detecting and still a month out from taking it down to the beach and detecting in the surf, I am impressed with it.  Like others have said, it is heavy, but I think that is the point.  I have taken in down to the river just to play with it a little and familiarize myself with it.  It feels nice in the strong current and is easier to work than the 11" that comes with the 800.  On the dry sand, I dug a few beer cans at a depth of 18"-24" deep.  The old church key ones so, probably pre 60s.  

I really purchased it for the beach/surf, so I will give a more detailed report of it in about 5-6 weeks and compare it with the 11" coil and a stock Excal II.