Bishop

Nice. are you using the 2300 or monster more often.

anyone else wear there coil cover out yet? the 6k covers are way to soft and thin. i think i read, maybe here somewhere. that they epoxied a kind of thin tough plastic? maybe something like Formica to the bottom of the coil cover. does anyone know what that material was called. i need some for my next coil cover.

i have only seen 2 bears in the wild and would mess my pants if i saw a grizzly. if i was hunting up there i would have at least my 30/06 with me, i don't think a pistol would do the job. nice gold.

thanks for the comments on the housing. i think i may have worried some of you with that. yes it would be a bit extreme selling and going full time. im 90% sure ill stay with the plan of working till 55. there are bad days at work when i stop and look around and think, why am i still doing this. im actually very cautious and calculating when making retirement plans. it is well thought out and wont be short funded. if anything, i worry ill die with a bunch of cash left over as i really don't spend that much money. yes, expensive health problems could come up later in life. i like my house, but ill likely sell it and get a smaller place when i retire. home prices have spiked, but there are a few spots that i have been keeping an eye on that are somewhat reasonably priced. mostly due to being away from the city, and i like that. i really like spring valley just down the road from Mayer. Wilhoit has some good prices. but im a little worried that this area could burn up fast in a fire. Yarnell, i had a friend that i would visit there and it was/is a very nice area. he ended up losing his place to the big fire.

i was thinking of posting something similar to this, a retirement post. so im happy to see your post here. early retirement is something i have been aggressively saving for the last 20 years. im 50 now, i was planning to retire at 55. i have run the numbers and if i sold the house, i could retire today and go full time beeping and let my 401k (old man money) grow for the next 10 years. its funny how material possessions can hold a guy back from doing what he wants to do. however if i wait 4 1/2 years till im 55 the pension kicks in and the taxes/money works out much better and i could keep the house and all the crap, that i really dont need. for me, as far as where to go? the bradshaws are in my back yard and i know them well. so there is that. the outback would be interesting, maybe the mother load in cal or northern nevada. or drop nugget hunting and pick up beach hunting. the treasure coast Florida or waikiki. after thinking it over, a lot. i think being a snowbird might be best. 5th wheel toy hauler, wherever the weather is nice. right now im looking closely at what the market/fed is doing. with a recession likely on the way and inflation out of control. im stockpiling cash and jamming as much as i can into the market.

crack vac, mac vac. its a leaf blower screwed on a 5 gallon bucket with a vacuum hose on the side. basically a gas powered shop vac. not to hard to build them for about 150 bucks, or buy one from the mining shop for 500. comes in handy for cleaning bedrock, i also use the blower on my dry washers.

thanks. that Honda is a goat. will go up almost anything. the engine braking going down steep inclines is amazing. only bad thing i can say about it is its a little spooky on uneven ground, haven't put it on its side yet. it was that or a quad, and this has lots of cargo room. can pack 2 beepers, cooler, dry washer and gas crack vac easy.

yesterday i got out with the 6k for a 4 hour hunt on an old patch i found 27 years ago or so and was able to find an extension of it. got 4 for the day.the biggest on on top was the last one of the day. the other nuggets in the pic are recent finds. mostly with the 6 but a few crumbs with the monster. a lot of my hunts only seem to be 1 or 2 bits and that's it. the 2nd pic is me looking rough after a hot hunt. my buggy, set up for prospecting.

size #7.5 bird shot is the cheapest, most commonly used shot. i don't think it was purposely done by minelab, but maybe some kind of happy accident that the stock 6k 11 inch coil seems to have a harder time hearing them (unless flattened out) in the ground. or air testing them. i never thought i would say it. but i don't need more sensitivity with the 6k. 5x10 might be nice though for poking in cracks and shrubs.

very cool. sounds like you are living the dream. it seems like you left Meadview just as the weather is getting nice and going off to the cold of Montana. was it the wind that had you pack up and move or just wanting to get a early start in Montana. i am thinking of doing something similar in a few years, but with a small toy hauler as i know that camping in a tent with high winds can be rough.

that last pic of the gold. it looks like 2 different patches. the one on top looks like a bit more silver in it, electrum maybe? and the lower pic smaller bits, but more pure or maybe a bit more copper in it. last weekend i found 3 and my smallest bit yet with the 6k 11 inch, less than a grain,like .8 had me laughing as i could not believe that that coil could beep that small. no pic as i gave it away. that 11 inch is more than sensitive enough for my use.

just a quick shout out to clay. with your cds and websites, The Diggings and mylandmatters and your sharing of knowledge of all things mining claim related. its helped me find some of that elusive open ground that's out there and stopped me from claiming some areas that would have been a real headache to deal with. thank you for what you do.

nice finds. really like that last pic with the flow lines. i cant help but think of all the hot rocks and iron stones i have dug up and tossed out of washes over the years. must have been a few space rocks in the bunch. Franconia, gold basin, Willcox and Holbrook have all been on my bucket list for years. i really should do a dedicated Meteorite hunt, but the bits of gold have me chasing them instead.

old trash is a good sign. if the wash wasn't trashy, do you think the nuggets would still be there to find? some detectorists give up fast in junky areas. im more concerned if a wash is devoid of (old) trash targets, cleaned out.

nice nugget. im the guy that bought your 5000. found a 1.6 gram nugget with it, then sold it and got the 6000. i think you will really like the 6000.

seems like a easy question, but its some what involved. do you coin or jewelry hunt? if you get the Equinox 800, you are more than likely going to want the small coil, i think its $180 for the coil. so add that in. as for finding small bits of gold, on bedrock, not for deep areas. i think the monster with the small coil, that it comes with has a slight advantage. but the Equinox has better discrimination that could be useful in junky nugget areas. you have the Gold Bug 2, its a good beeper. its kind of like a stick shift truck vs the monster is more like an automatic. if you can find someone that has one that you can try, it would be best. i will say that the monster almost takes the thinking out of detecting, you aren't interpreting the the threshold like you are with the gb2. on top of that, it depends on what region/area you are going to use the detector. i have heard some say the monster or vlfs will not be good, say in the mother load of California. so find out what others are using in your area.

i had to find all the different containers i squirreled away and i sill missed one. pictured is 510 grains, 1.10 ounce. maybe another 30 grains in the other container. also there is more but i have a partner that i have been doing a gold split with. the fine stuff on the left was part of an experiment with the gold monster. detecting bedrock washes that had a lot of bird shot trash in them and sucking up the targets with a gas powered vacuum and then running that through a dry washer. most 5 gallon buckets had 3/4 to 1 gram gold and an oz of lead per bucket. it worked well, imagine sucking up 100 targets or more an hour. but i had to stop, as carrying a full bucket around was making my sciatica act up. it was an interesting year in that i found 3 gold veins shedding small nuggets. one is on a club claim and 2 are on open ground, but hard to get to. not sure what to do about them as i don't know much about hard rock mining. looking forward to 2022 with the 6k.

good post. hopefully it keeps someone out of trouble. i am impatient. sometimes i rush to get things done, things like slapping the hitch on the ball and then driving my sxs onto the trailer, only to find its not hooked on. this happened last week. i now know how these vertical scratches get on tailgates.

i beeped these a long time ago. i believe these are natural lead/silver nuggets. the pictures cant seem to show the wire structure i can see in a loop, also they have been rolling around in a wash, so they are beat up. also i have a small collection of copper nuggets one of them still on the host rock vein. lead,silver,and copper all oxidize and don't last long. the little .77 gram nugget is from San Domingo, found yesterday.

killing it up there. going to start a gold rush or something.

not to much of a big deal for me, ill straighten it out maybe once per hunt. however, if you use the wireless headphones be careful with that charging cord, as mine just stopped working. i had an extra power cord so not a big deal either.

i was out yesterday morning. its a strange thing here, when the temperature drops and you are used to 105 or hotter and it was about 68 and i felt cold. i don't think i could do the Alaska cold. good job, nice nuggets.

i have not done too much testing with the 6k. i got it out of the box and into the field and have not looked back. as for Normal vs Difficult Timings. in Normal i have have found myself digging hot ground targets then switching to Difficult, and the target disappears. i now hunt mostly in Difficult, every location is different. manual when i can, a bit more sensitive, i think? instead of using a U.S. Quarter, might i suggest lead. it often sounds very similar and preforms very much like gold. i might have to do a bit of testing myself.

im really surprised by the poll numbers. the amount of hunters that don't wear headphones. 12 percent use the built in speaker? your missing a lot of targets. i would say 20 percent or more. the small stuff, more importantly the bigger, deeper stuff. the kind of target/sounds that just make the threshold rise, like, maybe there's something there, i give it a bit of a scrape and its a target that i would not hear without headphones on. not to mention the rear facing speaker, on a mellow target when trying to recover it. the only detector i don't use headphones with is the gm 1000, no threshold.

wow, that's really nice. someones going to ask. so i will, how deep on the big one.