TAZMAN1972

Rick, I guess the nuggets i found in one of my spots would be called Chevron then. I have only found them in that ONE particular spot in CA. Have you ever found any other Chevron gold in CA? I wonder if all gold was deposited as or grew as crystals or does some of it just have the "impression" or "negative" of the rock that it was touching?

Lucky, Those are some special nuggets. I like the spaghetti one the best though! I have actually found a 4 or 5 that look a little like the one on your tailgate, not so big, but i found them in one spot in the West slope of the Sierra range about 4500 ft elevation. Is the one on the tailgate considered crystalline gold or Chevron gold?

Well, I used the whink on my large nugget. The 1st pic is after about 48 hours. (the pics may be backwards) I did this in steps. I started with an hour, then 8 hours, then 24 hours etc. I took it out and gently toothbrushed it each time. I did find that once I started I really had to keep going because the in-between natural and clean (1st pic) just wasn't doin it for me. I am really happy with the final result which took about 72 hours. I really had no idea how rough it was going to be and how many small pieces of quartz their was under the covering of DARK red. This nugget is really neat to look at under the magnifying glass! Not sure if you can zoom in on it on the forum though. Thanks for the help with the Whink, I really like the stuff!

Not so little for the large one. Nice golden gold!

i can see them too! I also see a gorilla head with teeth bared looking left. The dark shadow is the eye sockets.

Thanks for the nice comments. Scott, the two large pieces were found about 100 feet apart so I don't think they went together but the top 2 and bottom left were all found close to each other. I just tried to put them together anyway just now. No go but good thought! Until next time!

Rye Patch gold is always real pretty. It has been too long since I have been there. Glad to see you had such a fun and productive time!

I had my Sunday free so I went up to the Sierra to try to get one more trip before the snow starts. 5 hours total driving and 6 hours of detecting... Priceless! I have been detecting alone since the summer. I like not having any interference from another detector in the area but there is just something missing when you have to hike, eat lunch, detect and, in the case of this trip, fist pump over a nice find...by yourself. That might just be me though. It took about 3 hours to find the first one which was the largest at 2 dwt. the total for the 4 pcs was 0.2 ozt. The last 3 were all within about 20 feet from each other and the 2nd largest was literally only about 1" down. I think the one on the bottom left looks like a Tyrannosaurus Rex skull! I always look for shapes in my nuggets like some people look for shapes in the clouds! I didn't find the nickel on this trip but I did find it not too far from this spot. I was swinging for hours with not a single target and this nickel was all by its' lonesome! I suppose a miner or logger dropped it on accident. It was a beautiful day and I was really glad to have made it up there.

Thanks Strick! I went and bought the Whink. I took a before and after pic of some smaller "ugly" nuggets that I always wanted to clean up better. I know, I know, no such think as ugly gold but it is all relative right? Anyway see the before and after pics. You may notice one of them is missing between the two pics, I always thought it was gold but it was lead. I am really happy with how it turned out. I am thinking of putting the big one in the Whink for a little bit and see how it goes. I will do before and after pics again.

Wow, beautiful piece of gold with a lot of character!

Tortuga, I didn't see that you asked about my settings. I run it wide open. High Yield x Normal x Sensitivity @ 20 x Volume at 7 with stock headphones or 14 with speaker x Audio Smoothing OFF x Threshold 23 x Ground balance Auto. I used to run in manual but I can't seem to find fault with auto so there you go! When it gets too noisy, on occasion, i put it on Difficult but I don't touch anything else. It is really like swinging my GMT with all the blips beeps and whining but the real targets seem to scream out. I have not actually found any new spots since getting the 7000. I have just been going back to the places I have been getting gold for the last 4-5 years, that had gotten hard to find gold at, and they seem to produce almost like new. It may sound backwards but I figure once things slow down again I will try the opposite approach and try running quiet. I have actually been switching to difficult when I swing over a target that is deep (doesn't sound at the edge of the coil). There has been more than one target that was so faint I am not sure I would have recognized it the first time if I had been running in difficult.

I will try it on some smaller nuggets that have rust and caliche before i even think about trying it on the big one. I will post some before and after pics of the smaller nuggets (Really just large flakes). This may take me a few weeks.

Don't fret kiwi, She wasn't using it and I still have the Whites GMT. It is a bit more her size anyway. Thanks for the nice comments!

Went up to the Plumas National Forest yesterday. My buddy has a very cool Ford military jeep. The thing goes anywhere and we needed it to get where we went. We found 2 small hardrock mines. Both were collapsed. One must have been large enough for rail and mine carts because I found a narrow gauge rail spike. Also found some rock drills/chisels and the sledge hammer head that was used with them hidden under a ledge of a very large boulder. There was so much ferrous trash that I didn't even turn on the 7000 all day. I used my Whites GMT and just looked for large ferrous targets and small non-ferrous. Not sure what the loop is for but it looks hand forges along with what looks like a hand forged door handle? The curved parts are SQ like a sq nail and they are bent over in opposite directions. I thought is was a door handle because it has shoulders that look like they were meant to only allow it to be hammered in part way. Then the two "nails" were bent over like a door nail. "As dead as a doornail"? That's my guess. It was an awesome day, 72 degrees F and sunny, no breakdowns with the jeep and some cool finds! Any one else have a guess about the doorhandle or the "loop"?

What I would really like is if I could just accentuate the high ridges of gold that stand out in front of the dark like tiger stripes. Is Wink like CLR but a bit stronger? I never heard, does everyone think that it is ironstone covering it? There is just a little bit of iron stained quarts on it too. I also realized I put the weight wrong on it. It is actually 0.69 ounce. The next smaller one with the quartz is the half ouncer.