Condor

BatterySpace.com in the San Francisco bay area has a package deal on the 5000mah batteries and charger which includes the cigarette lighter connection.  I think it was $49.00 for the charger and 8 c cell batteries.  I've bought a lot of Li-Ion batteries from them over the years, no complaints. 

I recently did an arduous prospecting hike on the N. Fork of the American River near Iowa Hill.  I was upriver about about 3 hrs from my truck.  I found a nice little sand spit in a steep canyon and set up my campsite.  The canyon was narrow and the afternoon breeze was picking up my little tent, so I thought to put a flat rock on the corner to anchor it.  I walked 10 ft to a rubble pile and reached down for a decent looking rock when I spotted movement out of my right eye (fortunately that's my good eye) about a foot and a half from my hand.  While my frontal cortex was trying to figure out what it was, my "lizard brain" assumed all executive function and commanded me to "get away from THAT"!  I was compelled to execute a difficult triple reverse crow hop.  Now I expect I would have garnered high marks owing to the degree of difficulty and a bonus for the colorful invective issued mid-flight, though the landing was a bit awkward, given the uneven ground and such.  In the outside world an "excited utterance" is quite prized.  It is one of the few exceptions to the "hearsay" rule in court.  It is thought that a statement made in the heat of the moment is more credible than one made after thoughtful deliberation.  With that in mind I can't be certain that this particular serpent was engaged in unseemly carnal knowledge with someone's mother, or that it had a fondness for oral sex with males, but I accused it of all this and more.  That little monster had allowed me to step over his little shelter and had lain there all the while I was setting up my little camp.  He never rattled until I was mid-flight. 

I probably run into half a dozen rattlers a year and I don't normally kill them, but this was an exception.  I just couldn't afford to share my little spit of land with a venomous serpent.  Just too risky given the distance to civilization and help.  He wedged himself into a crevice and wouldn't come out.  I decided to smoke him out with some dried brush.  Imagine trying to get that little pile lit without getting my hand near the crevice.  Got it lit and he made quite a fuss, but just wouldn't come out, so I added more wood and barbequed him place, I think.  He quieted down and I never saw a sign of him afterwards.   The next day as I was hiking up a steep ravine, I ran into his cousin.  I saw this one in plenty of time to avoid it, but it sure made a racket as I went past. 

Naturally, I was all goosey about where I was putting my hands and feet for the rest of the trip.  Saw one more dead one a few days later. 

Curious to see JP weigh in on this.  Will he be doing some field trials?

Hey Steve,
Did you ever get a chance to use the rocker? I am curious about the its efficiency on fine, flat gold. Also, what does it weigh?

Steve,

Do you think you can reach out to AKAU to post something about their plans for 2014?  Naturally curious about the gold split criteria.

Can the Deus handle gold prospecting too?

Steve,

I know you covered a lot of the same info in your comparison of VLF gold detectors, but please reiterate for the slow kid in the class.

I haven't done any coin and relic hunting, but might want to give it a try.  The conditions I see are:

Trashy, lots of iron and nails

Moderately mineralized ground, not city parks and such, but old desert settlements

Reasonably priced

Suppose you could only take one detector to such a location.  What would it be?

I forgot, I found this little guy in the wash gravels about 10 ft from the galena specimens.  It's really a tough walk, I wouldn't want to carry out 50 lbs of this stuff, I'll have to get my son the packhorse to tag along and do the heavy lifting.

You're both right.  Sooty black exterior on the weathered sections, bright shiny sliver on the broken pieces.  Now that I can see it in daylight, it's a lot clearer.  The photos won't do it justice, the shiny cleaved surfaces are tough to capture.  I took a picture of the pile of pieces that came from the center when I shattered it and the exterior.  It originally looked just like the Tombstone piece.

I think Chicken Miner has it.  It looks just like that.  It came from AZ, near Yuma the old Red Cloud Mine area.  Silver producing district. 

Steve,

This website doesn't like photo's with too high resolution.  I'm charging up the old trusty Nikon D70, hopefully, I can jigger the settings around to get a passible photo.  With my little pocket Nikon, the reflective surface of the rock is returning the flash and blowing out the contrast.  Maybe tomorrow I can take one with natural light and get the thing to work.  I left the detector in Yuma, so I can't do much to check the levels you describe.  Imagine a rock nearly as heavy as lead, about the size of a charcoal briquet, weathered with a sliica type coating, an  internal structure of black, shiny flaked crystal, that fractures like glass.  I found 2 of them in the space of 20 ft and quit digging blow out signals.  The area is AZ, within 30 miles of the Cargo Muchacho and Choclate Mountain ranges. 

Chris,

The rocks I found last week with the GB2 that after cleaning with acid I assumed to be ironstones.  Jet black, porus exterior, quartz intrusions, however; I showed them to my son today and they have 0 magnetic pull.  We then gave one a crack with the hammer and wow!  It fractured in dozens of pieces, the inside jet black, shiny cleaved plate like surfaces.  You can see tiny intrusions of quartz and other host rock.  My immediate thought is some type of lead ore, Its very heavy and very metallic to the GB2, but not magnetic.  Your thoughts and anybody else with similar experience. 

Much lighter, cooler, and roomier than jeans.  Very comfortable for AZ weather, though I suspect too light for colder climates.  I took an unplanned dunk in water to my waist the other day.  I hung the pants over a boat rail, they dried in about 20 minutes in 75 degree temps.  Duluth makes other work pants including jeans with the same gusseted crotch section, I haven't needed anything other than the "firehose flex" cargo style.

El Dorado Steve is right on. (Got a lot of Steve's on here)  After you make an initial purchase you will get an online discount coupon for either 20 or 25 percent off your next purchase.  The timing was great because I had decided I really liked my trial pair of pants and wanted to get more.  I took the gamble on their T shirts at the sale price, I prefer the 3 button henley style.  They are great shirts, I bought a weeks worth and wear them everyday.  I don't think anyone will be disappointed with Duluth products. 

I searched high and low for a decent pair of working pants that can handle the bending, stooping and kneeling of prospecting.  Military fatigues were close, but too many knockoffs and they weren't holding up.  A few months ago I began an online search and came up with some real winners.  Mind you, I have no vested interest in the company, no affiliation whatsoever, but I thought I would share my knowledge.  I bought 1 pair just to try them out.  They were so comfortable, I bought 3 more pairs and they are now my everyday pants, not just prospecting.

The company is Duluth Trading, the pants are called "firehose flex".  They make a bunch of other working pants, but these seemed right for my purpose.  Not cheap, but so far well worth the money for me.  The key is they are looser in the legs and have a gusseted crotch.  Now I'm not bragging that a man like me needs that extra crotch room, but they really make a difference for bending and crouching.  They are pretty lightweight, probably not warm enough for colder climates, but I think they make some with a lining.  I bought some for my 21 yr old son, he's a lot leaner and fitter than his old dad, so he wasn't that fond of them.  Oh well, its the thought that counts.  I'm not trying to spam you, just passing on some information I wish I'd  had a couple years ago.

Belay my last.  The acid cleaned up the hotrocks pretty good, interesting ironstone, rusty quartz pockets and calcium carbonate coating, but not anything rare.  A good indicator of potential gold, but not worth much otherwise. 

Steve H,

I know you're on the move, but if you see or hear from Reno Chris, I have a couple very heavy hot rocks I like him to take a look at.  Not typical iron stones, perhaps something like lead, but without the galena type structure.  I don't know of any lead mining in this area, but I once worked on a core drilling rig testing silver veins within a couple miles of this spot.  Not meteorites, they're shot through with quartz.  Soaking in mild acid to clean them up for a closer look.

I've been swinging the Minelab GPX's since they arrived on the scene and found a lot of gold at  Moore Creek.  Steve H. will remember me as Steve F.  Conversion to VLF took propably 6 to 8  hrs of consistent detecting time.  Too many bad habits of trying to cover a lot of ground to find those big targets.  The VLF machine is fairly simple, but it's a matter of coordinating your sweep speed, your hearing and your brain to process what you are hearing.  There's a lot of noise to separate  and process with the variety of  chatter beeps and geeps you're going to hear.  I think the biggest mistake beginners make is thinking you just sweep that coil till it beeps over a target.  You're going to hear a lot of beeps that aren't targets and if you swing too fast, a lot of stuff is going to start sounding like a target.  I dug a bunch of holes in what turns out to be mineralized patches of desert soil before I figured out I was still  swinging too fast.  I was amazed at how many of those sounds disappeared when I just crawled that coil up to the alleged target zone.  I found that with the external speaker I could set the threshold to just below steady audible, a very slight fluttering in the background.  A true target with extremely slow sweep would bring the threshold to steady audible often without ever beeping, expecially tiny specs of gold.   If I could repeat that threshold rise in 2 different directions, then it was generally a good target.  You aren't going to miss a good target by going too slow.  You may limit your opportunities, it's a question of priorities.   It's initially frustrating for a PI guy to move that slow, but sometimes it's the only game in town.

Steve H has talked about the value of VLF machines many times, but here's my own new experience.
 
I was bored during the holidays with time on my hands for detecting, alas my GPX is still at the Minelab detector Doctor. I decided to take Steve's sage wisdom to heart and give the Gold Bug 2 and 6.5" coil a proper go. I bought the GB2 from Steve at AMDS last year and had it out a couple times, a few crumbs here and there.  I just never took the time to really get to know the detector. I know a weathered little valley down Yuma way, where the oldtimers drywashed the hell out of every wash and gulley.  A couple years ago I pulled a sub-gram nugget off the slope with no more than 6 inches of dirt and gravel to host rock. I figured that would be prime ground for the GB.

I planned an overnighter so that I could get the most out of detecting time, only to discover I had forgotten my headphones. Oh well, the GB has an external speaker, not ideal situation but tolerable. I rigged a neck strap for the control box to that the speaker was closer to my ears. That setup was fantastic, I would highly recommend it even with headphones. You can wave that wand with the little coil all day without any arm fatigue.

I found my old dig hole and started beeping. Within minutes found gold and some decent pieces. Over the next 2 days I found 38 pieces in a band about 20 ft wide and maybe 100 ft long. I stood on the hill and looked at my gravel scrapes and the band was plain as day. There were a few oldtimer exploration holes nearby, all into a seam of red looking ore. I checked their tailings, lousy with iron trash from blasting caps and such.

The photo shows the gold divided into categories. The biggest are in the .5 to .7 grams. The next size is 2 to 4 grains. The next size are sub-grain, 12 of them weighed 4 grains. The last ones with a ballpoint pen for scale are so tiny the whole lot won't register on my scale. 

What I learned. The GB2 is a fantastic machine in the right circumstances. In moderate ground it really has to move way way slow. The threshold autotune really needs time to catch up going over mineralized ground or you're going to hear far too many beeps, geeps and groans. Slow that bad boy down. The Maxed Out settings are the ticket to hear those little bitty ones. Iron discriminate will probably lose you gold. It would be a difficult machine to actually search for new spots. The coil coverage is so small and you have to move way too slow. It's suited for ground where you already know there is gold and can concentrate on low and slow.

Like most of you, I enjoy the hunt. Sure, I wish all those nuggets were all in plus gram size, but I had a great time chasing those crumbs. Bravo Zulu to Steve H. for sharing his wisdom and knowledge for all things prospecting.