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September 17 2002 The weather today was bright and sunny and temperatures were in the low 80’s. The rains are long gone now and the creek has come down some. Yesterday Conor and I worked until nearly dark on the haul road while Clay and Jacob did some maintenance on Old Bulldog. We were able to get the washed out areas repaired so Clay could get his truck about halfway up the old mountain road. We dumped rock in the bottom of the bad areas and then we were able to scoop loose gravels from the side of the road into the washed out places. I mixed in some coarse tailings with the gravels and the repaired areas are good enough to drive a car over. Clay got his Mack over the bridge and close to the processing area. I loaded him up with tailings and he proceeded up the mountain in reverse. Conor followed him with the skid steer. There was no room on the haul road to turn a truck around and until we got the last part of the road repaired Clay had to drive up there backwards. There was just room enough to get the skid steer out of his way so that he could drive back down the mountain. It’s not an easy task going up there in reverse as the turns are tight with a few bad drop offs but Clay was more than up to the job. We had the old mountain road completely repaired by dusk so tomorrow we will begin hauling pay gravel and running the tom. There is nothing to stop us now. TO BE CONTINUED .............

September 11 2002 Bound For Glory Jacob was already up before dawn and eventually the entire crew was at the morning breakfast meeting and having coffee. We all took a minute in silence to remember those who had died in the Twin Towers attack last year. We had breakfast and Jacob and Clay went up to the dig site while Conor and I started the cleanup process. We were done just after 1:00 PM and I radioed Jacob and Clay. They came down to camp and I showed them a jar of gold. It was from this morning's weigh. It was good. The jar contained 56.8 ounces of coarse gold with some fine mixed in as well. I figured somewhere around 11 grams to the yard. Even old Jcob got excited. He stated that the further down he went the better it got. And it also was widening out to the west. Conor was nearly out of control and Clay was almost as bad. Jacob spoke softly and told everyone to calm down. He said it was bad luck to get too excited. He also told everyone to keep their mouths shut if they went to town. News of a strike could send all kinds of hooligans and prospectors out here looking for gold. We had dealt with enough of that kind of thing. After lunch we all got back to work. Conor and I washed another 40 yards of material by dusk and we called it a day. When Jacob came down the mountain with Clay just before dark he went straight to the sluice and grabbed a small scoop of the concentrates with his pan. We all followed him over to a water tub and shined flashlights down on the pan as he worked the black sand away from the gold. The pan was heavy with coarse gold. I think Jacob just wanted us to know we were still on the streak. We went back over to camp and I heated up some canned hash and fried up some Spam. Jacob uncorked a bottle and we all filled our cups. We did a toast to the mine and all the miners who had worked here before us. Then Jacob did a very somber toast to his brother Jed and the crew of 1936 and 1937. I saw a tear run down his face. Then he turned to us and flatly stated “Boys, we are bound for glory.” TO BE CONTINUED ...............

Another great find for you! Some question if you don't mind because I am beginning to start this type of detecting. Do you use a sand scoop or just fan the sand and use the pinpointer? Do you use dive weights to help stay in place in the surf? My last trip to Hawaii was in the surf and shoulder deep and I could not stay in place with the waves pushing me a couple feet every time they hit me.

Not at all tempted on an AQ, a final version, maybe, the AQ Gold, likely. I'd never spend my money on a beta product with no warranty essentially due to geographical location. Unlikely shipping it back for repair would be viable WHEN it breaks down. In saying that, maybe they've seen me poking fun at their shipping prices, suddenly they've removed Worldwide shipping off their listings and they now just Say USA, Mexico and Canada as shipping options and to contact them if elsewhere for a quote. They too probably thought over $200 USD to ship their garden scoop was excessive. -- Update: They've changed it on the AQ to only those countries, the other detector listings have remained the same with crazy shipping so the garden scoop is still $230 USD to ship 😛

If it is, it's not much less. I'm still losing targets through my scoop holes in the water. Dug some really small stuff in the sand also. Pop rivet heads from beach chairs, split shot sinkers, tiny can slaw, etc. All the likely suspects are still hitting with the M15.

It just keeps getting better! This is actually quite funny $9,99 for their garden scoop, only $230 USD to ship it 😛 It must fly first class with all the trimmings, via the moon.

Yesterdays largest nugget was a bit of a strange find. I watched and partially helped Joe dig two really deep holes for junk. He was exhausted and frustrated that neither target ended up being the right colour. It was just one of those days where his junk to gold ratio was higher than mine. My turn will come next trip. I moved a bit further upstream and started detecting the bottom of a long pool of water. Everything about it seemed right. It was much lower than the rest of the gully and it had washed out to a light grey decomposed shale bottom. It was potentially a good gold trap. Over the past couple of months we had popped a detector in that pool every time that we had walked past it but had never made the effort to work it properly. We were not setup to detect in water as we never carried waterproof clothing to enable this to happen. We had also dismissed the pools potential as we had met two groups of people on previous trips that had waders and wet suits with them. They were focussing on that type of area so we naturally assumed that this pool would have been given a thorough workout. I started detecting the bottom as well as I could with the z search coil by pushing it down onto the bottom of the pool and progressively moving out until I would run out of reach. There was no way the boots were going to get wet. This coil is hopeless in water. It is so buoyant that it takes considerable force to keep it on the bottom. Detecting efficiency is lost as you need to use both hands to keep the coil down. After a couple of minutes of detecting, I ended up getting a screamer of a signal. Joe was called up on the radio and he quickly arrived to help out. After listening to the signal, he had his boots off and was in the water before I could draw breath. After pinpointing the target, the scoop was used to bring up the clay/gravel mix from the bottom. On about the third or fourth scoop a shiny piece of gold came up sitting on top of the clay. It was a beautiful piece sitting there just smiling at us. We momentarily stopped and looked at it with our mouths open. Our plan was to find bigger gold at depth with the zed but this piece could have been found with an ice cream container lid bolted to a broom handle. As Joe had his boots off and pants rolled up, he detected the rest of the pool for no other signals. It just goes to show you that you must never assume anything in this game. We moved back closer to an area where I had picked up the earlier piece. I detected the right side of the gully when I found the first bigger nugget and decided to concentrate on the other side on the return trip. We had to leave early to get home so time was running out. About 20m down stream a very faint sound was heard which pulled me up. Again rocks were moved to get the coil a bit flatter to the creek bed. The subtle sound didn’t go away so hot rocks were ruled out. If it was going to be a target, it would be deep. Some material was removed and finally a signal started to develop. Stone and gravel was dug out using the pick and I continued until I hit a yellow decomposing bedrock material. By this stage the detector was really singing and I knew I was in with a chance. Joe came up and took one look at the hole and knew straight away that this was going to be a nice piece. He gave one big scrape with the pick, looked down and turned to me and said - “Did you drop that?” He pointed at the shiny, polished piece of gold sitting on the clay. We couldn’t believe what we were looking at. It had obviously moved with the last flood and had the appearance of a piece that had been sitting in acid. We picked it up and admired it before placing it back into position for the photo. We had to walk to where we left some gear and as per usual, Joe picked up another nugget on the way back. He has this uncanny knack of doing this on a regular basis. What started as a reasonable day ended up exceptionally well. The gold was cleaned up a bit last night. Here is a couple of shots showing what we ended up with. Its a good feeling when a plan comes together and you get results. It was interesting to note the difference in how the 6 and 7 ran in this particular area. The threshold on the 7000 was perfect. Very occasionally it would pick up a faint signal on a hot rock. These rocks appeared to be basalt. I reckon I hit less than ten of them for the day. The 6000 on the other hand was more erratic and reacted to the iron rich hot rocks which were generally red in colour. We would be constantly kicking those out of the way as they often gave off a signal similar to a deeper target. Darker soils and wet clay were also an issue for the GPX . With that being said, the 6 was still quite usable and had excelled in this gully. We both believe that the depth capabilities and the perfect threshold of the zed combined with the sensitivity of the Z Search coil helped us immensely in the past couple of trips.

yep, the 4 minute 40 second mark you have a screamer that just disappears with a small amount of soil movement. Once you're aware of it and just know to flatten out any soil it isn't an issue, but it sure goes from hero to zero with the smallest amount of dirt. You're training the little tacker well; he'll be going at it himself in no time and be hooked! He certainly has a keen eye for it, finds it in the scoop easily by eye.

September 13 2002 Part Three The four of us finished up the gold weigh as the downpour continued. There was a whopping 62.9 ounces in the cleanup which figured out close to 15 grams to the yard. Jacob is right, the gold is getting better as we go deeper in the cut. I don’t know how much longer the rain is going to last but we will need to spend some time repairing the haul road. I will use the skid steer to scoop up coarse tailings and try to fill in and smooth out some of the worst areas the rain is washing out. It is not a quick or easy fix. I figure at least a day or two when the rain lets up. At least we have enough pay gravel stock piled so we run the tom while the road is being worked on. Despite the rain everyone is in a good mood. Seeing all the gold coming out of the mountain is keeping spirits high. I am confident that we will get back to hauling pay soon. For now we are all taking a rest this evening because tomorrow will be a busy day. TO BE CONTINUED .............

Cleaned up the gold that the 6000 recovered. What you see is actually the result of a lot of careful work so in reality the 7000 actually did quite a good job. When we arrived at the patch, I had my 12 year old grandson run over the ground before any gravel was disturbed. He found 5 targets that were obvious which was pretty good as he had never been detecting before. We dug those pieces (which were very small) and then systematically turned over the ground and dug a little deeper and wider to recover the remaining pieces. As soon as we hit hard packed, dirty gravel the gold disappeared which indicated that it was a drop zone during floods that occurred late last year. I’m sure that the Zed would have squawked on some of those larger pieces if we had followed the same detailed search procedure a few days ago. What Phrunt has been saying was really reinforced and made obvious as I watched my grandson and daughter searching this area. I spent most of the day watching and filming as they enjoyed the excitement of the hunt. Often a scrape of an inch would reveal a screaming signal that was not audible a minute earlier. Gold signals lost in tailings piles or a scoop that had too much material in it were a common occurrence. To his credit, my grandson soon leant the tricks required to achieve success. The gold in the photo weighs just over a gram. The pieces that were panned were dried and weighed and came in at just over .2 grams which was surprising. There may have to be a rethink about leaving the remaining specs for someone else.

I bought a Nomad a few years back and didn't like the narrow blade which takes longer to cut a plug and does not scoop dirt well. The big Root Slayer with the wider blade looks nice but it is heavy and expensive. I chose the Floral mainly for its lightness and its ability to cut plugs quickly and efficiently. Tree roots can be a challenge sometimes. Serrated edges would be a nice improvement.

I stumbled across this video and thought what a cool idea, you could put on some workman type clothes and wander around the beaches even during high traffic times collecting all the recent drops and act as if you're just a worker cleaning the beach 😛 In some places this type of thing would be quite successful, and a bonus is you really are cleaning the beach, you'd have a lot of rubbish to dump at the end of your scooping session. I wonder where to buy these things, they even seem to make them with wheels, although I think I like the one in the video better than the one with wheels. https://www.cleansands.com/store/p40/SAND_CLEANING_TOOL_-_Production_Starting_Soon.html

It is crazy too how when the signal is in the scoop, with what appears to be a small amount of earth material, the signal can go from faint to a screamer as you remove material & whittle it down as you wave the scoop over the coil. D4G

Thanks all! I use a scoop only in murky water/rough conditions where I can not see underwater. This spot is usually clear enough that I can snorkel it so I don't bother with the scoop. I find so much here that I don't bother ever using the scoop, I just wait until I can swim it. I always use dive weights when I'm in the water, it helps keep you down, otherwise the wetsuit makes you far too buoyant and it's soo hard to dig targets, especially when there's waves which constantly push you around. I just weighed my belt and I'm using 13.1kg (10 weights) . It'll depend on your BMI as well, I'm 6ft5 & about 92kg, so you may need more or less. My wetsuit is also very thin, about 2/3mm. When I tried out a thicker wetsuit I was using near 20kg of weights and it wouldn't keep me down, so keep that in mind. It can get pretty cold in winter. A wetsuit hood also makes a massive difference. If you're planning on going deeper in the water (eg, scuba diving) it'll also vary as your wetsuit shrinks at depth. A quick tip as well which I find helps a lot; find a yearly graph of water temperatures for the location you wish to detect and print it out. I can see the water temp for each month of the year so I know when it will be coldest and warmest. Take advantage of the warmest months.

Good to hear. I usually run the 15" at 17-19 sensitivity so being able to up it a bit with the M8 sounds like it could brighten up a beach a bit. I've been waiting for some global warming to come to the left coast so I can get some depositors out there but we have a couple of inches of rain forecast for Easter weekend and every day has been primarily 60 degrees at the beach so not many are needing sunscreen. The Post Office ruined my plans today as I was scheduled to get my M8 tonight but it was rerouted to Hemet which is about 4 hours SE of me so now I may have to wait until Thursday to get it out there. I'm excited to swing it. Hope there is more gold in your scoop!

So, after using so many different detectors in the last 50 years, some things never cease to amaze. There were so many fan boys when the D2 came out and how it was going to RULE small everything. Well, we know that did not happen. YET, the Equinox never falters and excels at small bits. Got this pear-shaped diamond surrounded by many small chips. It looks like a setting that came apart from a ring. Nothing has been tested nor certified. I suspect from the look and quality it is real. Rang a solid hard 8 on the Equinox in Beach 2. Had big waves and lost it through the scoop on the first try. Was lucky to reacquire and run it up the beach to find. Interested to see how others are doing on small bits!!!

I'm trying to get into nugget detecting this year too. I've been reading. And reading. I like to read, so I've just read and read. I'm signed up for Gerry's class in April, really looking forward to that. I've been watching @abenson videos and they have been very helpful. The biggest thing I have planned though, is just to get out and do it and try to find some as often as I can this year. My first trip this past weekend was a skunk. But, I figure, that's just part of paying my dues. I got in lots of coil on the ground time and dug a lot of bird shot and tiny fragments of bullet jacket and such. Got practice using the pick and scoop recovery method for tiny bits. I figure, I keep trying, it will eventually start to come together. - Dave

The weight of a scoop is only one aspect for me. Those big CKG titanium scoops might weigh less than my little SS T-Rex (👍 👍 ), but that much sand would cancel out the difference (and my elbows) quickly. They really need to make a smaller one before I pay any attention...... https://www.detectingadventure.com/trex-sand-scoops GO Ring Daddy GO !

I've noticed with the manticore that with .22 and .22 shell casings that they always sound bigger then they actually are. And I know the 2d trace doesn't truly indicate the size of an object but the trace is kinda large for these two when they're shallow. This also happens with tiny pieces of aluminum, they sound larger and trace larger then they are. Real annoying when you're on the beach and have a loud target that's a small piece of junk that keeps falling through the scoop.

My 800 also does fine on the small bits, but I haven't got any that fine yet!!🏆Like you said, more of a challenge to get, and keep in the scoop! Pretty much solved that problem by not sifting much in my technique, as many do, but kick and spread up the beach, and pinpoint! My power switch recently bit the dust on my 800, so I will have to pay for a new Pod, as it's out of warranty! But worth the effort! Keep up the good work!🍀👍👍

Nokta (Stainless Steel) Premium Sand Scoop..9 in opening, 7/16 holes, Handle is adjustable straight or tilted (you provide the handle). About $120.

I'm using Tom's settings in the water with the M8 coil also. I don't think there is any way you can adjust any settings to make gold sound better. To me, gold has a smooth soft sound compared to coins or aluminum. In the prospecting audio every nonferrous target sounds pretty much the same. I say pretty much because I am hearing subtle differences on pull tabs or irregular aluminum, but I still dig everything that remotely sounds good. I too have audio responses from the smallest of targets that fall through the scoop or move around when trying to scoop them up. Sometimes after multiple attempts I move on. The audio response in prospecting mode is very short and quick. I think the more time spent on this particular mode is best for learning the Tom D settings. I hunt in Florida, so his settings are working for me. I don't think I will change to something else at this point.

Ok , this is more of a possibility😆 (is this cheating?): Me: solve the puzzle: what could a gold prospecting invention be with the hints of paddle, pizza and a helicopter? Google Gemini AI: The answer to the puzzle is a suction dredge. Let's break down the hints: Paddle: This suggests something that scoops or separates materials, like a panning operation used in traditional gold prospecting. Pizza (round): This hints at a circular motion, possibly referring to the way the dredge extracts material. Helicopter: This implies something airborne, which could be the method used to deploy the dredge. Combining these clues, a suction dredge emerges as a perfect fit. It uses a rotating intake nozzle to scoop up underwater material and separate the gold flakes through a pressurized water system. Suction dredges can be mounted on helicopters for use in remote locations. EDIT: so now I’m thinking an air powered scoop that you attach to your Keene Blower- it spins and the blades pull in the materials….

I have one of the Stealth scoops, the 720i and was trying to find some contact info for them. No luck either. Glad to now hear they are not gone forever. If I remember correctly... there is a lifetime warranty on that scoop from breakage but does not include wearing it out. I'm good with that!

I was able to get away for a couple days this week. Shipped my detector and scoop to a friend who lives in Charleston and flew down on Thursday night. I was able to hunt on Friday and Saturday and fly home Sunday, (today). Targets were few and far between, with the beach seemed to be upside down. Most of the bottle tops and pull tabs being at low tide line and sinkers and gold about mid beach. The larger ring is 14k and the smaller ring is 10k. Nothing toward the towel line. The iPhone was about 10 inches down mid beach and charged up nicely. Also with the phone was a driver's license and a debit card. I will mail those back to the owner tomorrow. For me the Tarsacci is just a great beach detector.