Jp’s Gold Thread

[Jonathan Porter]

OK, Steve has very kindly split the thread up so now I can focus on showing off my gold finds in this thread and doing interesting audio/visual material in the other.

Yesterday was jolly good fun.😇 I returned to my “Sunbaker” patch and initially with a slow start kicked into a much higher gear pinging gold all over the place. I approached it with a different mind set gear wise this time but basically the main advantage was going steady and digging everything.

First cab off the rank...deep deep deep. 🙂 

For the next hour I just continued on working the area and being more thorough, some of the targets were shallow and sounded like trash so it required what I call an “Emu Parade” approach where your constantly squatting down retrieving tiny lead shot and bits of other trash. I’m pretty good at picking the buried non-ferrous targets over shallow ferrous, here’s a little tip to help you get better at it yourself. 

Non-Ferrous only reacts to one aspect of the detector Rx creating an Eddie current which when the detector coils Rx passes over causes a signal to be created. Ferrous does this too but ferrous is attracted to a magnet and seeing how the detector is magnetic in nature there is a bit of extra signal created on ferrous items that blends in with the Eddie current signal. This causes two things, one is a brighter harsher more aggressive signal on ferrous objects (Especially tiny ferrous stuff) and secondly due to the over exaggerated discordant signal it makes it very hard to pinpoint the target when your trying to retrieve it. If you find yourself flapping around in the dirt swearing a lot it’s more than likely going to be a ferrous object that is refusing to be where it sounds in relation to the coil.

Non-ferrous on the other hand will almost always sound nice and mellow relative to distance from the coil until the coil is coupled right into the loudest response right on the winding. Almost always non-ferrous will provide a nice smooth sounding mellow response especially if it has a bit of depth to it. I will post up an audio video on the other thread at some stage to demonstrate the non-ferrous signal aspect when I have time. Also just as an aside in-situ gold has a halo that adds an extra layer of smoothness to the target signal, there is a distinctive mellowness to a long buried piece of gold. Using conservative settings is the key here with the audio, too much volume and too much sensitivity kills this information due to the subtle nature of the tonal/volume variation in relation to coil proximity.

Pics of a lot of the pieces found during the session.

I always try to think about why gold is present in the environment, there is always a clue if you look, unfortunately it is often after the fact and not so noticeable when you are walking the area trying to get onto the gold in the first place. But occasionally you see a clue then target the area and bingo gold, I find this incredibly rewarding when this happens. Trying to piece together the gold story in an extremely altered environment is often hard but essentially its all about alteration, gold fluids, depth, iron rich rocks, heat and pressure and metamorphosis. 

Gold zones have a story but unwrapping that story is the challenge and sometimes due to weathering and alteration and tectonic plate movement things get jumbled up into a coagulated mess that is hard to unravel. In this instance the clue is really obvious and goes to show how gold is in the environment, especially the length of time it is in the environment compared to erosion and weathering of the present day surface. In this instance gold is moving slowly down slope, gold is also weathering out of parallel structures upslope but the majority of the weathering of the gold is happening in a vertical fashion In combination with downslope movement.

The next pic is of a section of iron rich indicator country rock. You can clearly see it is very iron rich and has weathered accordingly, it is also very hot to detect and is extremely magnetic and high in X signal. A GPZ coil that does not X balance well will sound very noisy here and also get lots of loud hot rocks that do not sound usually off on a correctly X balancing coil. Downslope the ground is quite noisy and variable due to the material that has weathered out of the contact.

Iron rich indicator

The next picture is of some shear associated with the contact and is a sure sign of gold being present, this is quite different to regular slate that has been upended. In this case you can see it is quite localised and mainly associated with the indicator. It is these contacts that produce the nuggety gold but they are quite often hidden by overburden and vegetation. Rest assured they will be present though.

Shear

The sticky-up-rock that is twisted and tortured is caused by compression and folding along the fault line, at great depth and under extreme heat and pressure they provide prefect channels for gold fluids to flow along. The contact with the iron rich indicator is a perfect spot for gold to drop out of solution causing the formation of nuggety gold. It’s been theorised that gold drops out of solution when there is a pressure change like during an earthquake, even mild ones, whether it happens all at once or little bits at a time over long periods is the interesting question.

Finally near the end of the session I was rewarded by a deep mellow sounding low/high and a bit of cream came my way in the form of a 6 gram chunk, happy days😎. Watch this space there is more work to be done.😇

JP

Pics of the big boy and the days total

 

 

 

 

[DigsAlot]

That days take seems to have moved a lot, very rounded.

[Jonathan Porter]

16 minutes ago, DigsAlot said:

That days take seems to have moved a lot, very rounded.

Think of it as the gold having a lot of country move past it rather than the gold moving around the country🥴😎. In high volume water environments (volatile areas) the gold is always extremely worn and rounded.

I think the exception is when the gold is locked up in specimen form, the specimens can get quite mobile because the gold weight too quartz ratio does not dictate the specimen to go to the very bottom so can remain with other rubble being transported about shedding gold as they weather away.

JP

[mn90403]

15 hours ago, Jonathan Porter said:

Non-Ferrous only reacts to one aspect of the detector Rx creating an Eddie current which when the detector coils Rx passes over causes a signal to be created. Ferrous does this too but ferrous is attracted to a magnet and seeing how the detector is magnetic in nature there is a bit of extra signal created on ferrous items that blends in with the Eddie current signal. This causes two things, one is a brighter harsher more aggressive signal on ferrous objects (Especially tiny ferrous stuff) and secondly due to the over exaggerated discordant signal it makes it very hard to pinpoint the target when your trying to retrieve it. If you find yourself flapping around in the dirt swearing a lot it’s more than likely going to be a ferrous object that is refusing to be where it sounds in relation to the coil.

JP,

You have just described hunting for iron meteorites in Franconia, Arizona.  The tiny little pieces are loud and hard to pinpoint and they are near the surface.  There is no gold in the area where these are found.  Now I know why they are 'easy' if you know the area.  It does take a bit of coil control on the small ones.

In some areas where I detect for gold there is a tiny wire that we hear.  It is loud and hard to pinpoint also.  All of this time I thought it was because of size but now you have explained it.  Unfortunately in some of these areas there are some hot rocks of varying size that will be loud also and I have wanted the gold sound to be as 'bright' as those but now you have explained a difference which may improve my gold recovery.

Mitchel

[mn90403]

15 hours ago, Jonathan Porter said:

Think of it as the gold having a lot of country move past it rather than the gold moving around the country🥴😎. In high volume water environments (volatile areas) the gold is always extremely worn and rounded.

I think the exception is when the gold is locked up in specimen form, the specimens can get quite mobile because the gold weight too quartz ratio does not dictate the specimen to go to the very bottom so can remain with other rubble being transported about shedding gold as they weather away.

JP

I have a large specimen that I believe got trapped in the rubble and cobbles because it is smooth on one side and rough on the other.  I've come to learn as you suggested that my specimen didn't move as much as all the material that moved over it.  I'm glad to know I'm reading some of the clues right.

Now that audio stuff ... haha  I hear it but don't know what I'm hearing it seems.  Between the two threads I'll be a better detectorist.

Thanks for the efforts on posting.

Mitchel

[Hardtimehermit]

Very educational geology JP, thanks for the pictures and info. I like the way you wrap your head around the bigger geologic picture and try to solve where and how the Au is coming from. 🤠 ht

[Jonathan Porter]

Today was a bit of a late start as I had a few things that I’d been putting off for too long, the reward getting the job done was a few hours detecting which was fun.

I wandered around a pretty large area this morning, going back over my “Sun baker” Patch and then working out from there. As I worked my way away from the main run I heard a channel flip confused signal that was subtle but present. So I pulled out the phone and captured the audio to share with others here. You will notice I’ve scraped some lines either side of the target to indicate the width of the response relative to coil motion, any narrower than this and these deeper targets become lost in the general busyness of the threshold because they are not being given a chance to develop properly. 

 

Pics of ground with mark lines before digging and after for comparison.

The rest of the mornings gold found

 

As always it was fun to be out and about and nice to be able to share my experiences with others.
JP

 

 

[Jonathan Porter]

Thursday was an experimental day going back over an area I worked with my son over a year ago, when you work with someone there is a tendency to crowd each other out a bit when the gold starts to come out. Distance is necessary because of cross talk so in fairness to each other you tend to wander into the hot spot then wander out again to give the other operator a chance to ping a few bits as well. Because you can always come back the thought of missing a few due to a bit of crowding is not an issue. This time I was able to just cruise around the hot spots and go about things systematically taking my time.

The old boys have gully raked this spot so there are piles of stones thrown up onto the high banks, working these banks is hard work due to the angle of the slope and the annoyance of a bit of EMI getting into proceedings from a high Voltage power line some distance away. This just means an extra bit of threshold warble at times requiring a bit more concentration as the coil is tilted out of flat plain. Working my way through the zone produced a few tiny bits that had been missed then I got a nice low/high response on the high bank which required a bit of huffing and puffing and my detector going off on a little excursion of its own rolling down the steep slope.

You can see the thrown out stones in the top of the pic

You can see the ground is extremely oxidised, this is due to weathering and the high iron content of the country rock. Next pic is of the country rock that has had all the oxidised layer eroded away leaving the un-oxidised bedrock layer exposed. It looks very similar the Yavapai schists I saw when detecting Arizona with Chris Gholson many years ago. This is what Arizona would look like if it had had the same amount of surface weathering Australia has had! This type of compressed Meta-basalts has quite a coarse crystal structure so is really bad for dam building because water flows/leaks through it really easily, on the way it collects all the calcites and deposits them further downslope or within the soil profile (similar to Caliche in the US).

Once I’d gone over the obvious spots and pinged a few bits it was time to go for a meander. In situations like this you tend to become exposed to a lot of trash, in my case the area has been habited since the 1860’s both by miners but also timber cutters and cattlemen. Horseshoe nails and bullets became the norm and because a lot of them are caught up under the grass roots it becomes a real chore to dig them out. With this in mind I went into super choosy mode and only dug the best sounding signals and targeted quartz wash exposed areas in the hopes of pinging a little nugget to then force a slow down and more concentrated detecting to try and extend on any gold being found.

Huge BIF dyke indicating the fault line

Near the end of the session I came across some really nice quartz wash in a bare area with pieces of ironstone mixed in and pinged a tiny little nugget for my troubles. Careful detecting brought out a few more bits then a nicer piece to finish off the morning. I will head back here at a later date and go over it more throughly.

JP

Last few bits for the day

 

 

 

[GoldenCrow]

Thanks for taking the time to report on your adventures JP.

Great info and the consistency of you finding gold is incredible.

Cheers, GC

[Jonathan Porter]

Been pretty busy lately organising our business and finalising last minute preparations for the global lockdown associated with current world events. I am so lucky to be able to self isolate in an area where I do not need to travel to go detecting, therefore contact with others is near zero. I encourage readers of this forum to understand the importance of not moving about where there are others present, the risks are too great at this time.

Please do not respond to my comments about COVID19 on this thread, I am just explaining my own personal situation and why I‘m able to continue detecting thanks to my location and circumstances and do not want to seem to be encouraging others to take risks if they have to travel any distances to get to a goldfield. I am able to literally step out my front door and go detecting more often than not with my detecting buddy Mia. 

Here are a few pics of some of the gold I’ve found over the past week between tasks. Gold is a very big part of my usual income and now because our shop is effectively defunct it has become a vital component to our survival strategy. I live where I live for this very reason, having ready access to gold bearing ground was always the main driver for this decision. I am happy to share my finds here so long as it is not seen as rubbing salt into the wounds of those of us who can’t, the primary focus is about sharing something I love with others and I sincerely hope it’s taken that way.😕

Speci found sitting on an old timers pile

Yesterday I revisited a favourite old gully where I found 1 1/2 ounces quite a number of years ago, there is always some left behind in scrubby terrain like this.

Gold bearing gully

Nice solid chunk that made me smile when I weighed it

The aim is to ‘try’ and find an ounce a week to keep ourselves afloat during these trying times, any gold coming in is better than nothing! Going detecting and finding nothing is way better for my mental health than being stuck indoors and I hope my sharing goes some way to helping others cope with the magnitude of what is happening to all of us collectively.😔

I will not be mentioning this subject here again as there are plenty of other places for those discussions to take place, but felt I should explain where I‘m coming from in case it is seen the wrong way. 

JP

Yesterdays take