Some Alaska Gold

[Gold Catcher]

39 minutes ago, Rob Allison said:

Hey Steve,

  The old "scrap and detect" method works great in certain spots.  We have been using it for years in smaller washes and even nugget patches to get down a bit deeper.  We have been using this method with hand tools, shovels, picks, pry bars, rakes and detectors/pinpointers to remove overburden and get closer to the paylayer or bedrock in many of my recent Youtube videos. 

Congrats on your recent success in Alaska.  

Rob

I do the same, Rob. It's a good method. I do this often in river canyons. Select a strategic spot, work for 1h or so to remove overburden and then spend alot of time on the selected spot with slow systematic scanning (multiple detectors and coils). At times, I find this method more productive than just wandering around.

GC

[WesD]

Nice pics Steve, thanks!  Always interesting to see how ground looks like in other areas.

Yup, dig n detect is the ticket to success in a lot of places! 

[aerospace guy]

Steve..how to phrase this...would it not have been so "labour intensive " to dry wash those areas after you had verified that many multiple targets were there? I do both..metal detect and dry wash and I have seen detectorists spend hours and hours shoveling (similar to scrapping) and throwing the shovelfuls on the ground where they then spend more time metal detecting the same dirt! My shovelfuls go right into a properly set up dry washer... I spend way less time than they do and I don't "lose" gold as they (the double workers) say I do! Plus of course I detect "tailings.

                         However if I were in someplace with "killer" targets like Alaska instead of SoCal with only a few..really really FEW targets I can see why someone would be enticed to just detect only! Thoughts?

[phrunt]

I've seen my understanding of the scrape and detect method in play many times with JW, he finds a nugget, then spends a few hours scraping away getting more and more, he had a turn on a patch I found and did exactly that as he didn't want to start taking over my patch he stayed in one spot and just kept scraping down layers and getting more and more gold, albeit very fine gold so he was using the GM1000 but the gold just kept coming and he was having a good time, I'm sure he got 60 or more pieces from this very small area.  It was quite impressive to see. 

I did similar on my first ever patch, it was in the bottom of a old timer dug out sluiced area and I found one reasonably sized nugget, so I just figured there had to be more so I kept digging out the area and more and more popped up, it eventuated with me getting my biggest ever nugget which was 4.2 grams, very respectable size for NZ.  I went back the next day with a shovel instead of a pick and I probably got around 20 to 30 nuggets in an area that on the surface only had one detectable nugget.

In saying all of that I probably need to use this method more often as I've only done it a couple of times, perhaps I'm a slow learner 🙂

[oneguy]

On 8/15/2021 at 10:05 AM, WesD said:

Nice pics Steve, thanks!  

Yup, dig n detect is the ticket to success in a lot of places! 

Generally keep these on Quadzilla almost all the time and like to have them reasonably handy when the situation arises......  High tech affordable gear!!!!!

[geof_junk]

The scrape and detect method has it's benefits on small gold but should be left till the detector has covered the whole extent of the gold bearing ground in the vicinity. The reason is that that type of activity will draw attention to the location and you lose the bigger or easy bits. 

[Rivers rat]

Well done that man!!!!!!Look like you had fun Steve!

 

 

RR

[Steve Herschbach]

16 hours ago, aerospace guy said:

Steve..how to phrase this...would it not have been so "labour intensive " to dry wash those areas after you had verified that many multiple targets were there? I do both..metal detect and dry wash and I have seen detectorists spend hours and hours shoveling (similar to scrapping) and throwing the shovelfuls on the ground where they then spend more time metal detecting the same dirt! My shovelfuls go right into a properly set up dry washer... I spend way less time than they do and I don't "lose" gold as they (the double workers) say I do! Plus of course I detect "tailings.

                         However if I were in someplace with "killer" targets like Alaska instead of SoCal with only a few..really really FEW targets I can see why someone would be enticed to just detect only! Thoughts?

Great question.

It depends on the location and the gold. I’ve detected this bench for decades, so pure detecting is getting very lean, to the point where scrape and detect became worth the extra work. I’ll never do this unless I have to because I’m not into extra work, and prefer straight up detecting.

I do not shovel dirt onto the ground and detect the dirt. In fact there was no shovel here at all, just a couple picks. It’s why I call it scrape and detect, not dig and detect. The linked article explains my general methodology, and I’m all about efficiency. I reserve this method normally to steep slopes as gravity really helps. The flatter it gets, the harder it gets, and the work to reward ratio changes. If you are lifting the dirt, a dry washer starts to make way more sense. I am pulling material down very carefully, often just an inch at a time… depends again on target size. In this case I was a little more aggressive, as going too slow to find the tiniest bits can also be a mistake if it keeps me from getting to bigger gold due to limited time.

This spot had very little fine gold, verified by my buddies sampling the site for possible shovel work. Also, with a hot VLF, and an excellent operator doing this properly, little gold is lost, as long as the gold is of detectable size in the first place. I miss very little that is under 1/10 grain or 0.006 gram when equipped with a hot VLF.

This material is also only dry on the surface (lots of rain this trip), so we would have used a high banker instead, which my friends were doing in the pit I had detected over the rise. Which, it turned out, my detecting had scalped clean of the bulk. Big gold was gone, leaving fines, but the big gold added up to far more gold. Still, they did dig into gold I had missed at depth, so did ok, but not near as well as I with my detecting.

Other locations where fines are far more prevalent, panning, sluicing, dry washing, highbanking, etc. all may be the better option. I would say that the minute a shovel is needed, it’s time to take those other options seriously. You have to know what you are doing, know the methods, pick your best shots. This stuff is an art, and after 50 years I’m fairly smart at picking the best way for me to get the goods based on a wide range of variables. It has other people commenting all the time on my nose for gold, but it would be more honest to say I’ve simply done it all the wrong ways over the years first, learned what does not work, and now have a fairly good idea of how things do work, by process of elimination. It’s all knowledge won the hard way, and to this day I’m still learning. That’s what I love about this stuff, always things to learn. 

[aerospace guy]

Thx!! Good info!

[Joe D.]

   That's the way I like my info Steve, exact and to the point, no sugar coating how you got there; and the mistakes are part of the learning curve! Just what works, and how you get it done! Thanks!!

   I would like to think that my learning curve on all things detecting, and hopefully prospecting one day, will be less steep, thanks to all here! But sometimes, i can be a hard-headed idiot!!😤  🤣👍👍