Advice On Metal Detecting For Gold Nuggets In Finland

[Steve Herschbach]

I spent some time in Finland a week ago at the invitation of Garrett Metal Detectors. The idea was to visit the goldfields and come up with some recommendations for helping people there get better results finding gold nuggets with metal detectors. A such this document will focus on the use of Garrett metal detectors. I am writing this up specifically for my new friend in Finland, Jyri Walkaejarvi of Finndetector Oy. Thank you Jyri for being a wonderful host. And thanks of course to Garrett Metal Detectors and specifically Henry Tellez for this opportunity to visit the wonderful country and people of Finland! 

 

How To Metal Detect for Gold Nuggets in Finland - Observations and Recommendations by Steve Herschbach

While in northern Finland, otherwise known as Lapland, I visited the site of the 1870's Lapland Gold Rush, in and around Tankavaara. Our time was limited and unfortunately some of our detecting equipment got held up in shipping, so my chance of finding gold was minimal. However, I was struck by the extreme similarities between Lapland and my home state of Alaska when it comes to metal detecting for gold nuggets. I feel well qualified therefore to offer some observations and advice for those wishing to find gold in Finland with a metal detector. I will focus on two main strategies. The first, which I will refer to as "dig and detect" has by far the best chance of finding gold. The second method involves general scanning, with possibly more chance for a larger nugget, but overall less chance of finding gold on any given day.

Lapland has a complex glacial history typical of high latitude gold deposits. There have been multiple advances and retreats of the ice over millennia of multiple glacial ages. Huge numbers of geologically short lived water sources have come and gone, with massive flood events being common. This means gold can be found almost anywhere, but the deposits tend to be thin and discontinuous. Actual bedrock is always a good place to find gold concentrations, but false bedrock layers are very common in glacial terrain, and should never be overlooked as a potential source of gold.

The biggest problem in northern climates is that the gold bearing gravels are often buried out of reach of a metal detector. Deep mossy tundra alone can be too thick to penetrate with a detector. It is also common for thick peat and muck layers to occur under the tundra. In Alaska this means it is impossible to detect in many locations unless they have been opened up by previous mining that has stripped the overburden. However, in areas north of the arctic circle there are very short growing seasons and nutrient poor soil, so large areas of glacial deposits have only supported thin layers of plant material since the last ice retreated. It is basically gravels just barely covered by moss, small shrubs, and thin trees. These areas do present opportunities for exploratory type metal detecting i.e. gold prospecting.

There are private commercial mines employing heavy equipment in Lapland, but the areas I visited were more set up for visitor and club type hobbyists. These most commonly employ a pump to bring water to a spot nearby where gold is being excavated with pick and shovel, and fed into what are essentially modern long toms - very narrow long sluice boxes. The riffled gold recovery area is relatively short, with most of the length devoted to moving tailings away from the immediate work area. Water is at a premium at the sites I visited and so hand screening was far more common than the water fed spray bar screening systems we commonly use here in the states.

The locations I visited were along small streams that acted as water sources. At the first the terrain was relatively flat, pocketed with many small excavations going down just a meter or two to bedrock. The gold might be on bedrock or concentrated in layers above the bedrock. The second location I visited was working more on a slope, water being pumped up the hill to the work face of the excavations all along the valley wall. If both cases work was proceeding farther and farther from the water over time, requiring longer hoses and larger pumps to deliver water to the work site. The area in between is generally discarded overburden and tailings.

While larger gold nuggets do exist small nuggets and dust are more the norm. My recommendation for anyone wanting to have their best chance of finding gold with a metal detector is to concentrate on finding small gold nuggets. If I could go back to these locations tomorrow, I would be using a Garrett 24K high frequency detector outfitted with the new 6" concentric coil. I would go after the exact same material that the pick and shovel crowd are chasing. This is what I call the  "dig and detect" method, where the main thing changing is the recovery equipment. Instead of a heavy pump, gasoline and oil to keep it running, a lot of bulky hose, and a large sluice box, you simply use a metal detector and a gold pan. The method has an obvious advantage for areas where motors are not allowed, or which are too far from water even if a pump was allowed. It is perfect for trips of only a single day or two, where dealing with all that equipment would eat up valuable mining time. Finally, it is an excellent way to look for areas to set up a pump based operation at a later date, after a good spot is found.

My diagram above shows a couple possibilities. In the first we are basically digging in a hole down to a pay layer, often bedrock itself, and discarding tailings out of the hole. In the second we are working into a slope, discarding tailings behind and down the slope. The trick in all cases is to remember that the gold you are after is very small. The bigger nuggets will be easy, so concentrate on finding the smallest gold you can. This requires a metal detector like the Garrett 24K that can detect pinhead size gold. It also involves knowing that a true pinhead size nugget can be detected at no more than a centimeter or two. The secret is to be in careful control of the material. Excavate carefully, removing no more that 2 centimeters from your work area, discarding the material out of the hole, or onto the slope behind. Rake the discarded material into a flat layer and detect it all very slowly, very methodically, covering every portion of the material. Keep the coil touching the material, and overlap the coil sweeps by 50%.

After you carefully detect the excavated material, carefully detect the entire newly exposed work area. Again, there is no rush, as you will spend more time digging than detecting. Enjoy the moment and really give it your all.

Note that you are detecting what is basically the same material twice. Once when it is in place in the bottom or working face of the excavation. Then once again after removing a layer and spreading it out. This helps prevent accidentally digging too far and discarding a nugget that was just out of reach of the detector. In addition, some nuggets can't be detected when on edge, but on getting moved and reoriented, they can now be found. Again, most of the work is in the excavating and raking. The detecting is the fun part, and you only get one shot at the material before it gets buried by your future efforts. Taking the time to really do it right with a minimal chance of missing anything is very important, and I promise that I have personally found enough  nuggets in the discard pile to make it worth that second look.

It can be good to know when a nugget is found, especially in the work surface. This tells you not only that you have found gold, but also if it came from bedrock, or a specific layer above bedrock. When I am getting to know a new location, I do like to isolate and recover every target, to learn where the gold is coming from exactly. In the future this will help me to know where to concentrate my efforts. Maybe I can discard the top layers. Or maybe gold starts right at the grass roots. You never know without proper sampling. A plastic scoop can be very helpful in isolating and recovering small gold nuggets, because the 24K is so sensitive it will detect the salt content of your hand!  It will also find gold much smaller than any normal pinpointer will find. Do not hold dirt in your hand and wave it over the coil - it will signal every time. Put the dirt in the plastic scoop and wave it over the coil instead.

Once you know a location well enough however, chasing every tiny signal takes a lot of valuable time. It may be far more efficient to just recover every signal and put it in a gold pan or bucket, for recovery all at once instead of one at a time. Be sure you are in the gold and know where it is coming from before doing this, as you don't want to think you are filling your pan with gold nuggets, only to find at the end of the day it was steel bits and hot rocks.

Ah yes, hot rocks. The mining areas do have some rocks that will set off a metal detector. The worst offender will be chunks of magnetite, a high grade iron ore. A super sensitive detector like the Garrett 24K is more prone to detecting these than less sensitive models, so small gold sensitivity is a mixed blessing. Luckily they are usually not so prevalent as to be more than an annoyance. The 24K does have a ferrous identification meter, intended for iron and steel trash. This can also aid in identifying hot rocks. Discrimination circuits are not entirely reliable when it comes to gold nuggets however, so I do recommend recovering all targets when using the dig and detect method, especially if you are into the toss it all in a bucket stage.

The tools involved are generally a pick and a rake or hoe, and possibly a shovel also if excavating out of a hole. I prefer working the slope areas myself whenever possible, because it is far easier to rake material down  hill, than to shovel it up out of a hole. A plastic scoop is a must have if the goal is to locate individual targets.

Tools of the trade

It should be mentioned before I move on to the next method that no metal detector finds all the gold, in particular gold dust. If you are doing particularly well with the dig and detect method, it should be a clue that there is likely gold there you are missing, and setting up that pump and sluice might be worth the effort. Pan sampling your discard pile is a good way to get a better idea of how much small gold might be present.

I do think the method described above would be the best way for most people to look for gold with a metal detector in Finland. However, I have learned in my years of detecting that you tend to find what you look for. Large gold nuggets are the big game hunting of metal detecting. Large nuggets are much rarer than small gold nuggets, and typically when hunting them you end up finding lots of junk like nails and bullets instead. But they are out there, and the only way to find them is look for them. Instead of working with picks, rakes, and shovels excavating material, you will concentrate more on just scanning and recovering targets. A main target would be the piles of discarded rock and gravels pictured above, in hope that a large nugget somehow escaped recovery and was lost. It happens. Do not be surprised though if what is normally found are trash targets and hot rocks.

Instead of a detector super hot on tiny gold like the Garrett 24K a person is probably better off with a detector tuned more for larger gold, like the Garrett AT Gold. This detector also features an excellent target id system that can aid a lot with the common trash items and hot rocks found in tailing piles. A more powerful alternative would be the Garrett Axiom, a new high power pulse induction nugget detector. The Axiom features extreme depth on large gold plus the ability to tune out hot rocks that bother most other detectors, but that comes at the cost of relatively poor discrimination capability.

What intrigued me more when looking at the situation is the possibility of hunting thinly covered virgin ground. Yes nuggets are rare, and people overlooking them and discarding them are even rarer. Hunting tailing piles basically means hunting trash interspersed with very rare nugget finds. The good news is I saw a lot of this in Finland....

There are very large expanses of light forest with just the barest vegetation on top of glacial deposits of all sorts. Most gold in these areas is very small, but the nature of glacial deposits means a large, even a very large nugget, can be found randomly almost anywhere. Finland did produce some large gold. "The largest of all, weighing 393 g, was found in 1935, evidently in the headwaters of the Lutto, and another, weighing 385 g, is from the nearby Hangasoja area. The largest from the Lemmenjoki area, weighing 160 g, originates from the Morgamoja valley. Many of the larger specimens contain quartz, which has the appearance of being primary, as in a 183 g nugget from Tankavaara. The Geological Survey of Finland has a collection of some of the larger pieces of gold found in Finland."*  Multi-gram nuggets are being found in Finland today by intrepid prospectors using metal detectors, so this is not all just conjecture, but a real possibility.

Realistically hunting for large nuggets in glacial terrain will require a lot of dedication and patience. Not only is there iron and steel trash left by the old miners and the ever present bullets from hunting, but there was action in this area during WW2, so it is far more likely that metal items found will be anything but gold. That is why for most people I highly recommend the dig and detect method. When excavating into virgin ground, anything that signals will be a hot rock or a gold nugget, and with enough time, you will learn the hot rocks sound different. I promise if you persevere and use this method, you will have the satisfaction of getting a signal and saying to yourself "I KNOW that's a gold nugget!"

I wish you success and do remember it's often not the finds but the hunt that matters in the end. Looking for gold can be a great way to spend time with family and friends, and the dig and detect method lends itself well to parties of two or three people sharing the work load - and the gold. Good luck to you, and most of all, have fun!

Steve Herschbach
Copyright 2023, for exclusive use by Garrett Metal Detectors and Finndetector OY

References:

*Placer Gold in Finnish Lapland

Saariselkä Gold Rush

GEOLOGY OF TERTIARY AND QUATERNARY GOLD-BEARING PLACERS IN THE CARIBOO REGION, BRITISH COLUMBIA - yes, Canada, and maybe too much for some people, but a wealth of thought provoking information on gold deposition in glacial terrain, well worth a look by anyone prospecting in similar areas.

[IdahoPeg]

What a cool trip & interesting article!

[Swegin]

Sounds like a nice adventure.   Does Garrett have more in store for you?   How many time did the movie SISU come up? LOL..

 

 

[Steve Herschbach]

49 minutes ago, Swegin said:

Sounds like a nice adventure.   Does Garrett have more in store for you?   How many time did the movie SUSI come up? LOL..

 

I have no idea . They literally called out of the blue a week in advance and asked “want to go to Finland?” And I said “sure” without knowing anything more than that. Like what’s to know really, free trip to Finland, I’m in. I’m kind of a do anything at the drop of a hat improviser so it gets me a call now and then when people get in a pinch. 

Never heard of the movie myself and it never came up,

[mcjtom]

https://youtu.be/d2k4QAItiSA

[phrunt]

The tips in that are very relevant to New Zealand and I'm sure many other countries too.   I like all of the Nordic countries although I didn't even realise they had gold to be found in Finland.

Fantastic being able to go to Finland to do this, and I hope it encourages more Finns to take up prospecting and by the sounds of it Garrett has worked out their detectors like the 24k and Axiom are ideal for Suomi conditions.

i guess your trip was too short to pop up any gold?

[Steve Herschbach]

14 minutes ago, phrunt said:

The tips in that are very relevant to New Zealand and I'm sure many other countries too.   I like all of the Nordic countries although I didn't even realise they had gold to be found in Finland.

Fantastic being able to go to Finland to do this, and I hope it encourages more Finns to take up prospecting and by the sounds of it Garrett has worked out their detectors like the 24k and Axiom are ideal for Suomi conditions.

i guess your trip was too short to pop up any gold?

I spent way more time traveling than looking for gold. Reno to San Francisco to Helsinki to Rovaneimi, and then a 3 hour drive north to Tankavaara. Two kinda sorta days in the goldfields going from place to place. FedEx did not deliver the 24Ks as promised, so I did not have what I most wanted to use. Should have packed my own but oh well. No digging tools either except my short pick, so I hit the tailings with the Axiom, but just dug trash. Since I had no idea what to expect it was more a look around than anything else. The gold I saw from the people that were using the sluices was all very fine, far too small for any detector. We met up with a couple local detectorists that did have a few nuggets to show, largest was 2-3 grams.

[Valens Legacy]

Wonderful write up on this trip and enjoyed it very much.

There is a lot of good usable information that pertains to a lot of places here in the states also.

Hope they continue to have you in their corner for their detectors and hope they take your advise on how to make their products better.

Hope you had time to have some fun while you were there and as always good hunting.

[beatup]

very interesting write up Steve 

[GotAU?]

Very good write up Steve, thank you for taking the time to share it with us!  The photos really make it also. Are you or Garrett putting it as an article for a prospecting magazine? 

I’ve seen some beautiful copper nuggets formed when glaciers pressed them from their lodes, have similar other soft metals like gold been found in Scandinavia by the same process where the nugget is not a quartz and gold specimen but has been “pressed” out like like the copper float nuggets have?