How Small Does It Need To Be?

[Lead Detector]

6 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I know a lot of what I call "real miners." Alaska still has plenty of small placer mining operations, many of them family operations. Or serious gold dredgers. Almost to a person they consider metal detecting for a gold a complete waste of time. They have a family to feed and bills to pay and no time for toys. In the world of gold mining metal detectors are toys. Useful toys at times perhaps, but still toys. Me on my favorite mining tool....

That's a bit bigger than my D4, but we all gotta start somewhere 😁

[jasong]

1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I know a lot of what I call "real miners." Alaska still has plenty of small placer mining operations, many of them family operations. Or serious gold dredgers. Almost to a person they consider metal detecting for a gold a complete waste of time. They have a family to feed and bills to pay and no time for toys. In the world of gold mining metal detectors are toys. Useful toys at times perhaps, but still toys. Me on my favorite mining tool....

There is something ultra satisfying about turning big boulders and new dirt over with machinery. I feel like a kid on a playground running that kind of stuff sometimes. 😁 It's like zen satisfying to watch stuff that would take weeks to move by hand just yield and give way in a few minutes. That kind of digging I like. I'll dig trenches for water, electrical for friends just for fun because it's relaxing for me to move dirt like that, almost feels superhuman.

This was my winter fixup project, old abused ranch mini ex with bad cylinders and swivel, bent dipper. Granted, a few magnitudes smaller than the dozer, but still fun. 

[Nedkelly]

4 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

There is actually something satisfying about recovering an incredibly tiny bit of gold, kind of a "I can't believe I found something that small" sort of thing. It does take some proficiency to be good at it

Yes I agree gives you a lot of confidence knowing you have the detector tuned to perfection and your working in harmony with it.

[Lead Detector]

For digging the little pieces?

 

[okara gold]

37 minutes ago, Lead Detector said:

For digging the little pieces?

 

Batteries not included! lol

[geof_junk]

13 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I know a lot of what I call "real miners." Alaska still has plenty of small placer mining operations, many of them family operations. Or serious gold dredgers. Almost to a person they consider metal detecting for a gold a complete waste of time. They have a family to feed and bills to pay and no time for toys. In the world of gold mining metal detectors are toys. Useful toys at times perhaps, but still toys. Me on my favorite mining tool....

Like all us gold prospector, we fill in our holes but your would be a little bit bigger.😀

[cudamark]

On 3/2/2024 at 12:45 PM, dig4gold said:

Hi Phrunt. Any chance you could wave your E1500 over that little sucker & tell us how it does, maybe your gold monster, GB2 & Garrett 24K too? Cheers.

Any gold is better than no gold & even a tiny bit like that .009 piece is still gold & you can go home & say you found a piece of gold. Does size matter? My girlfriend says "It's not the size that matters, but the way you use it."😂

D4G

Good thing, huh? 🤣

[dig4gold]

On 3/3/2024 at 10:44 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

I know a lot of what I call "real miners." Alaska still has plenty of small placer mining operations, many of them family operations. Or serious gold dredgers. Almost to a person they consider metal detecting for a gold a complete waste of time. They have a family to feed and bills to pay and no time for toys. In the world of gold mining metal detectors are toys. Useful toys at times perhaps, but still toys. Me on my favorite mining tool....

Overburden is the bane of us detectorists, all gold mining for that matter. That sucker would make short work of getting down to some detectable ground/bedrock.

D4G

[ChuckScrivener]

My two cents on this subject is that I mess with anything detectable.  And a big reason for that is how many patches I have found because the tip off piece was a speck.