Talk Me Into A Detector For High Iron Ground Please

[Old Iron]

I'm a newbie here thinking about buying a detector for some seriously high iron content ground. 

Little background. I run a commercial placer mine in the Yukon. Thinking about getting a good quality detector to check some old historic workings next to me. Also my own tailings piles. Figured it would be a good pass time for me and the family on days off. I've watched a thousand videos but the only hands on experience was with a $20 special trying to find a lost excavator tooth. Lol

My ground has a extremely high iron content. It is glacial ground so it varies a lot but I get rocks that are solid iron and literally rusted together at times. The amounts of black sand is multiple times any other Creek I've seen.

 

I know many years ago others have tried and gave up detecting do to the iron.

I also know metal detectors have really come a long way since then.

If you guys was coming out for a weekend of beer drinking and gold mining what machine would you bring?

Thanks.

 

 

 

[tim907]

I have a similar issue. I prospect in the Petersville and Cache creek area of Alaska. Highly mineralized ground with lots of hot rocks. I currently use a gold monster 1000 and have found some gold with it when detecting known dykes, but trying to cover much ground with it drives me nuts with the constant signals from all the hot rocks. I think I am going to pull the trigger and get a SDC 2300 since they are known to handle highly mineralized ground well but are still basically turn on and go like the gold monster. 

[RONS DETECTORS MINELAB]

A pulse induction detector or similar technology for handling the ground saturation problems will probably be needed there for the iron issues.

You might consider the gold sizes you might find there and the price range you’re planning to spend on one.
A GPX-4500/4800/5000 are all great detectors for a variety of gold types for a good price.

Everything else goes up in price from there or at least until the Algoforce arrives in the US.

[phrunt]

SDC will be the best on the hot rocks by the sound of it but small coils are the go for it, closely followed by the GPX 4000/4800/5000 like Ron's mentioned.  GPX will let you put on bigger coils for ground coverage and benefit from the bigger coils with depth.    If you have specimen type gold in your area the SDC might be the better choice as it's hotter on that than the GPX 4000/4800/5000 series.

The newer 6000 is more sensitive to smaller gold, but also much more sensitive to the hot rocks, a side effect of its sensitivity, in saying that you don't sound like you would care about getting 0.0X of a gram and would be happy enough getting 0.X of a gram pieces anyway.

The 4000/4800/5000 take some learning to use, not a whole lot but you do have to be aware you'd have to learn to use them, the SDC being easy to use and switch on and go style detecting.

The Garett Axiom is another option, but I don't know enough about it, so I'll leave that to someone else if they think it's suitable for you.

[Old Iron]

Thanks for the advice.

I probably should have mentioned that I'm mainly only interested in +gram nuggets.

I'm mining upper gravels off a flood plain below a sheer rock walled canyon/waterfall. Gold is mostly 30 mesh or finer with a few pickers so I run 1/2" screens in the plant trying to maximize fine gold recovery. I've yet to catch anything approaching that size screen but one never knows. Like to put a kid on duty checking tailings to make sure. 

Above the falls in the canyon and including some old historic workings up above the gold is mainly coarse flake, pickers and nuggets up to 1/4-1/2 oz.

We send friends and family up in the canyon hand planning and they always do really well.

I want to detect the nooks and crannies up on the sides looking for a big score more than anything. 

 

 

 

[Steve Herschbach]

Given everything you have said, hot ground, small gold, no real detecting experience - Minelab SDC 2300. As easy to operate a gold vacuum as you can hope for. Don’t worry it will find big nuggets also but if you are using a 1/2” screen and getting nowhere near that I’d not be sweating depth on multi-ounce nuggets.

Threads Tagged “Minelab SDC 2300”

 

[Rob Allison]

Perfect time for the Minelab SDC 2300, hit up Alaska Mining and Diving up there for the SDC 2300 special right now.  

If the iron rubbish is very bad, you might consider a good coin/relic unit like a Equinox or Manticore with good discrimination as you won't miss the big gold with either of these detectors.

Rob

[Swegin]

9 hours ago, Rob Allison said:

Perfect time for the Minelab SDC 2300, hit up Alaska Mining and Diving up there for the SDC 2300 special right now.

A dealer supporting another dealer, you don't see that everyday.

 

[Old Iron]

Thank you all for the recommendation.