G'day Viper (and others) - a couple of questions, a couple of observations (long post)
June 02, 1998 at 05:54:54
Viper
I read your post about the match-head sized nugget at 3 feet. You and I and every other rational person knows it's absolute garbage, for sure. I saw it on the website of a long-range locator manufacturer (no names, no pack drill). Just wondering what webiste you saw it on, because I'd be surprised if Minelab condoned that sort of claim - it's got to end up doing them more harm than good.
Now you've really got me interested in that Fisher PI detector you mentioned in one of your recent posts. If that or any other cheaper detector could do what the 2100 can do in these Western Austalian conditions I'd gladly sell my 2100 and grubstake myself for a month or two's prospecting with the proceeds. Have you got a link to any further info on it, particularly regarding its use in Western Australia?
Without wanting to fuel this debate ad infinitum, I don't know if you saw my recent post following Lanny and Wayne's on the subject of the 3/4 ounce nugget at 20". Having found a 17.5 gram nugget at a measured 18" (see my previous post for details of the find). It depends not only on soil conditions, but also how fast the search coil is swung, operator experience, the surface area to weight ratio of the nugget and the position it's sitting (flat or edge-on). Just bringing to light the multitude of factors involved.
Going off on a tangent for a moment, years ago I was working a patch of tiny pieces with a mate on a salt lake, both using SD 2000s. I'd only just got mine shortly beforehand and prior to that had only used a Garrett A2B on sal lakes (the A2B is an "Australianised" version of the Garrett Groundhog modified specifically for gold prospecting).
Salt lakes are notoriously noisy - not just the salt but all the iron mineralisation which has accumulated there. Without wanting to sound like a know-all, I'd eat my hat if there was anything as bad in the States. You could work the lakes by permanently holding the switch on the handle over to the left but the trade-off was you sacrificed a lot of depth.
Anyway, myself and two mates pegged a lease on a salt lake where there ended up being nuggets of all sizes (one day if anyone's interested I'll post a description on this Forum of the best patch we found on that lease - over 25 ounces, mainly small pieces along with a few "biggies" found by two of us between lunchtime one day and breakfast the next day - worked straight through the night. Still got a photo of all that gold too).
Jeez, sidetracked myself again. Anyway, what I was getting at was that after pulling out that 25 odd ounces, we found there were heaps of tiny bits, what we refer to here as "flyspecks" (a figurative rather than literal term - I don't want to be misconstrued as making any outrageous claims!). We soon figured that we could pick up the tiniest pieces by moving at a pace that we thought at the time was dead slow while overlapping sweeps to what would probably appear to be a ridiculous degree to the casual observer. This was due to the extremely narrow area of sensitivity at the centre of the coil, which was further accentuated by holding the switch over to the left.
Moving on in time to just a few years ago, another mate and I were using SD 2000s for the first time on a salt lake. My buddy had found a patch he'd pulled about 10 ounces off. He'd been there a week before I could get time off work, so when I got there he'd skimmed the cream off it and there were mainly only flyspecks left. My mate had only been detecting a few weeks and had just taken to it like a duck to water - you'd have sworn he'd been at it for years. With all my experience at that other patch, I still had a lesson to learn from that guy - SLOW DOWN EVEN MORE. We got another couple of ounces between us from that spot in five days - not enough to retire on for sure, but by the same token better in our pockets than still in the ground.
While I'm in this rambling mode, I'll mention one last thing, for the benefit of whoever may be interested, that to me has been THE KEY to finding gold in virgin areas (the only places I look these days).
It's a twist on the above theme. SLOW DOWN when you're searching in a likely looking spot. When I say "you", I don't mean YOU, Viper, I mean it in the sense of "one, anyone, all of us". Instead of flying through in a mad rush to get to the next likely looking spot as I've noticed many do and as I used to do myself in earlier days, have a bit of faith in your own judgement which led to choosing that likely spot and spend quite a bit of time there before you write it off and move on. The best way to start getting a feel for likely looking spots in the first place is starting at known gold-producing areas and raidate out in search of similar-looking combinations of rocks and gravel.
Better put the skids on myself here.
Viper, don't forget to relay more details about the match-head nugget claim as well as the Fisher PI when you get a chance. It would be much appreciated.
Regards to all
Steve
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