Got me a Falcon MD20, Yay! Very cool tool.

[Boarteats]

Had a bunch of rocks ready for when Amazon dropped off my falcon. I've been wanting to get a better handle on the iron oxide stained quartz rocks and other iron heavy rocks in my streams, so have been looking at the MD20 for over a year.

I think that it will be my favorite tool. Although, can't say that I entirely understand why the Falcon identified some of the rocks as containing nonferrous metal. See attached pic.

-- First and fourth in row were straightforward. Crushed part of the first and found insanely fine gold (I believe). Could barely see the flecks with 50x loop. Will have to revisit these guys to crush/examine a larger sample.

-- Second and third are head-scratchers. They are super light like dried clay (kaolinite??). Impregnated with dark purple, green minerals. No idea what's going on here.

-- Sixth is a steal BB, I think.

-- The rest are attracted to magnet. Even so, Falcon identified these as containing nonferrous metals. The last two are similar to metal that I've found associated with chunky magnetite. Biggest sample (not shown here) was .3 grams, had specific gravity somewhere around 12 to 14. Metal is malleable but not easily deformed. Takes a fair amount of effort to squish it.

 

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[Boarteats]

Ok, funny story. Couldn’t wait for sunrise, so went out to stream to run detector over gravel. Got a hit almost immediately. Picked up rock, which was really heavy for size. Totally stoked at this point. Went back inside to get a good look at my treasure. Turned out to be an old, encrusted spark plug. Talk about buzz kill!

 

[RTR]

You'll love it.Bought one back in 2011 ,use it ALL the time,and still works like a charm and a Hugh time saver ...Use that 'gold speck test card' until you get familiar on how it works/sounds.

 

[RTR]

It has no problem at all seeing gold(smaller than the supplied speck) thats inside a quarts rock.

 

[Boarteats]

View attachment 1781636 It has no problem at all seeing gold(smaller than the supplied speck) thats inside a quarts rock.

Ohhhhhh.... that’s what that card is for!! lol. Watched some videos online and tested using gold flecks that I recently collected. Really tiny stuff. Have plenty of iron. Found it a bit tricky on samples with iron and small amounts of nonferrous metal.

 

[Boarteats]

@RTR, you were correct. Already love my Falcon. Had an hour to kill between holiday events, so went and dug up a couple pans of dirt. Classified material as I collected it. Didn’t have time to pan material, but did have enough time to scan some of the larger stuff with the Falcon. Really surprised by results. The detector screamed when it ran across the rocks in pic below. Looks like pieces of shale (??), mostly. Super strong signal. Hoping this means that they have more gold in them than is readily apparent.

 

[RTR]

@RTR, you were correct. Already love my Falcon. Had an hour to kill between holiday events, so went and dug up a couple pans of dirt. Classified material as I collected it. Didn’t have time to pan material, but did have enough time to scan some of the larger stuff with the Falcon. Really surprised by results. The detector screamed when it ran across the rocks in pic below. Looks like pieces of shale (??), mostly. Super strong signal. Hoping this means that they have more gold in them than is readily apparent.

View attachment 1782867

Good ! Now reduce them to sand & pan em out

 

[RTR]

like this until its nice & fine,using a 5 pound sledge hammer & eye protection

 

[Boarteats]

Crushed rocks. Best Christmas present ever! Lots of additional extremely fine gold not shown that I wasn’t able to separate out. By far, most gold I’ve found at one time. Thank you MD20!!