Finding gold & rebar property marker pins

[pauldst]

I currently live in Northern California, and have been trying to learn to find and get gold. I have been thinking of getting a metal detector to help narrow down places on claims to dig for sluicing, but have not yet been able to justify spending the money. I am also a partner in a development in Iowa. The last time it was necessary to find lot pins for a sale, since I was no longer there to rent a dectector and find them, we got the engineering and survey company that we used in construction to find the pins. It ended up being around a thousand dollars!

So, I am thinking to go ahead and buy a detector, since I am going out there in a few days, and find the pins for all the remaining lots while I am out there. Will any detector that is good for gold work well to find rebar pins? Or are there certain ones that would be better? I would need to stay under $500.

On Craigslist I see a Fisher CZ20 Metal Detector, a Minelab Eureka Gold Metal Detector, a Tesoro Lobo SuperTRAQ metal detector, a Nokta Fors Gold Metal Detector, and a Whites GMT Gold Master. The last one says it has an "iron grunt"...what is that? And the next to last says not good on wet sand beaches, so probably not what I want. All of these are less than $500....

Thanks in advance!

 

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[perry2]

Any good machine will find rebar// a machine like the ATGold or ATPro would do all. Even the Garrett 150 or 250 at under $300 will work -and I think all of the above // .// by the way if you are setting or locating Gold claim stakes buy a bunch of small magnets (E-Bay) and place one near the base of the marker---then if the pin walks away you can relocate the corner (many claim corners are PVC pipe so a magnet 3-4" down will save the location for metal detector locating.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

.... find rebar pins...

Rebar is iron. So if your sweeper is a standard coin machine (like the cz20), be sure you're not using it in disc. mode. Lest it go "silent" over iron. Because iron (like nails) is normally an object that md'rs want to AVOID. But in your case, if the markers are iron, that's what you want to FIND. However, if the iron is big enough, it often overloads the disc. circuits and you hear it anyhow. Not sure how the cz20 will react to rebar-sized. And go figure: It's poked in downwards (so you're only "seeing" to top , not like it's lying flat).

So if you're going to use a standard disc. coin machine like that, you might want to put it in all metal (aka pinpoint) mode. I've found property rebar pins for a friend using a standard coin/relic machine: Explorer II. But I made sure to use it in ferrous mode and having the disc. "wide open". So that iron sounds too (albeit a different "grunt" tone). Then so-long as I knew the approx . area of search (approx. where the pins should be) I could just investigate various signals. Small nails and various pulltabs and foil were easily distinguished from the larger beep I was looking for.

As for the gold nugget machines, naturally they'd work too. Since, by nature, they're all-metal machines. HOWEVER they might be "too squirrely sensitive". Meaning you'll ring the bells of notre dame on every single BB, fleck, pinhead, etc... Since they're made to find teeensy dot sized nuggets. Thus over-kill for your objective. JMHO

 

[cudamark]

If you want just one detector to find both gold and these property marker pins, I'd get a versatile gold machine like the Fisher Gold Bug Pro, Minelab 705 gold pack, Garrett AT Gold, etc. I wouldn't get the CZ20/21. I didn't realize that they used iron rebar as a marker. All the ones I've been asked to find were a staked washer made of brass or stainless.

 

[luvsdux]

Having looked for rebar markers in the past, I can definitely suggest hunting in all metal as some detectors tend to discriminate iron when in discrimination mode. Also, if the bars are inserted vertically which is typical, the 3/8 - 1/2 end is actually a pretty small target.
luvsdux

 

[pauldst]

Thank you, all.

Because of timing, and the possibility that the airline may not allow the metal detector on when I fly back (driving out), I am not going to buy this now. I had decided on a Nokta Fors Gold Pro that has the three extra coils and a Makro pinpointer. :/ Hopefully it will still be available when I get back.

On the rebar markers, that is what is in there, I saw some before they were put in, and have dug down to one or two in the past. They have plastic caps on the top with the location information.