Mytimetoshine

[Sample Pan Dan]

It was good to get out and get a little holiday color with you today. Just wish it hasn't been so damn cold.

 

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[mytimetoshine]

Yea man it was great to get out for some Thanksgiving gold!

Got to the parking lot at 715 or so and made my way across the bridge. The bridge has a metal trust above it ( not sure what you call that, suspension?) which had been dripping condensation overnight so every 5 feet was ice. Those that know this bridge know it's a bit sketchy crossing because people drive fast on this road and it's a blind turn on both sides coming into it. It's pretty damn cold 30-35 degrees. I almost ate S*** on the first patch of ice and the people driving bye gave me that, your out of your mind to be out there right now look. Lol.

Made my way down to the river with my Bazooka Prospector and chest waders but realized I didn't have my rubber gloves... The sun was not over the canyon yet so I was contemplating what I was gonna do until Dan showed up a few minutes later. We stood and looked at the river and were both thinking F that, we arnt getting our hands wet.

About 9 the sun came up over the canyon and lit us up so we got to work with only about 1hr left before we would have to pack up. Dan found a good spot right away but after testing about 10 different spots I just could not find any concentration. All material on the river has "some" gold and I've done we'll with bad material before so I just started skimming the top couple inches of bank material that were close to the sluices. 6 or 7 2 gal buckets through the prospector. Dan had some good color on his drop riffle even though I inadvertently tossed a golfball size rock off my grizzly's directly into his sluice.... I blurted out "oh s***" and got it out as quickly as possible. Then looked for Dan, and his head popped up out off a pit nearby. I'm all like " nothing to see over here"! Carry on ..lol

We called it quits at ten. Did quick clean ups and enjoyed our victory beer. Great day with great company doing what I love. Doesn't get any better then that. The take was very humble but I bet it still makes those east coast boys a little jealous!

 

[mytimetoshine]

Pretty frustrating weekend..

Stayed in this weekend to catch up on some projects, get rest and clean up the house.

First project was to play around with my new digital microscope. Mac software would not install just like the last camera I bought! Wtf...

2nd project was to finish my rod mill. Getting all the rods cut and filed down was a lot of work! Set it up for the first run and right away all the rods go Cockeyed.... try it 3 times making small adjustments but the same thing... I'm very frustrated right now! Ugh..

 

[GoldpannerDave]

Pretty frustrating weekend..

Stayed in this weekend to catch up on some projects, get rest and clean up the house.

First project was to play around with my new digital microscope. Mac software would not install just like the last camera I bought! Wtf...

2nd project was to finish my rod mill. Getting all the rods cut and filed down was a lot of work! Set it up for the first run and right away all the rods go Cockeyed.... try it 3 times making small adjustments but the same thing... I'm very frustrated right now! Ugh..

See response about the rock tumbler in the original thread over in "panning for gold."

As far as the computer problems, Mac's aren't as plug and play issue-free as advertised. Great computers but not as great as Apple thought in the 80's. The earlier Apple product, the Apple IIe had the educational market wrapped up and stood to do the same with the Mac but they got greedy and went to a closed system, while the IBM/DOS world went open system. Within a few years, 90+ % of all personal computers were NOT Mac's.

Gamer designers were not going to pay $500 up front to be able to design games for the Mac, hence all the great games weren't Mac. Software designers weren't either. All the great new apps weren't Mac, etc. etc., etc. Once you had 90% to 10%, if you were writing software, games, etc., for a living, which market did you want to design for? Obvious answer, but Apple did no see it back in the 80's when they made that decision. I haven't followed all the figures over the last 30 years, but I think Apple has stayed at 10%
plus or minus about 5% since then.

Please understand I am not putting down the Mac, only Apple's marketing decision. So today, if you want say, a relatively cheap USB microscope that works, your best chances are not with a Mac but a Windows-world product. I am just trying to explain why it doesn't work as well as Apple promised back in the 80's.

And don't tell me about high-end graphics; the parameters of the users and the requirements are all different. Again, I am not discussing product quality. I suspect many here are old enough to remember the situation I described above, some of you may know even more about it than I do. All I am trying to do is tell why his Mac software won't work. I suspect it was written for a Windows system and ported over for the reasons I explained about.

 

[mytimetoshine]

See response about the rock tumbler in the original thread over in "panning for gold."

As far as the computer problems, Mac's aren't as plug and play issue-free as advertised. Great computers but not as great as Apple thought in the 80's. The earlier Apple product, the Apple IIe had the educational market wrapped up and stood to do the same with the Mac but they got greedy and went to a closed system, while the IBM/DOS world went open system. Within a few years, 90+ % of all personal computers were NOT Mac's.

Gamer designers were not going to pay $500 up front to be able to design games for the Mac, hence all the great games weren't Mac. Software designers weren't either. All the great new apps weren't Mac, etc. etc., etc. Once you had 90% to 10%, if you were writing software, games, etc., for a living, which market did you want to design for? Obvious answer, but Apple did no see it back in the 80's when they made that decision. I haven't followed all the figures over the last 30 years, but I think Apple has stayed at 10%
plus or minus about 5% since then.

Please understand I am not putting down the Mac, only Apple's marketing decision. So today, if you want say, a relatively cheap USB microscope that works, your best chances are not with a Mac but a Windows-world product. I am just trying to explain why it doesn't work as well as Apple promised back in the 80's.

And don't tell me about high-end graphics; the parameters of the users and the requirements are all different. Again, I am not discussing product quality. I suspect many here are old enough to remember the situation I described above, some of you may know even more about it than I do. All I am trying to do is tell why his Mac software won't work. I suspect it was written for a Windows system and ported over for the reasons I explained about.

All good about the Mac. My reason for allegiance is the plug and play aspect and it's user friendliness. Sure you can get the same computer for 1/4 of the price and I used to own one. I always had problems, always had virus and thought they went outdated 10x faster. My dad has been loyal since the 80's and convinced be to buy Mac last time and right away I was happy with my purchase. I have NEVER had a single issue with this computer in the 7 years I've had it. That is until the dreaded digital microscope...lmao

That being said I could care less. I am not interested in computers at all and use them for very basic reasons. If you guys like PC that doesn't bother me at all. Shoot at this rate it might be easier to buy a used PC for 100 bucks to get my microscope working!!!

 

[GoldpannerDave]

All good about the Mac. My reason for allegiance is the plug and play aspect and it's user friendliness. Sure you can get the same computer for 1/4 of the price and I used to own one. I always had problems, always had virus and thought they went outdated 10x faster. My dad has been loyal since the 80's and convinced be to buy Mac last time and right away I was happy with my purchase. I have NEVER had a single issue with this computer in the 7 years I've had it. That is until the dreaded digital microscope...lmao

That being said I could care less. I am not interested in computers at all and use them for very basic reasons. If you guys like PC that doesn't bother me at all. Shoot at this rate it might be easier to buy a used PC for 100 bucks to get my microscope working!!!

Today, if you are buying software to run on a Mac, it may well have been ported rather than written for the Mac due to the 90% - 10% thing. That is the cause of a lot of the lack of plug and play. Apple-written apps for the Mac do work without any problems, so do lots of others.

I wasn't suggesting you change, just letting you now why the USB microscope software probably did not work. And your solution of buying a used PC would probably fix it!! That is hilarious.

 

[GoldpannerDave]

Despite the bruised knee, and now sore wrist, it was a great day. Got a chance to hang out with some great guys, got some gold, and enjoyed half a ham sandwich.

Ouch!! But the gold looks very nice. Just focus on the right-hand picture, not the left, I guess.

 

[mytimetoshine]

So I called the Dino Light tech support on my lunch break at work and they were very friendly and fixed my problem. He said my model shouldn't be affected by the software issue. He suggested it was just a bad software disk and it was! Downloaded the same exact software directly from there site and bam. Microscope is on! Gonna mess around with it a little tonight try to get a couple shots. I've been freaking waiting for like 2 months for this. Lol

Edit: see pictures on the thread USB microscope official thread --
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/g...-usb-microscope-camera-official-thread-4.html

 

[GoldpannerDave]

So I called the Dino Light tech support on my lunch break at work and they were very friendly and fixed my problem. He said my model shouldn't be affected by the software issue. He suggested it was just a bad software disk and it was! Downloaded the same exact software directly from there site and bam. Microscope is on! Gonna mess around with it a little tonight try to get a couple shots. I've been freaking waiting for like 2 months for this. Lol

Edit: see pictures on the thread USB microscope official thread --
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/g...-usb-microscope-camera-official-thread-4.html

That is great news!! It is always nice to see things work properly. Now we are expecting some pictures.

 

[mytimetoshine]

So I haven't been out since Thanksgiving morning. Busy season at work, holiday stuff and the cold short days..

Been working on several projects though like my rod mill. I'm currently running a 2x4 diameter ABS barrell with a 110v drill as the motor. I have my Sands classified to -100 but have only been running the -20 +50 stuff. A 15 min run will crush about 35% of the material going through the 50 classifier. Gold every time... 80% of the gold stays in the classifier with just a few small specks of gold being recovered from the stuff that went through. Unfortunately after running a batch for an hour and then return running for 30 more minutes I still didn't get it all through the classifier so being left with just gold on top is unrealistic probably. Maybe with a larger set up..

So I've noticed that a 15 min run seems to be the most efficient. Even though it doesn't all go through the classifier and you have to pan out the gold it seems to be enough to get most if not all of the hidden gold. My theory is that the gold hiding in an iron she'll fractures off pretty easily but some of the larger, harder pieces won't crush. , even when ran for long periods.

This is from 5 tablespoons of material. Over 30 pieces!!!!

 

[mytimetoshine]

Finally got to take this bad boy out of the box! My daughter is with her mom till her birthday next week. Can't wait to see her face when she gets her MD

So with my Christmas obligations full filed yesterday I decided to go out and see how much I don't know about medal detecting, lol

I planned a short sort of multi purpose easy trip. My fever has been out of control so I decided to bring my gold pan and waders too. Right under the bridge is a Rockpile I work when I don't have much time to hike in. After last week's rain the SF hit 6k CFS and the whole area was underwater so being basically a newbie I wanted to see what the water flow did to the area and if any flood gold was present. Sadly the water flow didn't do much, smoothed out some of the dug pits but nothing really moved..scraped some top layer back sand and didn't notice and recently deposited flood gold. So I just ran a half dozen pans of some ones hole that was up higher. Had some clay in it and was able to reduce my fever with a few flakes into the pan.

So I put all my gold stuff in the truck and grabbed my detector. I have never used one before. Did a Quick skim through the manual before I left this morning but that's it. Started right on the main trail. I did the ground balance thing and then turned in the ground tracking which I'm now thinking was wrong? Not sure what the difference between the tracking and the balance is. But anyway I started getting signals instantly. In fact I couldn't go 2 ft with ought one... lol soooo much trash. Nails, caps, tabs, foil, fishing lures, pennies... it's amazing how much trash is in these rivers...

I'm really glad I bought the pin pointer. It would have got frustrating quick trying to locate the targets otherwise. Anyways.. it was pretty fun and I can't wait to learn more.

....I did have one interesting target. Idk what it was but the pole went deep I couldn't get it out and the top broke of when I tried to Yank it out.

 

[Jeff95531]

You remind me of me. I got the MD I have because it goes DEEP! Little did I know what THAT actually meant when I started getting signals right off! And everyone KNOWS people stored gold coins in coffee cans...so you MUST dig every target. .

 

[mytimetoshine]

Yesterday I went out again with the detector. Didn't find any treasure but had fun being out there and learning albeit slowly how to use this thing. I did get one target that was obviously in behind some bedrock that had a slight fracture. I hammered it till it came apart. Now I didn't expect to find gold that day but when I found out there was metal down in there and not just a hot rock I won't lie I got pretty exicted. Ended up being a fragment from a square nail....it was a gorgeous day and I had fun. I bring home my backpack full of nails, caps, she'll casings and random scraps of iron. Dump everything into a pan and give it a quick rinse.... 2 specks of gold!! Ahaha see if did find gold with it!. Couple cool finds. A block of iron that must have weighed 20 lbs and a what I think is an old bullet I mean old...also a small nail. Much smaller then I've ever seen before. Anyways.... lots to learn..

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

That nail looks like it could have been a boot tack

 

[mytimetoshine]

That nail looks like it could have been a boot tack

Haha funny you say that. Mojo said something about boot tacks the other day, but then when he saw the pic it looked to big to him.

 

[Asmbandits]

Looks like the detector is working good! Now only to find that nugget or cash of nuggets! I'm still kicking myself for not meeting up with you, the whole family is sick and I had the baby with me that night and she kept me up most of the time and when the alarm clock rang there was no way I was going anywhere.. I almost left to head up there around 10 after I had been up for a little while but it's probably better I didn't since that the day I was feeling the worst. Hopefully ill get out soon I'm off this thursday and friday so hopefully I'll be getting out then.

 

[Goldwasher]

Not a boot tack. It's the type of nail they used to tack canvas to frames. I found a spot on the claim where they were in a perfect rectangle. the block of iron looks like a smashed hammer head

 

[mytimetoshine]

Looks like the detector is working good! Now only to find that nugget or cash of nuggets! I'm still kicking myself for not meeting up with you, the whole family is sick and I had the baby with me that night and she kept me up most of the time and when the alarm clock rang there was no way I was going anywhere.. I almost left to head up there around 10 after I had been up for a little while but it's probably better I didn't since that the day I was feeling the worst. Hopefully ill get out soon I'm off this thursday and friday so hopefully I'll be getting out then.

No worries man. We will get a raincheck. I didn't even make it to my destination that day (took wrong trail,AGAIN)...LOL

 

[mytimetoshine]

Not a boot tack. It's the type of nail they used to tack canvas to frames. I found a spot on the claim where they were in a perfect rectangle. the block of iron looks like a smashed hammer head

Ah, very cool. Yea this one looks in decent shape. And that hunk of iron probably is a sledge hammer head. I didn't even think about that! Every nail I pulled out I wanted to know the story of who dropped it. MD is pretty fun, I bet even more fun when you find a picker!

Hey what about that bullet looking thing? Any ideas?

 

[mytimetoshine]

Finally! Got a real day of prospecting in. It's been a month or more..

The plan was to meet up with Golden Mojo and School of hard knocks at 730. I lobbied Joe for 8 cause I was being chicken. Then when the alarm came my subconscious said no. I knew right where they were going so I just met up with them around 9 or so and it was still FREEZING.

I went light just backpack full of pan, classifier, knee pads and hand tools. But there was no way I was getting in that water and I already know it's impossible to pan comfortable at this location without getting your feet wet so I bring my waders. I rolled them up and bunjied but still had to carry under one arm as I could get it attached to my backpack like I thought I could. I really need to get my pack situation figured out before spring. I see everyone with everything neatly organized and attached to there pack and I think why can't I do that? I need someone to teach me the art of the pack, lol. Joe just uses a large open pack that he can just dump stuff into which seems to work well. Def better then what I've got.

When I got there they weren't very far up the "trail" They had stopped to sample some ground so I waited for them to finish there pans and pack up and we started up river. Wasn't long before we stopped to sample again. Found some descent color but we're unsatisfied and continued on. We got almost all the way to where we wanted but then stopped again to....you guessed it to sample...lol. I decided to trudge on by myself cause I've been wanting to reach this stretch of river all year.

When I got there it was a disappointment. It was all muddy and mucky. Great looking bedrock though so I sampled a crack instead of ground material. The crack actually looked undug, I was getting nice clay and dirt material and then I notice right next to the crack is just like a little depression in the bedrock and there were 3 bullets and 2 fishing gear weights lined up perfectly in a row and looked like they have been there for 50 years. My first thought of course was like oh man its some sort of gravity trap right here and this crack Is gonna be full of gold!... then as my first hand full of material yielded 2 small specks I realized I'd been had.... Obviously lol. I'm sure someone cleaned out that crack long long ago and as they did they pulled that lead out an set them right there....*******s! I'm sure it was a beautiful thing.....

I wanted to do more sampling or even go further but I knew the boys would start coming up stream to see why I didn't return so I started making my way back and ran into SHK lol they knew if I didn't come back I'm either hurt....or more likely getting good color but out of yelling distance! Haha.

We then went back down stream to meet up with Mojo and fooled around a bit more and now it's 130. The little sun we had is gonzo and it's starting to get a bit cold again. Good thing in late December there is that thing called sunlight from 1030 all the way till 1....

We ended up making a plan to go back to the spot we got the best color and just have at it till 4. Which we did. I was freezing, SHK looked like he was over it and ready to go then I go to grab Joe an I notice his boots getting pretty wet while panning (had to be soaked through by now) , I say " damn Joe aren't you cold with wet boots"? And he says with a dead face "what, I have double socks on".. soon funny!

Oh man only with good friends can you have fun in the freezing cold walking around a pile of rocks and boulders all day. Till next time gentleman!!