Hi there Big Tim,
First off I want to mention that I appreciate your attitude as you do not seem to be foaming at the mouth about this venture and that is a good start!
Second you own an MXT and that is a fairly good machine for gold and is therefore a good place to start. Self education has already been mentioned and since you have the MXT you can begin to learn about gold detecting by building your own test garden. If you can get your hands on some powdered iron, maybe a teaspoon full, mix it with several shovels full of your yard dirt. Once it is WELL mixed you can use this dirt as the basis for your test garden. Since you've been hunting for coins and such for some time do you happen to have a gold ring that is crushed or badly damaged or that you just would not mind cutting it into various sized pieces?? If so you can do just that cut it into very small, and then larger and larger pieces, very small would be about a 1/16" x 1/16". Once you have the pieces glue them to light colored poker chips with some sort of glue on nonmetallic tape, you do not want to loose the pieces so make sure they are not going to come off the poker chips. If you do not have the gold you can use the same sized pieces of lead or cut up a nickle and you will get about the same response from these metals as you would gold on the detector. Once the garden is planted leave lots of room between each sample, put your detector in its prospecting mode and learn what it tells you over each target.
I have a GMT with the small coil and the stock 6 x 10 and use it in the National Forests here in California. Last year I used it to help me locate a nice bunch of small nuggets, about $400 worth at todays prices. Can one make a wage from it, not from what I've seen yet. How does one find a spot, go where the 49ers went as they did not get it all. Again, I go out into the National Forests and so far I can go where I want BUT I STILL CLEAN UP THE PLACE WHEN I'M DONE. The caps are to get your attention so I was not shouting. Big holes out in the forests or along the sides of pristine rivers look just as ugly as park lawns do when a detectorist does not fill in their plugs. I enjoy the adventure of being out there searching, fishing, camping, campfire at night and the bats flying around catching the bugs. When you find any amount of gold it is exciting even the teeny tiny little bits. Even small nuggets or even smaller pickers make your heart run faster. So a claim and how does one get one, there are lots of scam artists out there more than willing to sell anybody a worthless piece of paper to a worthless piece of ground. Me I go where gold has been found before and search on my own. Join a gold prospectors club that has claims to go to or join other groups that have claims you can go to as a member. If you've got the funds and have really practiced with your detector you can sign up for a trip to one of the Alaska groups say on Gains Creek. For now I would advise practicing, getting newer metal detector prospecting books from the library and doing self teaching.
Equipment: Plastic gold pan, classifier, small digging tools. That will get you down the road just with these items. You have a detector that is useable for prospecting so you can dig a 5 gallon bucket of dirt and check the dirt with the detector before you do anything else with it. Here is another place where your gold samples glued to the poker chips will come in handy. Place one on the ground and see what your detector tells you about the NEW area! Highly mineralized soils are a lot different from simple soils (thats why I suggested tossing in the powdered iron into your dirt at home) and you must learn how to set your detector for the mineralization. Okay so you find a place with a lot of flakes and your back is getting really sore from all the bending over you must do so how do you move more dirt in a day without killing yourself? 1) really classify and all that means is to bet the big rocks out of the finer dirt. Classify down to 3/8" or 1/4" for panning or sluicing. Now don't even think of just throwing all those classified rocks away, that's what the 49ers did. Run your detector over all the rocks you take out of the dirt as the detector can "see the gold" even if you or I can not. A bulk classifier is nothing more than a BBQ rack or a refrigerator rack set at an angle over a catching area, say a large piece of plastic. Tie two sticks to the top of the rack, push the sticks into the ground so the rack is at say a 45 degree angle to the catch area and just slowly pour shovels full of rough sample on the top of the rack and allow it to fall to the bottom of the rack, gravity will take care of most of the rest. Okay, so you've panned and then you've classified and you still are just not getting enough dirt moved in a day so now you purchase your "first" sluice box. This is sort of like purchasing your first pan as most of us have more than one pan and some of us have more than one sluice box. For a first sluice go for the new units with drop riffle designs, check out Angus McKirk or California Sluices, I think Angus has better designs. Also astrobouncer on this site has posted Lots of pictures of the drop riffle sluices he makes out of wood on his table saw. The drop riffle sluice boxes are easier to use and catch almost all of the gold that goes into them, checkout pvillehunter posts for his efforts with sluice boxes. He started with a Keene sluice box and has just switched over to the McKirk boxes.
Here in National Forests in CA one can stay "park" their vehicle in one spot for 14 days and then it must be moved, I'm not sure just how far it needs to be moved but moved. Camping in the forest is usually free as there are NO amenities. Camping just off a highway at a campground costs from say $8 and up a day. Where I go I backpack in and where I go the roads are rough and one is safer if they have a true 4 wheel drive rig though the all wheel drive Subaru's have good ground clearance and if they are not super loaded down then they go most of the places where the big rigs go though they have their limits. One can go to the desserts of Arizona or to any western location and prospect as long as you've read and understand each areas rules.
One common rule is be prepared to take care of yourself where ever you are!! I have a 1992 Bronco 4 x 4 rig and in the summer I carry two sets of tire chains with two to four rubber snubbers per wheel, I do not have a winch on my Bronco so the chains on all the tires help. Another common sense general rule is to be in good physical shape as this "hobby" requires some work if not a lot of work especially if you backpack your gear into a canyon for a two week stay, say down a 3000' vertical drop canyon with an 85 pound pack and yes I do that. I'm 67 years of age this April so it can be done and usually I am by myself.
Really pour over all the old posts on this site as there are some really good informative ones in the prospecting metal detecting and sluicing sites. I'm a novice at this and I've asked lots of questions so you could go to these two areas and scroll down till you see one of my postings and then just follow the thread of answers, they are amazing! These fellas have really given me some great information. In return I try to help others and I try to post some good pictures of the country I get into.
Their are rules for the places you will be going into Depending on what you will be doing. I've been told that Dredging in California is coming back although at the moment it is still illegal to dredge in CA. If/When it returns then you will need a permit to dredge and then they may limit the types of places one can dredge, that is unknown at this time. Sluicing or panning in the Nat. Forest requires you to haul your stuff in and have at it, no permit at this time. Be informed and that means You need to get in touch with whatever authority looks over the area you want to go into and the rules change from time to time so stay informed. Do all that you can to clean up after yourself! This will be important for all of us to do as if we all go out there and mess the place up, they will close All Prospecting down and we will deserve it if we are careless or allow others to be careless. At the end of last years prospecting season I moved a ton or two of boulders to reclaim the spot I had been prospecting. It was a lot of work for one guy to do but I did it without rules from the Forest Service, I did it as it was the right thing to do. Its sort of like litter in the big city, it's ugly if it gets left there and if a lot of people do not clean up after themselves then the forests will get ugly and they will be closed to all prospecting.
Okay, this should keep you busy for the rest of the winter. Read, practice, plant your test garden, learn how to pan and still keep small bird shot in the pan, check out the government printing office for "Placer Mining" brochures, check out the internet for "how to pan for gold" as one fellow from Oregon has posted an awesome 'how to' for panning and reading a stream. And now I need some sleep. Go have fun!! 63bkpkr
note = picture from latst years metal detecting/panning/sluicing
Gravelwasher
) i had to learn on my own, school of hard knocks, made many mistakes.
