MD Newbie Gold question

Tony_agr · Dec 30, 2014

My Daughters got me a Teknetics Delta 4000 for Christmas, as a longtime prospector I was very excited, however that has now turned to confusion.
My question is this, What Numerical Value would I see displayed for small gold?
I tested the detector on a gold ring, my small bottle of flakes and the reading was approx 18, in the iron range, Also tested on a Silver Standing eagle, Morgan, Franklin .50 cent and down, so I know what to look for in the Silver Value range. It just seems to me that I'll be digging up more iron trash than any gold, I was using it on the default discriminate mode, sensitivity level 8, after reading the manual this seems to be the best setting to use as the "all Metals" mode will eliminate iron, but the iron range is where I think the gold will be detected... I live in Placerville CA so you can see why gold is one of my targets
Any Advise is much appreciated
Thanks

Terry Soloman · Dec 30, 2014

Your machine is NOT a gold nugget hunter - period. With that said, your best settings will be ALL METAL, probably in the "A-1" mode depending on the soil. If you want to find gold nuggets with your machine you MUST go LOW and SLOW. Good Luck - http://www.tekneticst2.com/manuals/MDELTA Rev 5 04.30.14 - Reader.pdf

Tom_in_CA · Dec 30, 2014

reply

Tony_agr said:
My Daughters got me a Teknetics Delta 4000 for Christmas, as a longtime prospector I was very excited, however that has now turned to confusion.
My question is this, What Numerical Value would I see displayed for small gold?
I tested the detector on a gold ring, my small bottle of flakes and the reading was approx 18, in the iron range, Also tested on a Silver Standing eagle, Morgan, Franklin .50 cent and down, so I know what to look for in the Silver Value range. It just seems to me that I'll be digging up more iron trash than any gold, I was using it on the default discriminate mode, sensitivity level 8, after reading the manual this seems to be the best setting to use as the "all Metals" mode will eliminate iron, but the iron range is where I think the gold will be detected... I live in Placerville CA so you can see why gold is one of my targets
Any Advise is much appreciated
Thanks

In addition to Terry says, I'll add this:

If you tested your gold ring, and then tested "flakes", I'm sure you've seen that there is no one single reading/TID for gold. Doh!

And as you know: Very rarely are nuggets, found in nature, ever much bigger than grain-of-rice sized. So the odds of ever getting a gold nugget the size of a typical ring, is extremely rare. Also gold rings are alloyed to be 14 or 18k. Whereas gold in nature is 24k I think. Hence gold jewelry TID's have utterly no bearing on where nuggets would read, to begin with.

It all plays into the size of the object (gold, silver, or otherwise). Thus a nugget the size of a peanut, would read high range (like penny perhaps). Whereas a nugget the size of a pin-head of grain-of-rice would read wwaayyy down into the foil range. Or dabble near iron, for that matter. That's why nugget machines (those made especially for prospecting) are never very good at iron rejection. If there IS such a feature on them, they either only work for the top inch or two of depth, or the users don't bother with any iron reject feature. Lest they loose-depth. Most places you'd look for nuggets are , hopefully ... in nature where you won't have a big problem with iron.

Not sure if your machine is meant for nuggets or not (versus a "coin/jewelry/relic" machine). If it's meant to be primarily a coin-machine, then your only hope is to use all-metal mode. You can air-test some pin-head and grain-of-rice sized nuggets, and see how or if you can even hear items that small.