Whites Pulsescan TDI at Moore Creek, Alaska

[Steve Herschbach]

White's Pulsescan TDI at Moore Creek, Alaska

I run a "pay-to-mine" operation at my gold mine at Moore Creek, Alaska. The location has mixed hot rocks that severely impede the performance of regular metal detectors. I was very excited when White's announced a new ground balancing pulse induction detector, the Pulsescan TDI, because I figured it would do well at our mine. As part of the operation we want to provide detectors for our visitors that do not have their own.

These people by nature have little or no detecting experience. I was happy to find some stock settings for the TDI that worked well at Moore Creek. I could basically set the detector for somebody and as long as they did not touch the controls it worked well. Just turn the detector on and go.

Still, experience counts for much and novices have a tough time finding gold nuggets, just due to lack of basic detecting skills. We have found in the past that regardless of the detector used we are happy if novices can just find any gold at all metal detecting during their visit. So I was very pleased that half a dozen new detectorists found their very first nuggets metal detecting with the White's Pulsescan TDI. The unit is not only very capable but also quite easy to operate and so really the only task left to the novices was to get over a nugget.

Mike B & Karl E of Anchorage with TDI Finds

Close-up of Mike and Karl's Gold

Moore Creek visitor Pete W from Paducah, Kentucky. Pete hunted hard with the Pulsescan TDI but was having little luck. I was out with him at one point and was sitting nearby when he got a signal. He started to dig with his scoop but the target was deep, and so I cam over with my pick to help. I scooped a pretty deep hole, but when he checked the target was still in the ground. So I dug some more and out popped a really good looking nugget! A very nice piece weighing .27 ounce that put a huge smile on Pete's face.

Close-up of Pete's Nugget

Moore Creek visitor Jens S from Hupstedt, Germany with nuggets he found with the White's Pulsescan TDI. The larger nugget is .62 ounce and the smaller .37 ounce. Jens found the smaller nugget first within ten minutes of turning the TDI on for the first time.

I was doing some bulldozing at our gold mine at Moore Creek, Alaska to stir up some nuggets for our visitors. I got to one little knob of gravel and after I flattened it out I thought "that looks like a good spot". I had not done any detecting in a couple weeks and figured it was about time. So when I got the dozer back to camp I got the White's Pulsescan TDI out and headed to the location. A guy had just come into camp as I was leaving and so I told him to head up the same way.

I got to the spot and started detecting. First down one row and up the other. After about ten minutes I got a nice signal, and dug up a great .31 ounce specimen. It is a little section of a quartz vein with a nearly solid gold core of gold running through the middle.

I turned off the detector and headed back to camp. The other guy was now just arriving and asked me what was wrong. I told him nothing was wrong, but that I'd got my nugget and so was done. You should have seen the look on his face! Poor guy had been looking for gold for days and I walk right out and find a nugget in ten minutes.

We had an 82 year old gentleman in camp that week who was not having much luck detecting so I gave the specimen to him to take home to Florida.

So what were the settings, etc.? I did not get fancy. Pulse Delay 10, Gain 12. The GB was tight as we have both a positive and negative hot rock at Moore Creek. A bit one way and the positive rocks signaled and a bit the other way and the negative rocks signaled. Negative hot rocks are by far the more prevalent. In general a setting between 9-10 eliminated nearly all the hot rocks.

However, late in the game I determined a couple things. First, virtually all gold at Moore Creek gives a high tone, even multi-ounce pieces. I believe this is because of the generally high silver content combined with the specimen nature of the gold. You can figure with 99% certainty that a low tone is an iron target or hot rock at Moore Creek. Next season I plan on having the novices run the unit in low conductive mode only to eliminate most large iron and any possibility of the negative rocks sounding off.

I ran the new 7.5" coil a bit and found a 1 pennyweight nugget with it. I was surprised at how stable the smaller coil was, as I expected it would be more prone to hitting hot rocks, but instead it seemed to be more immune to the hot rocks than the larger coil.

We had three days of pouring rain and although a couple other detectors temporarily failed all the TDI units came through with flying colors. I plan on returning to the mine August 8th for a week of detecting with friends and with the pressure off I'll have more time to detect myself. Between now and then I hope to get some good wading time in with the unit plus go chase more old coins.

Sincerely,

Steve Herschbach
Moore Creek Mining LLC
website www.moorecreek.com

 

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[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

Re: White's Pulsescan TDI at Moore Creek, Alaska

Steve: How in the heck did you ever get Don to let that property go? I wonder if he had ever dowsed it? I saw him do fantastic things with his pendulum here in Mexico. On one spot we had him go over the property first, then redid it with Detectors, every spot that he had indicated, we found metal. We also found a few that he had missed.

I subtly tested him a few times until he said, "I am not here to be tested, I am here to find things so stop it ", he said this after finding a missing culvert and water line of the city, 4 ft down.

I would put his recovery rate at about 60 +%, and so laugh to myself each time that I see a post saying that dowsing is just a stupid superstition.

He map dowsed a new huge Cu discovery on the coast which I didn't follow through on and so lost it.

Get him bk to work on your property.

Don Jose de La Mancha

 

[Dave45]

Re: White's Pulsescan TDI at Moore Creek, Alaska

 

[Steve Herschbach]

Re: White's Pulsescan TDI at Moore Creek, Alaska

Hi Jim,

Well, the entire reason the TDI exists at all was to have a ground balancing PI detector. Places like Moore Creek are exactly what it was designed for. The hot rocks severely impede the performance of VLF detectors. Non-ground balancing PI units do even worse. The GB control exists to tune out ground effects and any discrimination effects are incidental to that. In low mineral ground you have wide latitude in where to set the GB control but in a place like Moore Creek controlling hot rocks is a far greater concern that iron or steel trash.

So my only concern at Moore Creek was tuning the unit for the best gold performance. Set as described the TDI got not only nuggets but all manner of small ferrous junk, like wire, small nails, and assorted small rusted stuff. Only the rarer large steel targets give the low tone.

Setting the GB at 1-2 makes all steel items go low tone, and so by setting the TDI to sound off on high conductive targets only you get the coin detecting effect. Virtually all gold nuggets will also be rejected unless they are of a particularly high purity/fineness.

It is possible that somewhere in the middle a setting can be achieved that would allow for gold to be detected while rejecting a greater percentage of iron. Different pulse delay settings might also make a difference. I made no attempt to find out nor did I purposefully mistune the GB in order to how much depth was lost. My only concern at the time was setting the units up for the best nugget performance. And that calls for a short pulse delay, high gain, and perfect ground balance.

When I go back in August I'll get more experimental. I have to admit that by nature I'm somewhat skeptical of applying any degree of discrimination in a nugget hunting situation. But there certainly are places with so much junk that the potential for some lost gold may be offset by lessening the amount of time and energy wasted on junk targets. That is one reason why the White's MXT is the preferred unit at Ganes Creek. But Ganes Creek is blessed with low mineral ground. At Moore Creek VLF units are at a severe disadvantage as compared to ground balancing PI units.

Steve Herschbach

Hi Stranger,

Steve, congratulations on your great finds, and thanks for two very interesting articles accompanied by bigger than life photos. Was hoping to hear from you before leaving on holidays. Just in time.

The 9 to 10 ground balance to smooth out your positive/negative hot rocks seems ideal insofar as it also appears that it placed the iron debris with the high conductive low tones. Found it interesting to see that the hot rocks dictated where the ground balance was set (just happened to work out well for iron debris too), as opposed to any arbitrary manipulation.

Here's a question for you Steve. How was the sensitivity of the TDI at your settings on the depth that various nuggets were located as far as you are aware?

Second question: What ground balance setting have you been using in order to place iron with the high tone low conductives when searching for silver and other older coins that fall into the low tone high conductives? And when doing so, assuming that setting was different from what would be a proper ground balance to the ground mineralization, what was the trade-off in depth?

Jim.

 

[Hoser John]

Re: White's Pulsescan TDI at Moore Creek, Alaska

Get in line--Steve delivers !!John

 

[Steve Herschbach]

Re: White's Pulsescan TDI at Moore Creek, Alaska

Hi Jim,

Everything you probably want to know is at the website listed in the first post.

Steve Herschbach