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Gold Rush ......... any followers or watchers
In article ,
Sunworshipper SW@GWNTUNDRA wrote: On Wed, 2 Feb 2011 21:41:47 -0800, "Steve B" wrote: "Jon Anderson" wrote in message ... On 2/1/2011 10:19 PM, Steve B wrote: She built a viewer out of 4" PVC with a glass bottom, and walked the creek. In the first week, she found one nugget the size of a golfball, and several smaller ones of good weight. Hugh gave up on all the heavy stuff and just used the underwater viewer after that. Another neat item, though a lot pricer, is the White's Goldmaster, tuned specifically for gold. The 16 to 1 mine in Allegehaney, California, has taken to using metal detectors quite a bit. They found one dang decent size specimen in a well traveled tunnel, just a foot or two inside the rock. They'd been walking right by it for many years and had no clue it was there. Jon IIRC, they are the prime method of finding gold in Australia, and companies have even made specific models to deal with Australian soils. I have been using mine for looking for meteorites. None yet, but some possible specimens. I use three neodymium 1.5" disks right now, and boy, you can hear it when something clicks and jumps on the magnets. Will have these analyzed at some time, there is a lot of iron in the soils hereabout, the next county north being Iron county, and iron ore to make cast iron has been mined there for 150 years now. Steve You should see it up here by Iron Mountain Mi. My cheap metal detector in Vegas would beep loudly over a penny, up here the penny doesn't ever beep at all. Matter of fact, the thing has a tone and goes blank over something metal and back to a tone here unless it's an anvil. Wonder if this has anything to do with it. http://thebigfoto.com/earths-gravity I seem to have moved to a big low spot. I'd like to make a magnetometer some day. Plus try to get it to work just above or below water. Has nothing to do with gravity. The issue in Australia and I assume Iron Mountain is that there is a lot of various kinds of ferrite in the soil, which raises the background level, making for instance that penny less visible to a detector. Joe Gwinn |
Gold Rush ......... any followers or watchers
"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message ... In article , Sunworshipper SW@GWNTUNDRA wrote: On Wed, 2 Feb 2011 21:41:47 -0800, "Steve B" wrote: "Jon Anderson" wrote in message ... On 2/1/2011 10:19 PM, Steve B wrote: She built a viewer out of 4" PVC with a glass bottom, and walked the creek. In the first week, she found one nugget the size of a golfball, and several smaller ones of good weight. Hugh gave up on all the heavy stuff and just used the underwater viewer after that. Another neat item, though a lot pricer, is the White's Goldmaster, tuned specifically for gold. The 16 to 1 mine in Allegehaney, California, has taken to using metal detectors quite a bit. They found one dang decent size specimen in a well traveled tunnel, just a foot or two inside the rock. They'd been walking right by it for many years and had no clue it was there. Jon IIRC, they are the prime method of finding gold in Australia, and companies have even made specific models to deal with Australian soils. I have been using mine for looking for meteorites. None yet, but some possible specimens. I use three neodymium 1.5" disks right now, and boy, you can hear it when something clicks and jumps on the magnets. Will have these analyzed at some time, there is a lot of iron in the soils hereabout, the next county north being Iron county, and iron ore to make cast iron has been mined there for 150 years now. Steve You should see it up here by Iron Mountain Mi. My cheap metal detector in Vegas would beep loudly over a penny, up here the penny doesn't ever beep at all. Matter of fact, the thing has a tone and goes blank over something metal and back to a tone here unless it's an anvil. Wonder if this has anything to do with it. http://thebigfoto.com/earths-gravity I seem to have moved to a big low spot. I'd like to make a magnetometer some day. Plus try to get it to work just above or below water. Has nothing to do with gravity. The issue in Australia and I assume Iron Mountain is that there is a lot of various kinds of ferrite in the soil, which raises the background level, making for instance that penny less visible to a detector. Joe Gwinn "Ground balancing" is a very important feature of any good metal detector, and one that is not understood very well by many operators. Plus, the soil conditions can change five feet from where you set it. |
Gold Rush ......... any followers or watchers
On 2/3/2011 4:33 AM, Sunworshipper wrote:
My cheap metal detector in Vegas would beep loudly over a penny, up here the penny doesn't ever beep at all. Matter of fact, the thing has a tone and goes blank over something metal and back to a tone here unless it's an anvil. I'm not an expert with metal detectors, but have owned a couple low end models. Typically they do not do well in highly mineralized soil. I've experienced the same thing with a cheap Garrett detector. I was out in the ruins of You Bet, a gold rush era mining town just east of Grass Valley many years ago, with the Garrett. There's an unbelievable quantity of flattened tin cans out there, just below the surface. I couldn't tell one of them from an axe head, or any other large signal, and the ground itself was mineralized enough to cause problems. There was another fellow out there that day with a state of the art detector. We didn't even speak to each other, just sorta warily worked around a pit that had been the cellar of a long departed house. I got disgusted digging up flat tin cans and started only digging up things that gave a much shorter and sharper tone. Finally gave up and left. Next day ran into a friend that knew I was into detecting, and he tells me about a guy he knew finding a mason jar full of silver dollars out in You Bet. I described the guy and he asks how the heck I knew. Told him I was there. Always wondered if that jar was one of the large vague signals I'd ignored... Cheap detectors are find for finding lost rings and coins at the local playground, but really are next to useless for anything approaching serious work. Jon |
Gold Rush ......... any followers or watchers
On 2/3/2011 8:06 AM, Steve B wrote:
"Ground balancing" is a very important feature of any good metal detector, and one that is not understood very well by many operators. Plus, the soil conditions can change five feet from where you set it. Exactly. It takes time and patience to learn how to tune ground balance, and in some areas it seems that's all one ends up doing, constantly tuning... Been out of it a while, but I'm pretty sure the newest models can auto tune to a large degree. I want to take a decent one with me when I move down under. My wife spent a lot of time roaming the bush and has found old coins on the surface. Makes me wonder what might lie just below! Jon |
Gold Rush ......... any followers or watchers
On Thu, 03 Feb 2011 09:26:26 -0800, Jon Anderson
wrote: On 2/3/2011 4:33 AM, Sunworshipper wrote: My cheap metal detector in Vegas would beep loudly over a penny, up here the penny doesn't ever beep at all. Matter of fact, the thing has a tone and goes blank over something metal and back to a tone here unless it's an anvil. I'm not an expert with metal detectors, but have owned a couple low end models. Typically they do not do well in highly mineralized soil. I've experienced the same thing with a cheap Garrett detector. I was out in the ruins of You Bet, a gold rush era mining town just east of Grass Valley many years ago, with the Garrett. There's an unbelievable quantity of flattened tin cans out there, just below the surface. I couldn't tell one of them from an axe head, or any other large signal, and the ground itself was mineralized enough to cause problems. There was another fellow out there that day with a state of the art detector. We didn't even speak to each other, just sorta warily worked around a pit that had been the cellar of a long departed house. I got disgusted digging up flat tin cans and started only digging up things that gave a much shorter and sharper tone. Finally gave up and left. Next day ran into a friend that knew I was into detecting, and he tells me about a guy he knew finding a mason jar full of silver dollars out in You Bet. I described the guy and he asks how the heck I knew. Told him I was there. Always wondered if that jar was one of the large vague signals I'd ignored... Cheap detectors are find for finding lost rings and coins at the local playground, but really are next to useless for anything approaching serious work. Jon Yeah, know the feeling. In Nevada I could be out in the middle of nowhere and almost everything I dug up was a bullet. One time I was at Delamar NV. and started metal detecting in the huge tailing pile, first beep was a bullet ! Talk about nowhere. Just found what looks like a long runway just NNW of that town on goolge earth. If that's what it is, must be a emergency strip cause there is nothing around it. Just south of the paved road, the road that use to be red, have a picture of it somewhere. SW |
Gold Rush ......... any followers or watchers
On 2/3/2011 10:45 AM, Sunworshipper wrote:
Yeah, know the feeling. In Nevada I could be out in the middle of nowhere and almost everything I dug up was a bullet. One time I was at Delamar NV. and started metal detecting in the huge tailing pile, first beep was a bullet ! Haha, yeah, I've found a couple dozen bullets out in the woods, and not in banks or hillsides, but out in flat areas. Pretty much where they landed I'd guess. One of the neatest things I found was a plain whiskey shot glass in perfect condition. Just happened to be in the midst of yet another collection of flattened tin cans... Jon |
Gold Rush ......... any followers or watchers
"Jon Anderson" wrote Cheap detectors are find for finding lost rings and coins at the local playground, but really are next to useless for anything approaching serious work. Jon You got that mostly right. Doing homework and establishing the age of a site is a good practice. Setting search grids is good. Doing a site examination for purple glass, square nails, potsherds, etc, is good, too. Digging up everything is good. Learning how to use the discriminator feature is good. Learning how to use the ground balance is good. Just learning how to use the detector you have is good. Most people do not spend enough time to learn their detector, have their controls set improperly, move through an area too fast, get discouraged too easily, and give up too soon. Whenever I am in an area of purple glass, I search thoroughly in grids, and dig up most everything. If I am in a hurry, I turn up the discriminator, and silver, copper, and gold coins will stay. But you will lose nickels and 14k gold.At high discriminator settings, lead, brass, and a few other unwanted things will stay. Most big chunks of iron will give a loud but slightly broken signal. You just have to know your machine intimately from using it for about 500 hours or so. But, generally, when searching in a 100+ year old area, it is good to take time and dig everything with low settings, as even some small buttons, jewelry, tokens, coins, jewelry, gold nuggets, and other things can be quite valuable, or just historically interesting. Deep items like the jar of dollars will not appear at all with settings that are too high. I'd rather search all day in a 100+ year old area and find nothing than go to the park and find a hundred coins. But I did find an English two penny coin once at a park that was worth $200. Some kid brought it to the park and lost it under the swing set. Metal detectors are cool, don't take up much room, and you will always pass lots of abandoned sites where you always wonder what you might find. Lots of people are very agreeable to letting you look on their land, and will even direct you to places where buildings once stood. Steve Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Learn how to care for a friend. Download the book. http://cabgbypasssurgery.com |
Gold Rush ......... any followers or watchers
"Jon Anderson" wrote in message ... On 2/3/2011 8:06 AM, Steve B wrote: "Ground balancing" is a very important feature of any good metal detector, and one that is not understood very well by many operators. Plus, the soil conditions can change five feet from where you set it. Exactly. It takes time and patience to learn how to tune ground balance, and in some areas it seems that's all one ends up doing, constantly tuning... Been out of it a while, but I'm pretty sure the newest models can auto tune to a large degree. I want to take a decent one with me when I move down under. My wife spent a lot of time roaming the bush and has found old coins on the surface. Makes me wonder what might lie just below! Jon If you're going to Australia, you could find one gold nugget that would pay for the whole trip. Steve |
Gold Rush ......... any followers or watchers
On 2/3/2011 2:13 PM, Steve B wrote:
If you're going to Australia, you could find one gold nugget that would pay for the whole trip. There were gold fields not too far away from where I'll be settling. But of much greater interest would be caches of coins buried by bushrangers of the mid 1800's. My wife knows the bush as intimately as anyone within a 100 mile radius. I'm confident we'll uncover a stash or two. She's found a few coins that are fairly valuable already. They are out there and not so many people looking for them. A great book for anyone seeking hidden/lost treasure is "Treasure Hunter's Manual" by Karl von Mueller. Jon |
Gold Rush ......... any followers or watchers
"Jon Anderson" wrote in message ... On 2/3/2011 2:13 PM, Steve B wrote: If you're going to Australia, you could find one gold nugget that would pay for the whole trip. There were gold fields not too far away from where I'll be settling. But of much greater interest would be caches of coins buried by bushrangers of the mid 1800's. My wife knows the bush as intimately as anyone within a 100 mile radius. I'm confident we'll uncover a stash or two. She's found a few coins that are fairly valuable already. They are out there and not so many people looking for them. A great book for anyone seeking hidden/lost treasure is "Treasure Hunter's Manual" by Karl von Mueller. Jon I almost emigrated to Australia in 1966 after high school, but could not qualify under their strict job standards. I have always found it fascinating, and may still go some day. There are some very big nuggets found there, and if you live close to a known deposit, you're in a good spot. Just see what detectors the locals are using, and buy a good one. Then spend the time to learn how to use it right. Can I come visit? Steve |
Gold Rush ......... any followers or watchers
On 2011-02-03, Michael A. Terrell wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" wrote: On 2011-02-02, Steve Ackman wrote: [ ... ] Big Bang Theory. Sometimes socially inepter, but certainly not stupider. ;-) That's the only one which I watch. :-) I've worked with people like them. :) What worries me is that I probably *was* like them way back when. :-) Enjoy, DoN. -- Remove oil spill source from e-mail Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564 (too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html --- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero --- |
Gold Rush ......... any followers or watchers
"DoN. Nichols" wrote: On 2011-02-03, Michael A. Terrell wrote: "DoN. Nichols" wrote: On 2011-02-02, Steve Ackman wrote: [ ... ] Big Bang Theory. Sometimes socially inepter, but certainly not stupider. ;-) That's the only one which I watch. :-) I've worked with people like them. :) What worries me is that I probably *was* like them way back when. :-) Nothing wrong with being a nerd. It's the pompous nerds that give the rest a bad name. :) -- You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's Teflon coated. |
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