A few more for the bottle!

[Chris Gholson 1,075]

Hi Everyone,

 

The weekdays seem to drag on forever, and the weekends are gone in the blink of an eye! I had a ton of chores scheduled for this weekend; much to my disliking. Hard for me to sacrifice a perfectly good two days of nugget hunting for house and yard work. As I said, the list was long, but I worked double speed, and managed to get everything out of the way and sneak in a little detecting.

 

The returns at the end of the day were good, but it was hot! The Arizona desert had to hit at least a 100 degrees and it had me dragging my behind back to the truck after a solid six hours of hunting. It hadn’t been that hot in a long time, bad news it is only the beginning. The thought of the lovely weather to come this June and July has me cringing!

 

Anyway back to the gold. I headed back to an area I found some gold a few months prior and concentrated on nothing but the deeper ground. The VLF machines and earlier SDs and picked just about everything clean, but they left behind a few of those faint “whispery” signals buried at the 12+ inch mark. The Minelab GP3500 and NF 16” SL mono coil handled the ground beautifully; my only drama was some really nasty ironstone. These weren’t your ordinary run-of-the-mill hot rocks; these babies must have been on steroids! They screamed out just like a piece of metal – even at 6 inches and more! I got tired of rebalancing in the Fixed position, so I opted for the Tracking in the Medium position and what a difference. After an hour or two I was able to distinguish with fairly good accuracy between deep ironstone and an actual target. After about 4-5 passes the ironstone would go kind of “gurgly”, while a nugget would remain steady without any major changes in pitch and tone. This is a great tool on the 3500 that I am learning to take full advantage from. In quiet ground I will probably run Fixed, but soil like that was perfect for Tracking.

 

I finished off with 5 nuggets for a total weight of 1-ounce. One of the pieces was a really neat specimen. The bottom is mostly solid nugget, but at the very top there is a chunk of quartz turned sideways with little bands of gold holding it on – really cool. Hope you enjoy the pics!

[Chris Gholson 1,075]

Here is that specimen I mentioned; both a front and back view...

[Chris Gholson 1,075]

One more...

[grubstake 0]

Beautiful stuff Chris. I bet the heat and the gold together really had your heart pumping. Grubstake

[StanTHEMan 0]

Chris,

Wow! Nice Gold! That's a dandy specie you got there, very unusual. I got out myself over the weekend, but all I managed to get was a sunburn. It was still nice to get away.

[Chris Gholson 1,075]

Stan,

 

Got myself one of those as well; isn't it great being an Arizona redneck! Are we still on for next Friday?

[Ruff&Tuff 0]

Chris, would you consider selling the specimen? I brought a GP-3000 from Bill Southern last year and still trying to get it dialed-in. I can not detect a .2/.3 gram piece of gold yet. It really screams with my 2.7dwt test nugget. Currently, I am using a Coiltek (Platypus) coil in the streams in Virginia. Any suggestions for setting-up the GP-3000 for detecting small gold (.2/.3 grams)? Thanks, Ruff&Tuff (shaveclose1@cox.net)

[Chris Gholson 1,075]

Ruff&Tuff,

 

When I wanted to make my 3000 a bit more receptive to tiny gold, I ran in the All Metal mode, Fixed position, Sensitive, and either N (Normal) or Shallow. It will also help by going to a smaller diameter search coil, and by keeping a good ground balance. You might also run a slightly higher Threshold; not a buzzing so loud it drowns everything out, but high enough for a clear steady hum.

 

Sure, I'd consider selling the specimen. If you get a moment drop me an email and we can talk more (chris@arizonaoutback.com).

[AZ4AU 0]

Hello Chris,

 

Those are some nice nuggets you found . Glad to see you could squeeze in some detecting time between your chores and to-do list .

[StanTHEMan 0]

Chris,

Yep - still on for Friday. I'll give you a call so we can set up the details.

[joeforthegold 0]

That looks like it is straight out of JP's video. Makes me think I need to start listening closer. Must be some of that where I go. Seems to be lots of little stuff. Great job and very encouraging. Makes me want to try some new things this weekend. Like my biggest Mono coil and ground balance in tracking medium speed on my new 3500.

Happy B-day,

I am still looking forward to that outing we have been planning for the last couple of years.

-Joe