Here's a question for anyone. Been thinking of switching over to gold hunting. I'd like to know how you guys are setting up your Ground Balance in order to locate black sand deposits in streams/wherever. Any response would really be appreciated. Later,
Jim.
I've only been using a metal detector for the last 5 years in my prospecting and the only detector I own is a Gold Stinger. I have never really used it for coins/rings etc. but I have swung it around old prospect sites/camps and found various bits and pieces of artifacts.
I guess I'm saying this to let you know I'm no detector expurt', just a guy who fell unto a good deal and ran with it. I'm lucky I was able to get my uncle on his cell phone, I wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't talked to him first. I'm more about dredges and high bankers
I can tell you though that my Stinger has put us on 3/4 of the sites we have worked. Wyoming is a funny place to prospect, it was still pretty wild when the Black Hills and Montana were booming and and didn't get hit hard except for a couple regions. So your pretty much on your own and I like it like that.
To find black sand concentrates. I ground balance in the "all metal" mode with little to no "discrimination". You'll want to bench experiment with the black sands you encounter in your area, they ain't all the same.
Make sure your genuinely ground balanced, this is typically the tedious part, "coil down, noise down, knob up" is how I remember ground balancing
Ground balancing is the technical part of this project, understand it completely, practice at home, and do it exactly like the manual says and don't be lazy about touching it up while your searching. This is the part that has folks cursing the Gold Stinger.
I set the "audio" a little higher than my normal. This is were it really pays to have good quality headphones throw those cheap ones that Garrett supplies away (Garrett has some better ones, but I got mine at Radio Shack)
Go really slow when searching, your on black sands when your tone decreases, sometimes it's real subtle and comes on very gradually which is why you need to go slow. I stick a small, wire survey flag and keep searching, marking "hit's" with the little flags as I go. By doing so I pick up the trend of the"stringers". After I work an area with the detector I go back and dig some holes. I like to see the "big picture" before I start digging so I set out quite a few flags first, then stand back and take it all in. When the trend is up and down the hill I know I need to go higher, when the flags are across the hill I know I've got the layer I'm looking for, at least most of the time.
I use the detector more often hunting in dry or nearly dry drainage's and up their banks than in active creek beds, since the hydraulic action often carries the light material exposing the blacks anyway. In dry area's the blacks end up covered with lighter material and plant matter. Sometimes I just take off walking, working the subtle ledges above active creeks that show color looking for alluvial pockets that have eroded from above and concentrated for whatever reason.
The best scores are hitting the exposed or semi-exposed bedrock or false bedrock clay of paleoplacers where the black sands have concentrated into a semi rusty mass. In some area's there are quite a few of them above the modern hydraulic action, most often at right angles to the modern drainage and most often hidden to some degree.
Many times the gold in these paleoplacers is black till you hit it with a little diluted acid. The picture of that sample pan had quite a bit of that going on. The gold showing was from a high water mark crevice (that sounded off normally) The "black gold" right next to it in the pan sounded like a black sand hit, probably because the gold was below the black sands in the "rusty sands" about 10 inches (it's a good stringer). The detector sort of went from tone to a "whisper" sound like it didn't know what it should say. It was a good sample on BLM land that will get some attention once the weather changes 8) I usually don't mix high and low samples but we had a few nice days before the last blizzard and I was out and about letting the stink blow off. I didn't even work the concentrates till we were snowed in for three days last week.
I've got spring fever in the worst way right now! (which is why I'm blathering on the internet)
I've heard (my uncle) that there was/is (?) a 12" coil for the Stinger that was the bomb for finding magnetic black sands but all I've used is the supplied 5"x10". Anybody know anything about the larger coil?
Take care,
Den
? Other nice sizes also.
Morning Steve--No TDI
