Detecting nuggets on stranded river benches

[HarlechDome]

Hi everyone. I have occassionally found small nuggets in old river and stream courses around the Harlech Dome. In some cases almost dry stream beds, although there is always a flow one or two feet down. First I used an Explorer 2 but this produced too much lead and steel, so I bought a Goldmax and did a bit better. Does anyone have any tips on a better detector for this kind of terrain?

[Techony]

Hi HarlechDome,

You've raised a very subjective and potentially emotive subject there regarding better detectors, but I would have thought if you were pulling up the lead, then you were getting the right signals to pull the nuggets.

Not too sure about the terrain issue, but certainly for the smaller pieces of gold I would have thought you'd be looking at a high frequency machine. A while back there was a run on the T2 when prospectors over in North Africa (I think) were snapping them up off eBay at ludicrous prices to go nugget hunting.

Another machine allegedly designed with prospecting in mind, is the new Garrett AT Gold, but you'll need to check out the reviews.

Then of course there's the Deus that can run at 18khz with probably the fastest recovery time on the market to winkle out the goodies from the difficult areas, but expect non-Deus users to comment otherwise.

Good luck in your search and well done on the nuggets so far. Got any photos to share? I'm sure we'd all love to see them.

 

[HarlechDome]

Hi Techony and thanks for the advice. I'll have to stick with my current decs for now, until some more dosh comes in. Sorry I tried photographing them (very small, about 0.2 - half gram) but I don't have the right kind of camera maybe, or maybe I'm just not a very good technical photographer. I'll try to find someone with the right equipment to take some pics. Is there a limit on the size of pics here?
Next weekend I'm going to have a try on the Prysor, a bit of panning as well. Hope there aren't any plutonium nuggets in there as well!

[Techony]

Max size for photo's is 380kb on here, and I suggest you resize close to 640 x 480 pixels once you've cropped the background away.

Cheers and Happy Hunting/Panning next weekend

[Chef Geoff]

Welcome to the site HarlechDome, Now I am presuming you understand how conductivities in metals work and how the basic rule of thumb states that the lower the conductivity of the metal then the higher the frequency required to find it.
As Tony has said the T2 has been popular in finding gold in the Suddan but as to how big this gold was or how effective these were, I'm not sure. The Explorer/ Etrac has never been recommended for nugget hunting as it's not sensitive enough for very small pieces of gold (you have to remember that gold itself is not that good as a conductor)
Obviously if you are serious about looking for gold and at £1000 an oz it's a serious business, then a purpose gold machine is the thing to go for and I guess the GPX5000 is the real machine to go for but at £4000 then you have to be very serious.
Both Whites and Minelab make a VLF gold machine which work at above 60kHz but they are not that clever around iron (very sensitive) and are more for the less populated areas of the world.
The Minelab Xterra 705 has a prospecting mode which when combined with the 6" coil is very impressive at nugget hunting.
But when after all is said and done, if there is lead or iron around then you are going to have to dig it as no machine "Knows" the difference between different metals.
One other thing to think about is if you have found streams that are ore bearing then 99.9% of British gold is alluvial, so for every nugget you detect you are missing nearly 100x that amount by not panning.

[HarlechDome]

Hi Chef Geoff
Not quite ready for the expense of the GPX5000. The goldmax works on multitone, so I can distinguish between iron, tinfoil, cans etc and big enough small nuggets, which have a much higher pitch as you know. I find I don't have to dig everything up now, as I did with the Explorer 2. It would be a bit risky and difficult to dig up large amounts of alluvial material in dry beds, so I know I am probably missing much larger amounts of fine gold. Still, one day I will find a horses head size nugget in these parts. Does the T2 or GPX work on tone, or a screen?
Ta mates, I hope to work with some partners one day when I find a site that needs proper team attention.