4 days, 79 nuggets, 15 grams

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It hasn't traveled far - no question of that. There is a source somewhere close, but much of the hills there are buried in 20 or 30 feet of soil, so its hard to see where the source might be.
 
Very nice. Wish we had somewhere close to home to detect for nuggets. I need to get my little Ace back out and knock the dust off.
 
Tndavid said:
Very nice. Wish we had somewhere close to home to detect for nuggets. I need to get my little Ace back out and knock the dust off.

When I was in my late teens, early twenties, I would run down around Dahlonega in North East Georgia to do some panning once or twice a year. Never really brought back much, but it was a fun time and well worth the drive from Cheatham/Davidson county. I would imagine there would be some good places to do some detecting also.
 
UncleBenBen said:
Tndavid said:
Very nice. Wish we had somewhere close to home to detect for nuggets. I need to get my little Ace back out and knock the dust off.

When I was in my late teens, early twenties, I would run down around Dahlonega in North East Georgia to do some panning once or twice a year. Never really brought back much, but it was a fun time and well worth the drive from Cheatham/Davidson county. I would imagine there would be some good places to do some detecting also.
So I looked at your profile Ben, and don't see it fit to call you uncle anymore as you are just a year older than me. Lol. Do you do any electrical work at any of the plants in New Johnsonville Tn?
 
Tndavid said:
So I looked at your profile Ben, and don't see it fit to call you uncle anymore as you are just a year older than me. Lol. Do you do any electrical work at any of the plants in New Johnsonville Tn?

Haha! My family and most friends have called me BenBen since I was about 7 or 8 years old. Now that a whole slew of niece and nephews have come along they've all added the 'uncle' to it.

Ive caught some nice catfish around the steam plant, but never have worked at New Johnsonville. I've been subcontracting at Vandy for over 13 years now. Before this it was mostly residential work with a couple uncles.
 
thanks, it is very encouraging thread. Exactly what I need, after two months searching in Himalayan river I found nothing, but alluminium trash on any depths. I have two detectors Garrett at gold and atx. with atx I can dig deepper holes (ugh) with same results. fine gold here is almost everywhere, even in sand what used for construction.
 
butcher said:
Try the gold pan, it is a good detector for gold, one of the prospectors best tools for locating gold in sands creeks or rivers.

after digging one hole I found paystreak and now classifing sand, taking it home (river is nearby) planing to run on miller table later. by panning separation is impossible because of many other heavy particles, sullfides garnet, silver.

I'm not giving up on detectors. ATX with big coil giving immence depth, will try to search for secondary deposits up hills under stones with quartz veins with pyrate and garnet.

so far, found this interesting specimen, small piece of metal comes from this stone.

28hmp1h.jpg
 
Very nice nuggets. The vein seems close. Are you trying to locate it, and how?. I have a similar situation.
 
"Recently I took my Minelab SDC 2300 to a location in Northern California which I hadn't visited in a couple years - even though its not hard to get to - because the last few times I'd been there it was a skunk."

Reno Chris,

I just found this thread thanks to Cuchugold's post. We're not too far from each other (+/- 150 mi.). My wife's grandson lives in Reno. Maybe the next time she wants to visit him, I could drop her off :twisted: and meet with you to discuss the important things like mining and refining! :D

James
 
In the couple years since I posted this, I have pounded that spot to death. I spent a couple days prospecting up there this year and I dont think I got half a gram! There is such a thing as working a deposit out. I think what I found in 2014 was a spot that the old timers just missed. They worked all around it but left this spot alone. Now I've dug the heck out of the spot and will have to do more searching to find another good one.

I've still yet to really put in time looking for the source, but maybe next year.
 
hi reno chris.

how do you go about metal detecting? where do you even start? how do you find these places? could you point us noob in the right direction?

thanks,
alan
 
Its not something that can be explained in a paragraph. In fact I wrote an entire book about this and related subjects. Its called Fists Full of Gold, by Chris Ralph (me) and you can buy it on Amazon. Read the book and you will know all you need to know...
 
Recently I took my Minelab SDC 2300 to a location in Northern California which I hadn't visited in a couple years - even though its not hard to get to - because the last few times I'd been there it was a skunk. I got started and with my new detector and I hadn't been detecting even 5 minutes when I found and dug my first target - and it turned out to be a little nugget. A few minutes later, and the second target was a nugget as well. Initially, I was only able to re-work a small part of this area as I keep digging more little nuggets and I didn't want to walk away when there were still golden targets to be dug. I was shocked to see how much gold was just sitting there in a spot I know I have gone over before at least a couple times in the past.
You can see these nuggets are very rough and have not traveled far. A couple days later I brought a friend out to the place where I'd been digging these nuggets, but the patch I had been working on was starting to peter out. That first morning he was there, I got three tiny nuggets but had been doing much better. However there are loads of workings there and my friend headed up the hill and found some spots up there were he was getting some gold. After lunch we went up there and he took one area and I took another close by. Although we were only about 15 yards apart, there was no cross talk between the detectors. Turns out my area was the more productive of the two, but we didn't know that then, and he got some good gold too. Once I got started, I was just digging one little nugget after the other. I would only be searching a few minutes between finds, and there was very little trash. I think I got a couple square nails and a few bird shot - and 29 nuggets. One of them was a cool kind of arborecent shape that is unlike any nugget I have ever dug, but I have seen some photos of pieces like that. You an see it at the top in the attached photo. The second day we went at it again, and I mostly just kept pounding that same ridge I was working on the day before from one end to the other. My friend found another little slope that yielded some chunky nuggets and he worked there. The weather was fantastic, just enough clouds to keep the temperature just right, great company, beautiful California scenery, and on that last day I got another 23 nuggets and again just a small hand full of trash items.
The total weight for the four days with the SDC was 15 grams, almost a half an ounce. There is still more area to detect, but also some spots that need to be dug and dry washed. So I will be out there with my dry washer as well.

sdc_gold_15_gr_b.jpg
Great post Chris!!

I have a Minelab Xterra705 that I use out in Arizona... It even has found meteorites lol...

Ive been reading your posts for years Chris lol... And live in Nevada, in Las Vegas and never got around to getting up to Reno.

When I eventually do get up to Reno, I want to stop by Winnemuca and visit the Battle Mountain copper pit. There's some great specimens of chrysocolla/ malachite matrix, some with druzy quartz embedded in veins ...

Then I want to get over to Hallelujah Junction and find an Amethyst and smokey quartz scepter crystal.


From there I want to continue up north to the far North-West corner of Nevada, and visit the world rebound Virgin Valley and dig up some of that precious black opal
 
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