.Hi Guys, Went out on saturday for a few hours to some old workings that I hadnt been to before. Some one had as there were a lot of old UNFILLED dig holes. Thanks to them though there wasnt much rubbish . Only one piece was down deeper in the schist the rest were pretty shallow. In fact the 2 on the right were both sunbakers. The bigger one screamed so I was sure it was going to be a .22 shell. I saw the "orange" & thought it was just a bit of orangy quartz. I touched it with the edge of the 11" mono & it screamed. I bent down & couldnt believe it was a piece of gold sitting on the surface, but it was. You beauty.... It was the biggest of the bits I found at .65 of a gram.
I then climbed up on to a green schist outcrop that had tailing races either side of it. There was a bit of wash still on the top surface of the schist which was up on edge. The green schist was giving the detector a bit of grief & making it warbble. Must have a high iron content in it. I smashed some off with the pick & sure eniugh it stuck on to the magnet in the end of my pick. I was in sensitive extra, deep & all the highly sensitive settings & running the 11" mono so I put up with the warbble as I scanned the wash & I thought I picked up a disturbance over the top of a bit of broken grey schist slab sitting on top. I kicked it out of the way & the disturbance became a bit more pronounce over the continual warbble. As I scraped away the wash the signal improved over the warbble & then I uncovered a crevice in the green schist running down on a 45 degree angle. I spun the pick around & draged the pointy end through the crevice to clean it out. I then draged the edge of the coil down through the crevice & it sounded damn good. One more drag of the pick & the signal was out. It was the 2nd biggest piece of the day, a .59 gram piece.
Boy was it getting hot amongst those old workings. No breeze & the heat reflecting off the rocks. I think we are coping a bit of that Aussie heat wave. Heard on the radio that parts of Central Otago were getting up in to the mid 30's. Who would have thought that a few days ago we had snow low down on the surrounding mountains? They did say that saturday was going to be a hot one.....they were right.
I didnt last much longer in there & bailed back home. So for four hours detecting.....6 bits for 2.74 grams in some workings I hadnt been to before.
I came home for a spell & then went for a cooling sluice box up the Arrow from 7pm till dark. Got a bit of flood gold & that was all.....& eaten by sand flies.
Went over to Clyde on sunday with my wife & a friend for the market day they had. Packed a late picnic lunch & then headed to some old workings were I had done ok with the GP 3000. While the girls sat by the lake drinking wine & gas bagging I headed off. Nearly didnt because it was so hot again. Only found one .39 gram bit for three hours. Mind you it took half an hour to walk in there & half an hour to walk out. So only two hours of detecting time. On my last target that I dug, which was just a piece of wire, I then discovered I had lost my little container with the piece of gold in. I then spent half an hour going back over my tracks before I finally found it. So really only 1.5 hours detecting. Was bloody hot again.
So a total for the weekend of 7 little bits for a total of 3.13 grams
Thanks for dropping in & having a look.
Good luck out there
JW :)
Edited by user Monday, 7 January 2013 10:27:13 PM(UTC)
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