Hi guys, Mrs JW & I headed away for the Queens Birthday long weekend in the hope of getting some sassy gold. Since the snow fall of the other sunday/monday the weather has been clear blue sky's & long hard frosts. Here are a few pics taken from work after the weather fined up.
Any way.....By the time Mrs JW & I headed off, booked in to our accomodation for the weekend & then hit the slopes & got to our spot of choice to detect it was 3pm. Bit of a late start.
I rigged up with the 4500 & NF 12 x 7 coil. Walked away from the wagon & started detecting. Within a minute I had a real screamer of a signal....bugger a .22 shell or lead bullet head, but I dug down on to it any way & after about 6" the target was out. Not holding my breath I was gobsmacked that it was a 1.3 gram slug of rough gold.
Ye Ha. Even Mrs JW heard the scream from my external speaker & thought a .22 shell or bullet head.
I carried on detecting down slope in a straight line from the first find & after another minute & 2 meters further down another signal that sounded better than the first & out popped another piece of rough gold .6 of a gram
Continuing in a straight down hill line I was on to another nice mellow signal & another little bit of gold.
I ended up with 8 pieces for 3.3 grams for 2 hours detecting & called it quits at 5pm as the sun had gone down behind the mountain & the temperature plumeted & Mrs Jw, who decided not to detect but sit in the wagon reading, called time out. I was happy with my little patch find & it was all in a straight down hill line. That was going to require a bit more attention tomorrow.
The next day we got back up there & Mrs JW was keen to get in to it. So she rigged up with the 4000 & also had on an NF 12 x 7. She asked me where to start. I said to her to start in the bottom of the little gully where I had found the last piece the evening before & just carry on up that gutter & then work your way up the other side. I will just finish the little slope that I was on & work my way back down to the bottom of the gutter. So off she went with her detector on.....only she never made it to the bottom of the gully but started straight away on the slope that I was going to finish off. So I headed up to the top end above where I got the first piece the day before to see if the run of gold contined up slopeI then heard Mrs JW's speaker nut off & kept an eye on her digging. She was having trouble isolating the target so asked me to have a look for her.....I ended up doing the whole dig for her & out popped a .64 of a gram piece of the same rough gold. You bloody claim jumper, I accussed her ...Laughing. Good on you I said & handed the piece over to her. I went back up to where I was detecting & then she got another signal & was having trouble getting that target as well. It was a very faint signal & she was starting to think it was just ground noise from the cold wet ground. I gave it a wave over with the 4500 & said it was a very faint signal...maybe a shot gun pellet. I managed to get the target & it was a dark little ball. Arrrr....yes & lead pellet. I rolled it around between my fingers to get the dirt off it & no gold was showing but it seemd quite rough & not really like a lead pellet. So I put a bit of water on it & kept rolling it between my fingers & then saw a glimpse of gold. A small dirty little round ball of quartzy gold. Now you are claim jumping you scoundrel I said to her. I reminded her that she was supposed to start in the gully bottom where I got that last bit yesterday & work her way up the gutter & then work up the other side....She just smiled at me & said....Oh...was I... he he :) :)
Here she is finally detecting on the other side of the small gutter. The gutter is just this side of her & the last piece I got the evening before is behind her to the left in that disturbed dirt by that brown rock.
I finally managed one little piece up the top end
Then nothing for hours. I put on the minelab 11" commander mono & only managed one more piece for the day. It was right down in the schist bed rock.
Mrs JW worked her was back on to the slope I had been over & she pinged two more little bits that I had missed Good on her.
On the monday things were not going good for both of us. Lots of walking...lots of junk
We ended up going to some old workings where I had found a few bits before. There was a run of bed rock that I was keen to try the GB2 on.
We headed off to them & we both hit the turned over piles.
I managed 3 bits with the 4500 & then tried the GB2 & got one little piece with it. Mrs JW lucked out here.
My total for the weekend was 14 bits for 4.5 grams. The eight rough pieces on top of the coin were saturdays 2 hours detecting finds. The two on the right from sunday & the four on the left from monday.
Mrs JW's finds from sunday
All up 18 for 5.5 grams
Cheers
Good luck out there
JW .
WWW
