How deep will your detector go - find out all the factors that affect how deep your detector can see

hey i'm chris ralph the professional prospector today we're going to talk about something interesting how deep will your detector go you know the other day i brought my trailer home i keep a trailer up in the sierra nevada gold country during the summer time and you know this is kind of the end of the year for nice summery weather or even nice fall weather it's getting cold and we're reaching the end of the season so i decided to bring my trailer home you know it's been a messed up year 2020. it has really been messed up between the covid thing and all the fires man california is just burning to the ground literally you know the 20 largest fires that have been recorded in california history and they've only really been keeping records since about 1930 but of the 20 largest fires one of them occurred in the 70 years between 1930 and 2000 the other 19 have occurred since 2000 and six of the largest six of the 20 largest fires occurred in 2020 so it's getting bad and california is oh it's a whole other story anyway i had one last day to get out with my metal detector and really do a great day of finding some gold and i thought i thought pretty hard about bringing my camera and filming and bringing you guys along and i just thought 2020 has been such a messed up year i'm just gonna go out and have a nice day well i wish that brought you along because i had a great day i got a nice nugget here it's uh about a fifth of an ounce in size and i got a couple other nuggets that added up so the total is around a quarter of an ounce pretty good for a day's work you know i've done better than that but still if i get a quarter ounce a day every day that'd be awesome i don't average that high so uh i was real pleased i was out there with my uh my gpz 7000 which i did a review on and i called it the the most powerful detector on the market and uh actually recently had a guy who commented on my review of the gpz 7000 and he said i was a complete idiot because i didn't say how deep that detector would go i gotta tell you that most the people who tell me i'm an idiot in my comments are people who have no idea what they're talking about they're people who've never done whatever it is that they're commenting on and so they tell me i don't know what i'm doing because i don't know what they know and they've never done it before i'll bet this guy has never swung a metal detector because the very question what is the depth that the detector will go is a question that's almost impossible to answer and we're going to go over why it's such a difficult and complex question today's video so come along with me and we will look at all the factors that determine how deep your detector will go so you can know you can understand what you can do and what you can't and it makes a difference and knowing how deep your detector will go or could go will make a difference in your skill of being a detectorist and finding gold so come along we're going to take take a look at all the different factors now i do a number of metal detector reviews with an eye toward gold prospecting not just metal detector reviews for hunting coins or caches or you know relics at an old civil war site or something like that i'm focused on gold because that's what my channel is about and in my reviews and then i'll probably do more of them in the future but in my reviews i get a lot of people ask me hey how deep will this detector go well it's it's not a simple question and we're going to look today at the four main factors four that uh determine how deep your detector will see and you'll see by the time we get to the end of this that it's not a simple question the first and most obvious thing is what's your target is your target a tiny little nugget that's just barely a picker and maybe weighs uh you know a tenth of a gram and or is it a nugget that weighs 200 pounds because i can tell you that any metal detector all metal detectors will see a 200 pound nugget a lot deeper than they'll see a little tenth of a gram picker so you know people ask how deep will it go well you know it might go half an inch on a tenth of a gram picker it might go two or three feet on a 200 pound nugget there aren't very many 200 pound nuggets out there i've never found one and i don't think there's been any found since uh before 1900 well maybe maybe after 1900 but still uh it's been a long time since people found nuggets like that they're just not very common and even in the old days of the 1800s gold rushes yeah not very many people found nuggets that big so you know what's the uh what's the size of your target well if you can't tell me what the size of the target is i can't tell you how deep your detector will go because it'll go somewhere between this and you know this and so how deep will it go depending on the size of the target it might be anything from this to you know that kind of depth and honestly even deeper i i used to tell people that it asked me this question hey i can see the engine block on my truck at 15 feet is that deep enough well you know nuggets that are the size of an engine block and respond like an engine block basically don't exist so how big is your target that's the first and biggest question another factor that controls how your nugget responds more than just the size is the nature of it metal detectors will see solid nuggets a lot more than they'll see little wiry nuggets and some nuggets here i'll show you one can be pretty wiry i mean basically it's just a mesh of wires so is your nugget solid or is it wiry or is it in between what is it so the nature of a piece and it makes a big difference i mean literally i've seen powerful detectors that a nugget that weighs a quarter of an ounce it'll hardly see it because it's all wiry and yet a nugget that weighs a tenth that size it'll see no problem because it's nice and solid so the nature of the nugget but somewhere between really wiry and solid solid makes a huge difference too another factor is the shape of the nugget um whether it's a solid ball you know three-dimensional type thing or is it you know like a a coin that's flat and and big on two sides i have nuggets like that i've found nuggets that are pretty good size that are big in two dimensions and thin in the other so if you find a corn flake the amount of success you're gonna have is you know you're not gonna see it as well as you'd see something solid so size nature wiry or or porous or solid or you know whether whether it's what's the shape is another factor is the alloy different nuggets have different alloys how much silver how much copper sometimes nuggets have iron in them you know the trade palladium is another thing that the traces nuggets have traces amounts of palladium so you know what's the alloy that your nugget is made of so you know when you ask someone how deep you know the response will be well what size what nature you know what shape and what alloy now you're starting to see and that's just the first of the things that we're going to look at the next important factor is the mineralization in the soil basically how much iron and what form the iron is in the soil now iron happens to be the third most abundant mineral in the crust of the earth and i think i read some place the earth's crust is an average of like i think it's somewhere around eight or nine percent i could look that up but that's close enough it tells you that there's a significant percentage of iron in the soil of the ground rocks and some rocks have lots of iron in them some rocks have virtually no iron in them it varies a lot it's not like oh it's always eight percent no it varies between you know eighty or ninety percent and uh zero percent so you're one of the things that you need to know about metal detectors is almost always the iron response is the the metal detector generates an electric field into the ground the iron response in the soil is usually larger than the response of your actual target and so the the metal detector has to be able to fish out and it's what they call ground balancing it has to balance out that iron in the soil and see the smaller response that comes from a gold nugget or a coin or something like that or a nail um so it when your metal detector is seeing something in the ground the amount of iron mineralization makes a huge difference and it actually makes a huge difference more toward vlf type detectors than for pulse induction i won't say that it has no effect on the pulse induction but it has a lot more effect on a vlf and you got to think of this you know when the metal detector is sending it's uh you know waves into the ground looking for a target you know the ground responds too and the more iron that's in the ground the more the iron kind of weakens or attenuates the the magnetic field that's going into the ground think of it like this let's say you have a a big jar glass jar full of nice clean clear water you can see right through it just came out of your tap perfectly clear but you take a half a teaspoon full of mud and stir it around in there now you can you know it's kind of milky maybe you can still see to the other side of the uh the jar but just barely now you put in a half a cup of mud and then you stir it you can't see it at all you know you can't see through the jar it just all you see is the mud and that's kind of like the iron in the soil the soil what it sees through to see the target the detector has to be able to balance that out and and and be able to see through the iron response that's coming back from the ground to the metal detector so it makes a huge factor in how deep your detector will penetrate so in addition to asking questions about the nugget if you really want to know how deep your detector go you have to know how much mineralization is in the soil at the place where your metal detector is working and it varies even in a place so you may be working here and have a certain level of iron in the soil but you may go over there 10 yards some other place you know like i say 10 yards or some other short distance and it may be a lot different over there than it is over here so it you know and the iron mineralization is only good for that spot it's not necessarily the same over here so there's another question well what's the mineralization of the soil another important factor is the size of the coil you're using smaller coils see small targets a lot better but they don't punch down as deep big coils like this big coil i have for my uh gpc 7000 and this is actually the standard coil for this detector a big coil like this on most metal detectors this actually has a great capability of seeing smaller nuggets but even so the idea is that big coils generally will punch a lot deeper but they won't see the smallest nuggets so it's a trade-off you know if you're looking for small nuggets a little coil is better but you won't go as deep if you're looking for big nuggets down deep a big coil is better but it will won't see those small nuggets so another question is you know what coil are you using and and you know you can kind of see by just looking at that the idea that hmm if you find a spot where there's multiple nuggets in a comparatively small area what prospectors call a patch you might want to go over that patch with multiple coils because you may get nuggets with a b coil down deep that you wouldn't see with a smaller coil and if you go over with a smaller coil you may pick up smaller nuggets shallow that you won't see with the big coil so you get an area that's intensely got a lot of nuggets in it yeah you may want to go over with several different coils even several different detectors if you can get your hands on them and try different things because different types of detectors different technologies different ground balancing technologies different coil sizes will may see some things that another detector will miss another important factor is what detector are you using now different technologies this is actually a kind of a unique technology the gpz it's it's called a uh zero voltage zvt or zero voltage technology but there's a lot more vlfs and pulse induction detectors this is kind of a hybrid of those two and the technology makes a difference as to how deep you can punch and so if you're you know using a vlf in general terms is a general rule dlfs are much more sensitive to smaller nuggets i did a review of the most sensitive metal detectors and they're all blfs because vlfs tend to be more sensitive on the other hand is a general thing pulse induction machines tend to be able to see a little deeper especially in soils with mineralized ground but the truth is that you know a in in low mineral ground in ground with very low or almost zero iron in the soil low mineralization uh a blf with the same size coil and a pulse induction machine same size coil will actually see to about the same depth and i've had dealers tell me this oh my vlf will see just as deep as your pulse induction machine if you have the same size coil and and maybe they'll say or maybe they won't in virtually unmineralized ground now that's true you know and if you hear somebody say that you don't believe it no it actually is true that in unmineralized or near zero mineral ground uh it'll it'll see deeper but that's a trick statement because most places where there's gold deposits where you can find nuggets and that kind of stuff it's not near zero mineralization iron tends to be associated with gold a lot of times you know iron pyrites are associated with gold and a lot of mineral deposits gold deposits so you know it's kind of a trick question because there's it's very very rarely the situation where uh the soil is so iron free that the two detectors will see the same and in fact honestly in a lot of higher iron situations you really can't use a big coil on a blf because a really large coil you'll just see so much iron with the coil you'll you'll have a hard time ground balancing so you know we come to the conclusion how deep will the metal your metal detector go how deep can it penetrate how deep can we see a nugget down there well you know i hope that having seen this video you won't be one of those people that uh that says well how come you can't tell me the number is seven or nine or 22 or some other number like that well there is no number to tell because it's a complex question you know if you want to know how deep a detector will go well what kind of nuggets are we looking for what's the size what's the nature of it is it solid or wiry what's the alloy of it has got a lot of silver in it not a lot of silver in it have other metals in it you know and and what's the shape of it is it flat like a corn flake is it solid or round you know there's all these different factors that go into you know what the the depth is going to be you know what a kind of coil are you using they're using a small coil using a big coil uh or what kind of technology are you using what's the amount of iron in the in the ground at the spot that you're looking at you know there's so many questions that you have to answer before you can give a number that the number is really just specific to that spot if people who do tests you know and they say well i could see that nugget at eight inches okay and that spot that they were at eight inches but in another spot where you're at might be 12 or it might be four so that eight inches really doesn't tell you that much and another thing that goes with that too that i kind of forgot to mention with the mineralization in the soils is how is your ground balance on your metal detector you know i said that in order to see through the mineralized soil the detector had to be ground balanced for that area and if you're running along and you haven't ground balanced your detector in a while and so your detectors may be a little bit out of ground balance yeah you're not going to see as deep because the detector isn't properly tuned to tune out the mineralization in the soil so there's so many different things i hope that you'll understand that it's a complex question and the next time you look at a review video that i do and i don't say this detector goes seven or this detector goes nine because there is no such number it's it's it's way too complex to give a number like that and in fact i had a friend of mine who uh he said if you go to a dealer and you ask him how deep the detector will go and they give you a number don't buy from that guy because he's being dishonest and uh there's he's got a point to that that you know if somebody's gonna give you a simple number without talking about the nuggets and the mineralization and the coils and everything else you know it's just not an honest uh thing so i still stand by that this the gpz 7000 is the most powerful detector on the market in the sense that what i mean when i say power i mean that it'll punch deep on bigger nuggets but it'll also it also has an amazing capacity for such a big coil to see small stuff and uh i did get a couple of small nuggets with that nugget that i got but i had a great day out in the field and uh i'm sorry i didn't bring the camera to bring you guys along but i hope you'll understand and take this little lesson on how deep your detector will go as a consolation prize for not being out in the field to see me get this nugget it was down a little deep it was actually in a road and i had to uh one thing about digging in roads one people ignore roads that go through old mining areas don't do that don't ignore the road through all mining now roads tend to be really trashy and and so you may have to fight trash but it tends to be a spot that people don't detect they'll detect all around the road but they won't detect in the road so i got a nice nugget because i knew to detect in the road now finding gold is all about really the skill and the knowledge that you have and knowing little tips like don't overlook the roads knowing tips like that can make you a much better prospector and i actually wrote a book about prospecting that tells all kinds of tips all kinds of information why you can't get a single number for the depth of your detector but a lot of other stuff that goes with it and if you read that book you will increase your skill level as a prospector and like a trade skill like being an electrician or or a plumber or something like that it's all about what you know and so when it comes to prospecting it's about what you know and i wrote a book and i'm going to tell you a little bit more about my book right now so let me tell you a little bit more about my book it's called this full of gold and i wrote it because i want you to be able to go out and find for yourself this full of gold and you can see that it's an encyclopedia with all kinds of information pictures and that sort of thing it's not in color but a color would have cost me a lot more to have printed and so the book would have cost a lot more it's for sale on amazon and you can pick it up i'll put a link in the description below i also serve as the editor for a prospecting magazine it's icmj's prospecting and mining journal and honestly you should check that out we've got stories and information legal stuff everything you know to increase your skills as a prospector i write articles in this every month and a lot of other very experienced prospectors contribute to the magazine as well so check the magazine out also i have a website and the website is at nevadaoutbackgems.com i'll put a link for it in the description below but there's gobs of information there that you will find useful in your prospecting efforts finally i want to say that i really appreciate your comments and thoughts and even a positive criticism don't come on there and just toss out insults because i'll just delete your comments but if you've got uh helpful things to say and questions to ask do write and and put those in the comments because i answer my comments to people and uh you'll hear from me in you know in responding to you uh so if you've enjoyed this video and you like what you see and you're interested in uh finding out more well then sign up subscribe and hit the uh the notification bell so they'll let you know when i post new videos and you know like it and share it if again you you see stuff that you really are excited about and i'll be coming out with lots more new videos and so we'll see you again real soon

Channel: Chris Ralph, Professional Prospector

Views: 5,036

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Id: SD3cSkeikto

Length: 24min 45sec (1485 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020