Garrett Metal Detectors I'm Gerry McMullen from Boise, Idaho, and today we're up here in gold country with the new Garrett AT Gold. We're out on these dredge tailing piles and the reasons that they're here is because of that water. Those dredges couldn't get anywhere other than the valleys and the cricks down below in the rivers is what allowed them to get up here, forming these dredge tailings. What we're trying to do today is find some of the specimens that the Boise Basin has. We don't have a lot of big gold up here as far as nuggets, but we do have some pretty good size specimens. Again, a specimen is quartz with gold in it. What we try to do is hunt more of the gravel piles, the finer materials like this here. The reason is because there's going to be more smaller pieces than in these bigger, rounded rocks over here, like the cantaloupe size and above. Most of your smaller pieces of gold are going to work their way down in there and that's not good because of the machines lose depth and sensitivity. So, when we hunt the finer gravels, that's where you've got a better chance of finding the gold. One of the other great features about the AT Gold is it's waterproof. Having a waterproof machine, and the only waterproof gold machine right now on the market that's VLF, I can take it in the crick and totally submerge it. Not only can I submerge the coil but the whole control box. Yes, folks, that's right, the whole detector can be totally submerged. When you're going to hunt in water, rivers, streams, cricks, always try to get the gravels around the bend. If you see when we get up on top, you're going to see a bend around the corner. Get on that inside bend where those smaller gravels are. Keep that coil right down on the bottom, slowly moving it back and forth. That's how you've got a better chance of finding one of them nuggets out there or up here in the basin, a specimen. That's the typical gold that a high-kilohertz VLF machine will find. You definitely want to use a small coil, the smaller coil the better. And, you can get that in a lot of places out west in the gold fields because a lot of the machines will miss them. Especially pulse induction detectors. You start getting a little bit bigger pieces of gold, soemthing like this that's probably a couple of grams, okay, PI machines are fabulous on that. You can get them at great depths of 14, 16 and 18 inches, possibly. But it's a good, solid, chunky pieces of gold. VLFs will hit that just as well, just like the one on my neck, okay. That was found with a VLF gold machine. But, up here, what we're looking for is these. Pieces of quartz with gold in them. And lots of times it's just little speckles of gold. Okay, and they're in the tailing piles up here. It's not what we call a nugget. It's what we call a specimen. And some of them will have different thicknesses of gold in them. So, that's what we're going to be looking for. And hopefully, we can find some of those. One of the features on the new AT Gold is the adjustable iron disrimination. The good thing about it is, we can adjust how much iron we want to discriminate or the size of iron targets. And the reason you want to have that capability is some areas, such as here, where the gold is in quartz, could read a little bit lower. Or, a smaller nugget could read lower. So, if you have too much iron ID, or iron discrimination turned on too high, you could actually reject that target. So, what I've got here is a piece of iron and you can hear the grunt mixed in with the good target. Right now, my iron ID setting is at 40 and next to it I've got some quartz with a piece of gold in it. And you notice, even though it's broken up a little bit, it still has a good, clean signal. Here's the iron. And here's the gold specimen. Now, some people say, "How come you can't clean that up more?" Well, you could and you could miss these. Every detector on the market has a capability of making a false reading at times due to either the size of the target, the mineralization, the depth of the target. So, rule of thumb, when it doubt, check it out. I'm digging that one. I'm leaving that one. But I'm going to pick it up. So, now, let's go out and find some good, clean signals. There's a pretty good hit. Not much grunt. As we're starting to get closer, it's grunting. I can walk away from that target if I want. Kick in your hole and on you go. That one's starting to break up and give a grunt also. Kick in the hole, carry on. Saves a lot of time with adjustable iron discrimination. Right now, we're hunting a little bit taller . . . I shouldn't say taller, but we're hunting a little bitter larger placer pile of gravels and rocks, actually. And, I've got my machine turned up a little bit. I'm in the All Metal Mode. You can hear a little bit of popping and chattering. That's typical, because I'm not worried about those little tiny ones. I want that banger. I want something to wear around my neck, that big specimen. One problem that we run into is hot rocks and cold stones. And here, folks, what I have is a cold stone. Whop, whop, whop. Actually, it doesn't hear it when you come up to it. It hears it when you pass across it. So, if I slow down . . . and when you speed up, you hear it better. Here's a simple way to get rid of that target, which sometimes you'll get a tailing pile full of a bunch of them. I'm ground balanced right now. You can tell it's not making a bunch of noise. But if I go over this target, it is. Simple way to get rid of it? Hit the ground balance button, hold it in, pump it up and down, and it's gone. Let off, this is good, and that target is not making that noise as well. Almost gone, and I can continue on. With the Garrett AT Gold and the available different coils, the little 4.5-inch Sniper is the preferred coil when hunting decomposed granite, bedrock, shale, that false bed layer. A lot of of little pieces of gold . . . some people don't even really call them nuggets . . . but pieces of little . . . little "clinkers" are stuck on these little crevices and cracks out here. So, what we're going to be doing is hunting this area. Always make sure you use the small coil. Keep the coil to the soil, right on the ground. Going along. Right here. Really small target. Getting a little "who-doup," "who-doup," "who-doup." That tells me that it's a surface target and both sides of the coil are hitting it. [He makes sound effect.] So, the first thing we do is take your super magnet, the end of your pick down here, and you try to find out if it's ferrous or non-ferrous. Now, you say, "Jeez, Gerry, if you've got iron ID capability, why don't you use it?" On tiny nuggets, folks, every detector on the market can be fooled on tiny nuggets. I don't take a chance. I've found plenty of gold. I use a rare earth super magnet. If there's a piece of iron down there, it'll suck it up. And, so far, it's still down there. That's telling me, non-ferrous. Here's where it gets fun. Your handy-dandy nugget cup. Just take a little off the top, shake it so the weight goes to the bottom. A little bit of noise. Nope, not in the cup. You hear that little bit of noise there? It's telling me it's in the cup. Now, we have to transfer some of this into our hand. And before you do that, take your ring and watch off. Because if you don't, this is what happens. I grab my cup. Here's my ring. I'm going to be getting a noise from the ring. It's still in the cup. Still in the cup. Still in the cup. Well, it's not gold, but it's the next best thing. Here, folks, is the hardest target to find other than a nugget. That's a little Number 9 birdshot. With the Garrett AT Gold and the 4.5-inch Sniper coil. If you're finding this, you're finding gold. And that's the little culprit that I love to find right there. That's a good target. VDI reading about 30. 36. 35. 32. The VDI number, it's never going to stay the same. It's going to fluctuate a little bit. Keep that coil right on it. Come off to the side, check the ground balance, make sure everything's done properly, let off. Oh, yeah. Good non-ferrous target. Small. Real small. Sand's a little warm. Nothing in there. Don't grab too much dirt. A lot of people grab a lot of dirt. Okay, there we go. It's in there. There it is right there. A little flat one. A little Idaho placer nugget. The Garrett AT Gold has the ability to get rid of a lot of hot rocks. A lot of VLF machines have problems with them. What I've got right here is two hot rocks. One's strong and one's weak. So, we're going to go over those and we're also going to test the nugget we have so that you can hear the difference and see what we do to get rid of a lot of the hot rocks. The three targets I have hear: a gold nugget, a soft hot rock, and a very hard, or long, hot rock. So, to get rid of the soft hot rock, you can lift the coil off the ground a little bit and it's weakened its signal. Notice that it's very soft to begin with, but it sounds like a small piece of gold. A tiny piee of gold. Lift it up and the signal weakens really fast. A nugget is strong. You lift it. It's still there and the further away you get the weaker it gets. Again, the weak hot rock. You lift it up and it's gone. The hot rock, the strong one, is totally different. It's going to act a lot like the nugget, but there is a difference. It's a broader sound. Here's the nugget. So, two ways to get rid of it. One, we can pump over the strong hot rock like so. Okay. Or, the way I do it. I go to Disc 1, it's gone, the other one's gone, and the nugget's there. All the hot rocks are totally gone and the nugget's there. That's the way I do it. A lot of people do it the old fashioned way by getting over in the All Metal Mode and ground balancing directly over it. It's kind of a broken up signal. Still get the nugget. But, a way that a lot of people don't know, you just put it in Disc 1, and you get your nugget. The weak one's gone. The strong one's gone. How strong is the strong one? That strong. Garrett Metal Detectors www.garrett.com Copyright 2011 Garrett Metal Detectors
