FlakMagnet

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FlakMagnet last won the day on July 1 2023

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  1. you continue to impress with your willingness to get out into the boonies and your willingness to do the work.
  2. Okay, you got me remembering Bob... In 1981, my partner (since passed away), and I were dredging on a river in the Mother Lode. We were being allowed to use a fella's claim - he was dredging upstream from us. Where we were working - we each had a 5-inch dredge - there was a huge boulder that everyone who knew about the claim speculated that, if someone could just get that boulder out of the way, it would be a bonanza. We both talked about it a lot. One evening my partner told me he had an Arizona powder license and some dynamite left over from his work there, stashed in his camper - the first I had ever heard about it and it got my attention because my camper was parked right next to him. He said he was pretty sure he could "shatter" the boulder and then we'd be able to remove the pieces and subsequently be able to get the gold that was beneath it in the slate bottom…this was a pretty rich stretch of river. We decided to give it try. I can't remember how many sticks he had but there were quite a few - enough so that we both thought they would do the job. He knew a hell of a lot more about how to place explosives and how much to use than I did. I actually didn't know anything other than explosives had to be handled carefully and be used with experiential knowledge and safety in mind. We spent a morning placing the explosives. He drilled a few holes into the boulder and also placed some other sticks in what he termed 'advantageous places.' I told him he was the boss, that I would take his word for it - that from what I saw, what he was doing made sense to my rookie comprehension. When he finished wiring everything up to some sort of electronic plunger-type device, we spooled the wires across the river and up into the rocks on the other side that we would use for cover. He looked over at me, "ready?" I said something like "go for it" and he pushed the button. A few things happened simultaneously; the blast was instantaneous, deafening and huge as the boulder literally vanished in an enormous cloud of rocks and dirt accompanied by an astonishingly tall geyser of water. A second later lethal hunks of rock and debris rained down around us for what seemed like thirty seconds. When the rock and debris finally subsided I carefully peeked out from the tree I had crouched behind. The first thing I saw was that the entire river from the explosion site and on downstream was flowing black. It was as though we had struck an ink well under the surface as countless cubic yards of slate had been powdered in the detonation. The entire river was literally flowing opaque black as it disappeared around a distant bend on its way downstream. Black water continued to roil out of the underwater crater for hours. Half an hour later as my heart-rate and the ringing in my ears began to settle down, I heard vehicles approaching up the road that ran beside the river. In the distance a line of cars was making their way upriver toward us. My partner and I ran for my car and drove into a nearby town where we spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening. Apparently the water had turned totally black for miles down the river, so much so that all the downstream dredgers had to get out of the water, which mightily pissed them off. They set out in search of the culprits. It took a day or so before the river completely cleared. It took a bit longer for our dredging neighbors to forgive us. We never found a single flake of gold anywhere near crater where the boulder used to sit.
  3. I agree Rob, Sun Ray Pro Gold's are some of the finest, most reliable head phones anyone can get for detecting. They are well made, fit well, have incredible sound quality and individual volume controls for each ear. I am on only my second pair in two decades because they are so well made. I actually still have my first pair as a spare.
  4. This is one of the real problems with being a day-tripper; it's really difficult to look for, much less find, virgin ground. You almost have to start somewhere on the edges of where people have found gold before to have a chance to find anything…so out-pounding those who came before (or yourself, as you so aptly stated), is almost the only option. For the last six years this has been my plight. But one thing I can recommend for people like me, if you are not finding any trash, then move somewhere else because it's a pretty good indicator it's been very well-pounded. Good luck to all
  5. I too absolutely love the Z-Search. If I have any complaints it's that it finds such small gold (as well as good deep gold). I thought I was finding small stuff with the ML 14, but I was mistaken. This is a superior coil like so many of the NuggetFinders I have used over the years.
  6. Back at you Rob. Thanks for the support and the advice. It's never taken for granted and always appreciated.
  7. thanks for taking the time to pass along your observations…always helpful with a new product...
  8. Very tempting. (now where did I put my piggy bank?) I'm working on it Rob.
  9. I'm sure you mean 7.3 pounds - the actual weight. No sense in pumping the weight up by over 40%. It's heavy Tom, but not that heavy. best...
  10. I feel the same about yours. I think you, like many of us, know how lucky we have been just to have the chance to experience some of the things we have.
  11. You guys have a lot of years on me and I always like the experience you bring to your posts. I started in 1977 dredging in the Sierra's. I spent four summers being underwater 10 hours a day six days a week. I dredged mostly in the Mariposa area but also the S. fork of the Yuba, the middle fork of the American and a few other creeks above Downieville. Then I got busy working and dredging got closed off in Ca. I picked up a detector in the early 80's but only intermittently. I had saved most of my dredging gold and my kids thought the tooth fairy brought gold nuggets when they were growing up. In the early 2000's I got into it again with Minelab PI's and am on my 7th variation, a GPZ which I love. I also underwater treasure hunted a couple of places in the Caribbean in the '90s, one in a place I can't mention and the other was on the only coral atoll in the Bahamas, Hog Stye Reef. I found some Spanish coins on a reef in the unmentionable place, that were so old the Spanish hadn't bothered to put dates on them yet. I've paid for most of my detectors with the gold I've found and used the rest for kids college. I've love it all.