M/L 4500 -Coil Combo for searching Hard Rock Dumps?

I was wondering if anyone had experience searching hard rock dumps with the 4500? If so what is the perfect coil
to use on the 4500. I know both the M/L 4500 and the 5000 do well on small gold nuggets. I would also like to
here some opinions on settings when hunting for gold/quartz.

Hi relichunter, in short there are no perfect settings for every location, many variables come into the equation such as ground type in terms of mineralisation ,depth, EMI conditions on the day, coil choice, start at factory presets and tweak the machine from there to get a clean threshold and adjust as you go, good luck out there.

Wayne.

If I'm going over the hard rock tailing piles I like the nugget finder 8in x 6in elliptical mono.
As it will find the extra small stuff that is the most common in the hard rock tailing piles.
You can really amp the settings with the small coil too.
And it will surprise you how deep you'll find a tiny speci with the small mono
Or I like the gold bug 2 for this as well.

It can pay to flatten the rock pile out if you find any on the pile as if you found one there's probably more.
And it can also pay to crush a few samples of the rock to see if there's any fine gold if you found a few small specie's.

Hi Relichunter. On wednesday went back to a quartz tailings pile that ive been scratching around on and found 3 more small quartz speccies. This makes 12 speccies so far from this heap and have only raked about 6inchs off the surface. They range from about .5grams to .05grams. The .05gram piece was inside a quartz stone about the size of a golfball. No gold was visible but the stone gave a faint but clear signal. I smashed it open and was suprised to see how small the piece of gold was. This stone was about 4inches down in the pile and gave a faint but clear signal. I am using a 4500 with an 11inch commander mono coil. A mate who was with me has just purchased an 8inch mono so he went over the area which i have raked and foung one .03grm which i had missed with the 11inch mono. The 11 inch is a great coil on small gold and also gives good depth for its size. Once dug up a brass button about knee deep in an old tailings heap. Happy hunting. Cheers Grumpy.

As I have never hunted hard rock dumps with a 4500 , I was not sure as to how effective they were. I heard over the years that PI detectors were not as good as the vlf machines on this type of hunting because the gold is spread out and not concentrated dense enough in the rock.

"They range from about .5grams to .05grams. The .05gram piece was inside a quartz stone about the size of a golfball". Grumpy 57, that is small ! It's obvious that the 4500 as well as the 5000 are very capable!

"If I'm going over the hard rock tailing piles I like the nugget finder 8in x 6in elliptical mono.
As it will find the extra small stuff that is the most common in the hard rock tailing piles." Aurumpro,

this is the type of information I was looking for, thanks. Although I do not have the 8x6 elliptical, I do have a 8 inch mono round and a commander 10x5 elliptical dd I can try out. In my area there are some good spots, but most of them are very far from driveable roads and the hike to the sites can be an hour or so, so my choice was my Tesoro Lobo which is extremely light, or the Minelab 4500. I will give the 4500 a shot with the 8 inch Mono coil this weekend and will post my results on how well it handled.

Gday relichunter2
It can also be useful to carry a small pocket microscope (mine is 60-100x magnification) to have a look at the composition of the rock and some times if your lucky it can have allot of fine gold that is invisible to the naked eye.
Allot of times particularly in remote areas the old timers missed or left the fine gold and only kept the visible gold as they tried to minimize the amount of rock that they had to carry to the battery/crusher.
Or sometimes they were just inexperienced so they can be well worth looking at.

Take a look at this crusher to easily crush small amounts of rock:
www.crazycrusher.com

Ive found bits at 0.01 with the 8x6in coil

Yes I made it part of my check list to bring a pocket microscope. Last week I went out and found one small piece or quartz with fine gold in it. I put on my reading glasses and from about a foot away I spotted it on the pile!! So now on my next trip I will be armed with my M/L 4500 with a 8 inch Commander Mono coil, and a rake ! I will rake it and scan it and see if I get any specimens. I also found two blasting caps on top of pile. I am excited as it appears this pile has never been detected as I am finding caps and no evidence of holes. Anyways..two more days until I can find time to go to the site.. :bounce:keep you posted..