Deepest Hole Dug For a Nugget............

G'day and Merry Christmas,to all my fellow prospectors.

Even after 20 years of metal detecting,Ive never dug deeper than 14 inches for a slug of gold and that was for a 10.2 gram nugget. Ive had much larger slugs of gold,but all were found bellow the 14 inch mark.
Somehow the gold at greater depths has managed to elude me.Just once in my life,id like to break that 2 foot barrier of depth and see color. In all honesty,it would be interesting to hear at what maximum depths others on the Forum have dug to,for a nugget,regardless of size.

Cheers kon61.

Hi there kon61, 14" for an 18.75 gram slug. Found with GP 3000, 11" minelab mono with DE Tacc super sound signal enhancer







A very merry xmas to you & all the crew & a prosperous new year chasing the yellow

JW .

Hi Kon61, Merry Xmas. Deepest gold would be an 8oz at 28" loose gravely soil on side of a hill, found with Extreme and 11"DD, really hot ground.

Mono

Hi Kon
Using an SD2200d, 16" NF mono, 6oz nugget @ 26" depth on a terrace on the inside bend of a creek, rally hard packed like concrete.
cheers
merry Xmas
Lee

Hi Kon,

deepest hole I've dug is 21" for a 13.4g flat bit using a 4500 with a 14" goldstalker, hardly made a sound until 1-2" were taken off the top. Took 70 minutes to get it out of the ground and it was well worth it

deepest hole wouldnt have been more than 300mm , ive found most gold on or near the surface .

G'day Gents.

I'm dumb founded as to some of the depths you guys have achieved on gold slugs such as that of mono's 8 ouncer,at 28 inches depth,with an eleven inch DD in hot ground,found with a GP Extreme,or that of Lees 6 ouncer at 26 inches depth,using the 2200d and a 16 inch NFmono. Universals 13.4grammer at 21 inches depth,using a 4500 and a 14 inch gold stalker mono,would have to be a feat in itself.Obviously the ground must of been favorable on that day.
Kiwijw,superb pictures there pal.Nice smooth chunky nugget.Would i be wrong in saying that the ground you were working on,seems to be very benign,or quiet looking ground,(the type of which i rarely get the privilege to swing over).
Finding a large multi-ounce slug of gold at amazing depth,is a memory never to be forgotten.A goal that i hope some day to achieve.
Its also good to hear that the old model machines are still kicking ar*e when it comes to depth.
Anyway to all concerned,have a prosperous and safe New Year.

Cheers kon61.

Hi Kon

Have a safe and "sideways" new year also mate.

my deepest slug was a flatish golfball sized bit for 58 grams at just over 600mm with a 4000 with a 14" coiltek Mono,
in sens/extra, deep, gain 13,motion v/slow in the worst sh1ty ground in WA eastern fields...
Goin back there soon with the 5000 and a 24"x14" Mono "Nugget Tech" coil to see whats goin on,
whacked it on today for a test and the field was massive,could hear a 20cent coin abaout a foot derectly of
the side of i,t so i'm very keen to see the depth i can get on the 5000,,,, got a nice little deep patch i found last year
that i think there's gotta be something decent down deep..

p.s dug a bit of 1/2 inch steel plate 3 inches wide last year at a measured 1.3 meters deep, if it was gold i reckon bout 50 oz minimum at that depth easy.

Pete in WA

I'm really amazed at the depth you guys are getting with the GPX's. All I can think of is better ground conditions which suit Normal Mode settings.
I buried a 20 gram sinker 14" inches down in some hot ground and using a GPX4500 with 16"NF just gave a whisper in Enhanced. Could have walked right over it and missed it.
In Normal MODE was a better signal but the amount of Hot Rocks in the area made it impossible to leave it in this Mode.

G'day Kon61, Yes we are pretty lucky in NZ to be blessed with quiet ground so mono's rule. All glacial worked over ground & glacialy transported & deposited material including the gold. So the gold & material could have & did come from miles away from its source. The material just totaly & randomly mixed up & dropped when the glaciers stopped advancing & melted away. Miles away from any water course today & high up on mountain tops even.
If you havnt seen this posting before, it tells my story of my last years detecting. Some posts have been deleted due to a bit of 5hit hitting the fan as some "locals" recognised areas, even though I never gave away there locations, because they have been there themselfs they recognised the areas from the pics. Your average joe public wouldnt have a clue though. Thats why I shared it. My posts are under kiwijw. Enjoy.
http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,278115.0.html

Happy hunting

JW

Golden child

One of the most important facts with P.I detectors is their reliance on the "halo effect"
to find deeper targets, this halo makes the target appear a lot bigger to the detector than it actually is,
this helps to find the deeper targets more easily.
When we bury a test target in the ground we dont have the halo effect as the object hasn't been buried
long enough,the same goes for waving a test target over the coil (Air test).
You will find that targets buried for a very long time like nuggets etc can be found at far greater depths.
The "halo effect" can be simply explained as the same thing as the rusty ground that surrounds a buried
rusty steel object and the surrounding dirt is rusty also.

Pete in WA

Thanks for the explanation Pete, wasn't aware of the Halo effect. Was thinking if my 4500 wasn't up to scratch on depth after reading this thread.

Very good over looked point Pete & so true for the PI's getting their very good depth on old buried targets. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
I just checked that post that I put the link up for & had forgotten how many posts I had actually deleted. Shame as it had a lot of pics. Page 2 isnt so bad as it was a few different places.

JW

Not a nugget but the halo effect would explain my cracker depth, 3 feet pulling one of those brassy miner buttons (small) in non mineralised ground, still with big rocks in the way though with a minelab 3500, 11" mono pshuedo echo effect....

HueyDuck....

kon61 wrote: Universals 13.4grammer at 21 inches depth,using a 4500 and a 14 inch gold stalker mono,would have to be a feat in itself. Obviously the ground must of been favorable on that day.

The area that I found it in was heavilly mineralised with plenty of detector holes in the area and was using enhance, maybe it was just a favourable day

any of mine were close to the top of the ground but a good friend of mine got a 51oz at 910mm with a 3500 and a 16'' nugget finder --verified by 3 others who were with him

Thank God for that Marachu, thats the combination i run for deep gold...3500 with new 16" Nuggetfinder, so theres hope for me yet and thanks for posting that one too...keeps me going....

HueyDuck....

G'day Gents.

Universal,that Enhance mode is something out of the ordinary on the 4500.It never stops amazing me.
None the less the depth you picked up that nugget from and in heavily mineralized ground is truly amazing.Maybe because of its flat surface area and of course its halo effect,helped bring it to within audible signal range.
I myself know that all air tests done on most targets whether buried or sitting on the surface are picked up at a greater height whilst in normal mode than enhance and yet in highly mineralized ground,enhance acts just like a dd on an SD series machine.I do believe that the hotter the ground,the greater the enhance modes capabilities,even to a point surpassing that of normal mode,in depth.
As for the "Halo Effect",every target buried in the ground for many years,creates its own halo,even gold nuggets regardless of their much slower decomposition or should i say decay factor.Proof of this is clearly found straight after bringing a target to light from great depth,only to find out that the depth has decreased significantly when the coil is once again swung over the target on the surface.
Murachu,did you have to show me a beautiful nugget of that size? Just when i was trying to work out Universals nugget depth and scrolled one down to your post,I almost spewed on the screen.Couldn't you have showed me something a bit smaller so that i don't collapse on the key board.

Enjoy your New Year guys. Cheers kon61.

Murachu that's a nice bit you lucky bugger, i'm still trying to find the bigger ones.... the biggest hole dug was 10 to 11" deep for a 1.2 gram with gpx 4000 with a 8" mono coil. but someone dug the hole but missed the target and filled the hole back in, they should off went 1 more inch down and half an inch back.
cheers
stoppsy
ps. have a great new years everyone... may many beers to be drunk and hang-overs to remind why do we do it to our selfs everytime....

no no no! I didnt find it!! a friend of mine found it --but i did have it in my hands ooooooouuuuhhhhhhh the feeling!!

Kon,

Enhance is what I mainly use now on the 5000, I've found that it gives me the best performance in mineralised ground with the settings that I use.

Phil.

Id have to agree with you there Phil.Considering most gold bearing ground in Aus is mineralized to some degree or another, Enhance coupled with various other mono coil/machine setting/combination's,would most likely cover most gold detecting situations.

Cheers kon61.

Hi there eve0001, My detacc, which I still use on my 4500, has a volume control & bye pass switch. So I can adjust the volume to suit. I also run it through an external speaker now days & havnt used headphones for ages. But back in my GP 3000 days I was running it through headphones but with the volume control it wasnt a problem. Settings I used were as sensitive as I could get it & as we dont have the mineralized ground that you guys have I was at full sensitivity with all settings. Every where is different though & you will need to tune your detector to suit your conditions. Cheers.

Good luck out there

JW

ah ok well it wouldn't be such an issue if there wasn't so much shallow trash and sensitive iron in the ground I don't mind finding lead but everything else is taking a toll on my ears haha.

Cheers.

Try sitting the headphones around your neck & not on your ears. That way you will still get the blast from a signal but it wont blow your head off.

JW

Here is a good dig by Gully Hunter 19.5 inches deep. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc0n3wAbSRM

Well done G.H & G.B. Great Nugget and great Movie of the digging....How come I haven't found something like that whenever I go out with you Blokes ? Go get 'em Men , and good luck to you.

Hi kon61
I have found many nuggets over 1m in depth and 100's over 600mm
With my deepest being a flat 6ozer at 1280mm  I couldn't believe it was only 6 oz when I dug it out, I thought it would be 20+oz

Even last season I would have dug over 50 nuggets at more than 500mm I got many of them on film and some of them were very small for the depth.
I recall filming myself digging a 1oz piece at 750mm in hard yellow alluvial clay then cemented river wash, it was like concrete, it took me about 30 to 40 mins to dig in 40+ degc temp I thought it would be larger than it was, maybe Bloodgold put a couple in the vid.

I think the soil that you normally operate in is a major factor in your problem as if the soil is a long time constance when you ground balance the soil out you are also balancing out any metallic targets in the same signal range as the soil.
And because you are using the smooth class of timings you also have a loss on long time constance targets.
So because of the soil signal being very close to the deep nuggets signal response you are effectively timing and balancing out the nuggets.
This is a problem that we all face in that type of soil the way I try to over come this is by using a large coil (20in+), normal/tracking and just putting up with all of the ground noise, but this takes allot of getting used to and I will dig many many false targets so I only bother with this on a patch with deep gold potential.
If you see one of my patches where I've done this it looks like pigs have nosed up the soil, after a while you get an ear for a positive target and after quickly busting off 200mm you can eliminate most of the ground noises.

Or use a smooth timing and a large coil like a 25in mono and try eliminate the ground signal with the settings and use the size of the coil to lift the amount of Rx sinal you are receiving from your deep nuggets and some of them will now be different to the soil signal and will now be detectable.
Also specific ground balance can be very effective in some highly mineralized soil, I have found it very helpful in oxide rich clay's.

Yep we should all backfill our holes dug ????????? I do every time. But some guys don't you see there holes all over.a few selfish non back fillers could spoil the hobby for everyone ????
SO BACKFILL ALL HOLES GUYS SHOULD NOT LOOK LIKE PIGS HAVE BEEN DIGGING?????????? Should be nice and clean with holes refilled. AND no I am not perfect on occasion I haven't but 85% of my holes I backfill. But we should always fill. So there we go just a reminder for us all.regards ken krakenup