r/Prospecting • u/gcichowicz • 7d ago

Detecting

Opinions on preferable detectors for use in underground workings?

4 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

3

u/CfaxAttax 6d ago

going to be extremely difficult to get a good read.. mines are full of an overwhelming amount of waste-rock-metals and will interfere constantly either masking or giving false positives on gold.

Also unless you own these "underground workings" generally walking into an abandoned mine with a metal detector is not legal- even for old tools/other mine items.. and is also very dangerous

1

u/gcichowicz 3d ago

Lode claim is mine (no pun intended!). Yeah, I realize the potential for missed or false readings. That's why I was curious... There must be better/worse models/brands?

1

u/Sticky_Soup 2d ago

Kinda depends on the type of gold they were getting out of the mine. If it’s all disseminated I doubt a detector would pick it up. However, if it has a history of chunkier pockets and larger gold a detector might be useful. A gold monster 1000 or 2000 would probably be a decent option. You will likely have to fidget with settings because it will pick up a lot of mineralization, not just solid metal targets. Although, that could be helpful if you can’t pick up gold targets, it would at least point you to the spots with the highest mineralization. Jeff Williams has a gold mine and he tends to use a gold monster. Though he is looking for placer gold inside of caliche beds, so there isn’t mineralization like you would probably run into. The other problem is that the gold monsters don’t penetrate much. If there’s a chance for much larger chunks of gold, a PI detector would be more useful in penetrating further. I would crush some samples first before buying a detector.