Ace 250 for gold nuggets??

[Fraulein]

Hello! I am new to the metal detecting hobby and with my Ace 250 I am having a great time. Where I live there is an old copper mine and when I was at the university I heard of some students that instead of finding themselves summer job, were going gold hunting in the area and were able to find enough gold to pay for their next school year.

I am wondering if the Ace 250 would be good to find gold nuggets. I know from watching you tube movies that the Scorpion from Garrett is built to do this. But until I can justify spending $500 to buy a Scorpion, does the Ace 250 would indicate anything if there was a gold nugget in the ground?

Thank you.

 

[MNCoinhunter]

Well, it's designed to pick up jewelry and just about every metal known to man. I think it qualifies...but you just won't know until you dig it up. I just started so I may be the wrong person to give you a definitive answer. Maybe you could find a used Scorpion on the 'net somewhere..

 

[oldranger]

Welcome to the forum youll learn a LOT here

im not experienced enuff to answer your question
but many of the folsk here are!!

Good Hunting

Ron

 

[candcantiques]

I have an Ace 250 and I have taken gold out and buried it to see how well the detector does. You may want to do the same. I took out rings and necklaces. I was able to detect the ring at 4" in salt water sand in all metal mode with the sensitivity turned down to 4. Salt water sand is hard to search in because of the salt and other mineralization that seems to amplify when soaked with salt water. Soil rich in a lot of iron might be close to the same as I have heard but I only search the beaches here in Daytona. I have yet to find a piece of gold that I did not bury. There is a wide range that gold will possibly register as I am sure you already know if you have read the owners manual and watched the video's. Depending on what kind of soil you are in (I have only ever searched sand) you might have to adjust your sensitivity. I have heard that you do NOT want to discriminate against iron if you want to find gold. If there is iron in the ground where you will be searching it COULD mask a gold signal so that all that registers is iron. Until you remove the iron from the ground the gold will NOT register. I also understand that the sniper coil will help you in your situation if you wanted to find gold nuggets. I have heard that from a lot of people but personally I have no experience to verify it. Whatever you do, do not get discouraged. Over time you will learn more and more about the signals that the detector is sending. DO NOT just watch the screen. Make sure that you listen to the sounds. Sometimes iron will register as a signal on the right AND a signal on the left making you believe you have 2 objects when in fact the iron object is right in the middle where you get no signal at all. Have fun and good luck with the nuggets and please let us know how you do.

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

would be to buy a gold pan and pan for gold; especially if you are short on cash.
what your friends aren't telling you, is the effort and frustration that they most likely have gone through to find the gold. Also what detectors are they using. There is a huge amount of dirt between nuggets of gold. I'm not trying to put a damper on your enthusiasm, but point your in a more productive direction if your budget is limited.
As far as the Ace is concerned, it is a coin machine and does not have the ground balance feature on it to deal with the ground conditions of the gold fields. That said, you may well be interested to know that I have in fact taken my Ace out onto the gold fields near where I live (Australia). This place (Stuart Town) was the site of a major gold rush back in the 1850's to 1890's and is the same region of our first gold rush. Despite the Aces lack of ground compensation circuits, it handled the ground surprising well. On testing with tiny fishing sinkers, which lead behaves exactly like gold to a detector, it could pick up a sinker as small as half a gram (about one sixtieth of an ounce) to a depth of a couple of inches! As there are a lot of minerals in the ground that set the detector off, the Ace can sound quite noisy, but from what I understand, a gold nugget will give a solid hit. I haven't found any yet.
There is a great little article in the August 2008 Australian Gold Gem And Treasure magazine written by Gopher (I don't know him). He took an Ace out to the gold fields along with his Minelab GP3500. He found the noisiest ground that he could with the GP 3500, then put it away and fired up the Ace. He did what is normally the opposite of what you do when the Ace is getting a lot of ground noise, and cranked the sensitivity up to the max and hunted in all metal. He hunted a 10x10 meter square area. He said that the Ace made a bucket load of noise, but it could still find targets through all the ground noise! Gold targets gave a solid hit. He then went over the same ground with his gold machine armed with a 5x10in coil. He only missed One was a Chinese coin at 12 inches, the other was a piece of junk metal at the same depth.
Did he find any gold with the ace? Yes he did. I can't tell you if it was in that 10x10 area or not, but he did find gold with it. It was a small nugget that weighed .44 of a gram! In the ground he found it he said that the (quote) "250 squealed and hiccupped and cried for it's mummy, but it still managed to find targets. And it didn't need to be a big target either. The little .44 grammer on the toe of the coil in the photograph is testament to that." (End quote. This quote came from page 31 of the August 2008 Australian Gold Gem and Treasure Magazine.) You may be able to find this article on the website of www.goldminingcentre.com.au . It is the website of the Garrett importer to Australia. If it's not there, then I'm sure if you sent him an E-mail, he may be able to help you out in finding a copy of the article. I think that the sponsor of the Findmall gold forum( Doc) gets this mag for his customers in the US, so you might be able to get a back copy of it.
I talked to my nearest Garrett agent, now only 300kms away and he said that quite a number of fellows were using the Ace 150 on the gold fields. I think that he said that they were using it in ground that was chronically overloaded with scrap metal, where there gold machines couldn't cope. Again, the Ace is NOT an ideal gold machine! but it's better than nothing. As I said at the start, you may well do better with a gold pan and learn the art of where to find gold and pan for it. Gold pans get the gold that detectors can't see! Cheap yet effective.
Mick Evans.
P.S. If you are serious about getting a gold detector, and want value fo money, then get a Garrett Infinium or a second hand Minelab SD 2100 or SD 2200.

 

[Uncle Willy]

What were they finding gold with and were they finding gold at the copper mine? The 250 isn't designed for gold but people have found gold nuggets with it. It may not find the tiny ones which are the most plentiful but should detect larger ones. The only way to find out is give it a shot.

Bill

 

[bearkat4160]

The Ace 250 will pick up a .1 gram gold nugget at 1 inch with a solid hit. My GTI 2500 will pick the same nugget up at 1/2 inch in disc mode or all metal. Which suprised me that the Ace beat my 2500 on small gold. It is a good little machine that Ace 250. However these are AIR test and dont expect these results in the hot dirt of the gold fields. The Scorpion beat them both. The Infinium is for bigger gold around half gram and up. Good luck!

Alan

 

[David]

Very good reports here! c and c, Mick, Alan, and all!

I would say in looking for gold nuggets, use the Ace 250 in Discriminate Mode, the same technique as if you were looking for a gold ring or gold bracelet. Discriminate out iron mineralization, ground mineralization, hot rocks, iron-steel, and some small foil. You will still have to dig lead, brass, and most aluminum though, as they have the same conductivity as gold nuggets.

Another thing, see if you can get a DD coil for your Ace 250, as this coil works MUCH better for gold nuggets in the goldfields than a Concentric coil on any VLF machine.

If you are really serious get a used second-hand Garrett Infinium LS that is deeper.

Hope this helps.

 

[Old Katz]

I have seen articals in the Garrett newsletter about people who have found gold
with the Ace but the nuggets were of a certain size usually good sized nuggets. Hunting gold nuggets is not the
same as hunting gold jewlery. Gold nuggets are usually in mineralized areas. You want a DD coil
for that and a machine you can Ground Balance. The Ace grouond balaance is factory preset and works well
in the average ground..

I'd go with the Scorpion from Garrett as its $469.00 at kelly co and can be used for both
Gold nugget hunting AND coin and jewlery. The Scorpion is operating at 15khz while the Ace is
operating at 6.5khz. I am told you will find both smal and large nuggets with the Scorpian; with the Ace you'll find the larger ones only
and miss the smaller gold.

The Ace was never intended as a gold machine.

Just my opinion.

Katz

 

[dahut]

Go on out and get you some spent, lead .22 LR bullets. Not the cartridge, mind you - just the bullets.

As it turns out, gold is near lead on the periodic table (Au - 79; PB - 82). This means it reacts virtually the same way as free gold to an electromagnetic field like that from your detectors searchoil.

SO, start with an entire lead .22 bullet and see if the detector reacts to it. If so, then begin cutting the bullet into smaller and smaller pieces until the detector stops "seeing" the lead. This will tell you the approximate size gold nugget your detector will react to.
My guess is that anything smaller than a match head will be dicey, if detectable at all.

If the detector wont reliably detect the bullet, then you must find nuggets larger than a .22 bullet. These are not unheard of around old mines, where the earth is exposed or brought to the surface from deep in the ground and left as tailings. However, they will be few and far between.

First, test the little ACE 250 and see if it will work. Start it in Relic mode and plan on running in low discriomation, as small gold nuggets will be hard to detect. Unless you run across a nugget the size of a walnut, you will be looking for any small signal that causes your detector to react.

Gold also shares common geologic origins with copper and can often be found wthin the rock of the tailing piles left from previous mining operations. This is good.
Sadly the gorund in such places is often highy mineralized or full of decomposed iron, which blinds most preset detectors like the ACE. you will have to get there and see. Raw copper ore may also be found in the tailings, which is not always so good for your detector, either.*
* Sometimes, raw copper can be sold as art pieces if it is substantial enough. Odds are against it, though. But it does happen.

And no detecting trip is complete without finding trash. Expect to find enough junk to fill your backpack around mines. Iron crap will be everywhere. Old shotshells, cartridge cases and fired bullets are common. Tin cans, hardware like nails, nuts and bolts, horse tack and so on often litter the place. Little of this stuff is of real value, although you sometimes mosey over something that is - so check out most everything you find.

Bottom line is, you wont find gold lying around waiting to make you rich at an old mine. You'll have your work cut out for you.
I suggest you first hunt down those students you heard about - and find out how they did it!

 

[willy]

It would probably be best to bite the bullet and get a detector with a threshold based all-metal mode. If you're in an area with moderate to low mineralisation and rather consistent ground, you could probably get away with using an Ace 250, but you'll quite probably be thinking about the gold you missed. I tried out the Ace 250 (just 'cause I had one) and also a GTAX1000 (had one of those too), as well as the GTI's 1500 & 2500 and found that, in my ground, they fell far short of being acceptable as nugget shooters. I've found that the all-round best detector for nugget shooting (with the ability to coin shoot, relic hunt, etc) is the MXT. Sorry to say this (it being a garrett forum & such), but that's 'how the hog ate the cabbage'. Check out Steve Hershbach's (hope I spelled his name correctly) metal detecting recommendations for nugget shooting in Alaska if you think I'm blowing smoke. Only the Gold Stinger (VLF, long in the tooth and I also had one) and the Infinium (PI and I also had one of those) are mentioned. See what he has to say about the MXT (with which I've found thousands of $'s of gold nuggets). Personally, I'd love to see Garrett come out with a competitive nugget shooter/coin machine.. but it hasn't happened yet. ..Willy BTW.. I own a Grand Master Hunter and this isn't just a 'drive-by sniping by a White's fanboy'.

 

[KarlGrath]

Yeah the Ace 250 is great for almost anything in my experience! You really do get some bang for your buck here. You don't need to shell out $500 for the Scorpion to get quality. I was able to find a Garrett ACE 250 metal detector with accessories for less than $300 online. Also, you could always ask a family member to purchase it for you as a Christmas gift