e trac and gold

[spo307]

what mode does the e trac have to be in to detect gold? i put my 14k gold chain and cross on a clean spot on the ground and the e trac does nothing????

 

[sprchng]

You're most likely discriminating it out with whatever pattern you have in your machine. Open the screen from Fe 9 to13 all the way across and try again. If you want to dig gold your going to dig some foil and aluminum also. Chains are always tough because they may be read as the individual links instead of the whole chain and gold is a low conductor at 14k. I have learned to get very interested in multi-tone signals as they may be chains or the side of an aluminum can but you dig them regardless.

 

[utahshovelhead]

O oh! The etrac is known for not being all that hot with small gold or gold chains. That is not to say that it wont hit gold, just not the smaller stuff or chains with no large surface area. You can read lots of earlier posts about this on the forum if you go back and use the search feature.

What sprchng suggests is a pretty good way to see what your particular gold item may come in at on your screen. Most important for me when gold hunting is not the ID but the sound. Do you get a clear sound? Now the problem with that is you will dig a lot of things that sound like it. but If you are in an area with gold in it (beach, swim hole ect.) then dig by the sound after opening up your discrimination to allow all the gold items you have pre scanned into your discrim pattern.

Hope that helps.

 

[ryanchappell]

Most VLF detectors including the E-Trac see a gold chain as a group of individual links. If you look at a single link you will see that it is around the size of a gold nugget smaller than 0.500 grams. Like an earring backing. The E-Trac is designed, tuned, and optimized to find high conductive coins and relics. It will find low conductive nickels and gold rings just fine because they are in the 5 gram range, not the 0.500 gram range. A chain's conductive size is broken and effectively the size of its links.

If you are looking for a gold chain you lost, the E-Trac would not be my choice of detector, to find it. You may be able to find it with an X-Terra 6" HF DD coil, a Tesoro Compadre, etc, if it is no deeper than an inch or two. I would go all metal, and dig shallow iron signals, as any signal, on a VLF detector, close to its limit of detection will fade to an iron signal and show up as a null if any discrimination is used. A small coil will help in detecting small gold, as long as it is not deep.

Air test the chain again in all metal!

 

[utahshovelhead]

Ok...so now the question is; if you were going to look for deep small gold earings, chains, or similar small gold and DEEEEEP, 12 inches or more, what machine would any of you recommend?

 

[Johnnyanglo]

F75SE
T2SE
GBPro
G2
Omega
XLT
AT Gold
Deus
GMP

 

[jarid]

GPX 5000

 

[roadapple]

I would use a Pulse Inductive machine, such as the Whites TDI or Minelab GPX. Both are gold prospecting units and will do the job !

 

[ryanchappell]

Ok...so now the question is; if you were going to look for deep small gold earings, chains, or similar small gold and DEEEEEP, 12 inches or more, what machine would any of you recommend?

F75SE
T2SE
GBPro
G2
Omega
XLT
AT Gold
Deus
GMP

All or most of the above are VLF machines, and good list of the ones that will detect small gold the furthest, but I doubt any will find a chain at a foot deep. One foot deep? That is the limit at which the E-Trac finds silver at, and another VLF detector is going to find a speck of gold that deep?

I would use a Pulse Inductive machine, such as the Whites TDI or Minelab GPX. Both are gold prospecting units and will do the job !

The GPX will find a spec of gold 12 inches deep or deeper, but will only discriminate out iron. So this would be useful at the beach, or relic hunting in a sparse field, but not a littered park.