Posted by bubba on 7/6/2009, 7:04 pm, in reply to "Question"
12.76.228.61
Gold Spear
Russ Ford, Arizona
The Gold Spear is a gold probe made in England. It's been around a few years, and there seems to be wide differences of opinion about its' benefits. I've had a Gold Spear for about 5 years. I agree with the other post that it depends upon your application as to whether or not it would be beneficial for you. The soil has to be soft enough to penetrate or it'll do no good at all. Remember you have to actually touch the gold to get a gold reading. And I've found that there will be a lot of false readings; either way. That is, either signals that say gold when there isn't gold, or signals that say there isn't, when there really is gold there. I mainly use it to find heavy concentrations of black sand. I think it is an excellent tool for that purpose. If I can get three or four gold readings out of a dozen probes in pocket of black sand, I've found I'm usually in a hot spot. The main advantage of the Spear in my opinion is that it is so much faster to stick in a probe and get a reading, rather than pan a pan of material. I can make 25 test probes in the time it takes to pan one pan. The disadvantage is that you have to not rely upon it totally, but use it as an indication rather than a sure thing...................
Ed Note: For those of you who don't know what a Gold Spear is, here's a photo. As you can see, it looks like a metal detector except it has a pointed probe (inset) that is meant to be pushed into the ground. It makes three different sounds when the probe touches gold, other metals or black sand.
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