User's Manual

6 35
TEKNETICS
Comprehensive Operating Manual & Guide to Metal Detecting
TEKNETICS
Comprehensive Operating Manual & Guide to Metal Detecting
MECHANICALS (continued)
BATTERIES
The T
2
uses four AA batteries. Use ALKALINE batteries for best performance. Rechargeable
batteries may be used. Expect 40 hours of service in the field with one set of ALKALINE
batteries.
If you use rechargeable batteries, good-quality NiMH (nickel-metal–hydride) batteries are
recommended. They will usually deliver over 25 hours of service without recharging, but when
they start running low, they die suddenly with little warning.
Always install batteries which are of the same type and the same state of charge. Otherwise
battery life will be determined by the weakest battery, as the good batteries cannot deliver their
power with a dead battery blocking the current.
All 4 batteries are installed with the
positive terminals facing upward.
DO NOT MIX OLD AND NEW BATTERIES
The LCD screen shows battery condition on the right.
ARMREST
The armrest WIDTH and POSITION are both adjustable.
Armrest Width: The sides of the armrest can be bent inward and outward.
To best stabilize the detector to your arm and body movement, squeeze the sides of the
armrest around your forearm. For a very secure fit, some users prefer to bend the
armrest in tightly against the forearm such that you pry the sides loose each time you
place your arm into the armrest.
Detecting Activities (continued)
Gold Prospecting (continued)
In some cases the parent mountain no longer exists. When a desert placer land surface is no
longer situated where deposition processes are active, weathering disintegrates the surface
material and it is washed away by surface erosion. The gold, being heavy, is not so readily
removed by erosion. Over many thousands of years the gold becomes concentrated in the
surface material, resulting in an alluvial deposit.
Weathered-in-place residual gold (typically in soil above a gold-bearing quartz vein) is a good
situation for metal detecting, fairly similar to a hill slope setting. The difference is that if you see
quartz stones and are thinking there might be a gold-bearing quartz vein beneath, prospectors
before you probably saw and thought the same thing. So, there will probably be prospect holes,
and possibly even nearby hard rock mines. The early miners were looking for a mineable hard
rock vein, but without a metal detector the overlying soil was useless to them. So always check
the zone around prospect holes, as well as the prospect hole itself if it’s safe to do so.
Mine tailings (mullock heaps) from hard rock mines are another favorite place to search.
Previous miners in an area typically threw the rocks out if they didn’t see gold with their eyes,
and they often got so busy throwing out rocks that they missed seeing visible gold. A metal
detector can find the mistakes of ancient or recent miners.
In many placer deposits, metal detectors go together well with the non-electronic traditional
artisanal mining methods of panning, sluicing, and dredging. The larger rocks in the gravels
cannot be processed by these methods, so they have to be thrown out. Someone already dug
these rocks from a suspected or known pay streak: now they’re on the surface loose, and
probably even clean. Unless you happen to know that the larger rocks in this placer deposit
virtually never contain gold, the rock piles can be a good place to use a metal detector.
In humid regions the soil is usually 20 inches (1/2 meter) or more thick, protected from surface
erosion by vegetation cover. Gold is heavier than soil and tends to settle to bedrock. Therefore
the gold is in these regions are too deep to be detected with a metal detector. With the geology
hidden underground, it’s hard even to know where one ought to be searching. Therefore in
humid regions the use of metal detectors is usually restricted to searching material which is not
covered by soil—river gravels, rock outcrops, and rocky material excavated in mining
operations. The use of metal detectors has historically been most profitable in arid regions.
Desert soils are usually thin and rocky, with gold often lying exposed on the ground due to
removal of lighter material from the land surface by erosion. And unlike in most humid regions,
you can see the geology to guide you to where you should be searching.
Gold is valuable because it is a scarce commodity. Even in a good gold producing area, you
may spend an entire day without finding any gold. Meanwhile you may dig bits and pieces of
other metal. “Hot rocks” -- rocks containing concentrations of iron oxides that sound like metal
when you pass over them -- are also a nuisance in many gold areas.
If you have gone many hours without finding gold and are wondering if there is something wrong
with your metal detector or how you are using it, the most important clue is this: if you are digging
tiny pieces of trash metal, then if you had swept over gold nuggets, you would have dug them too!