After you have invested in your detector and have done all the work involved in getting set up and found your location, have managed to eliminate the hot rocks etc and have located a nugget, it’s time to put the gold you have found inside a film canister. If the size of the nugget you have come across is large you should not have a problem with this. One of the best ways is to little by little continue digging or scarping at a hole from which you are able to hear the loudest signal coming from, which is hopefully around the middle of the nugget. This can be done by using a trowel or a buck knife. You should continue to look at the hole with the loop. If the hole goes below the surface a few inches and you start to get a signal, begin to dig a little slower with the sharp end of your trowel. At this point you should only take at a little bit of dirt at a time and this dirt should be placed on the side close to you. After the target is not in the hole anymore it is time to isolate it. You should now pass the loop over the pile that you have placed on the side. If you hear a loud signal, it is probable the target is large as well. In the past the technique consisted of grabbing a handful of dirt and waving it over a loop. When the handful of dirt obtained a sound, the prospector than opened his hand and looked for the target and this technique can work just fine in cases where the target is bigger and the loop is not so sensitive that it picks up the salt from your body. There are some detectors that will do this so it will be necessary for you to first test the detector with your palm, and if you see the detector picks up a positive signal then try testing your fingers. If it doesn’t pick up a positive signal then you will simply have to take little bits of dirt in your fingers instead of your hands. To make all this a bit simpler, do this when you are pretty assured the target is bigger. There is another method that is used in softer soil areas. The dirt in this method is scooped into a gold pan little by little. The pan is then shaken in order to move the gold down to the bottom. Then pan is then passed over the loop to see if the target is there or not. If you cannot hear any signal you will need to test the pile to see if the target is still there and then throw the dirt that is in the pan on the side. You should always check the pile again though. Some nuggets are very small and might not be at the bottom of the pan yet. Continue scooping more dirt up and keep on going with the process. After you have one single pan, move some of the dirt to the side of the pan and check the piles of dirt. You will need to continue doing this until you are able to blow off the extra dirt and the gold piece is exposed.
