Depths of gold?

[Karen]

I've been reading heaps of posts about the varying depths that gold is found - surface, shallow and deep but would like clarification on what depths

these actually are. And also with your measurements are you removing sticks, bark and leaves from the area before you estimate the depth?

Thanks!

 

[Chewy]

Gold can be found sunbaking on top of the surface if your lucky enough. Or at the other extreme some goldmines in Bendigo have shafts to a depth of over 1000 metres. 8) (Yep that's not a typo, 1km) Usually when people talk about depth they're referring to the depth of a hole from the surface, with the sticks etc cleared away from the ground, although there usually isn't that much of it to make much of a difference.

 

[mbasko]

Mponeng gold mine in South Africa is over 4km deep. As far as I know this is the deepest mine in the world. A bit of trivia - I'm assuming your more asking for detectable depths not how deep gold goes down?
I'd hazard a guess that the majority of gold found is within 1ft (30cm) of the surface - maybe less. The remainder mostly between 1-3ft gets difficult to detect especially once you throw in the inherent mineralised ground on goldfields. Thats where the more expensive PI or ZVT machine/s start to earn their keep. Detectable gold at depths of over 3-4ft is rare - extremely rare regardless of detector used. Again though PI or ZVT territory. To get those depths with a VLF in mineralised ground it had want to be a fairly large lump of gold. The advantage of the PI's & now more so the ZVT (GPZ7000) is the ability to see relatively small gold at good depth in mineralised ground also.
Removing surface debris gives you an added depth advantage & depending on machine + area this can mean the difference between getting no gold, some gold or a lot of gold. Sometimes even a few mm can make a big difference.
Claims of gold detectors getting depths of 2m, 3m, 10m etc. is just that - claims.

 

[Karen]

Thanks for taking the trouble to answer a very basic question Chewwy & Mbrasko.

Appreciate the info and views.

A mine 1km deep - that's amazing but a gold mine 4kms deep, that just makes my head spin. It doesn't seem possible. But there you go. Learn something new everyday.

I feel confident in digging down a foot, if it came to finding a sparkly. Good to know the average

 

[Ridge Runner]

Thanks for taking the trouble to answer a very basic question Chewwy & Mbrasko.

Appreciate the info and views.

A mine 1km deep - that's amazing but a gold mine 4kms deep, that just makes my head spin. It doesn't seem possible. But there you go. Learn something new everyday.

I feel confident in digging down a foot, if it came to finding a sparkly. Good to know the average

It Appears that Aussie Ground is the worst for any Detector, And machines that are built to work in such places have a huge amount of R&D go into them and that is reflected in the price, But once you get a good machine they do give you A Certain amount of Confidence to keep Going,