Bucket & Boomers Prospecting Adventures received an email a while back from the maker of the Crazy Crusher wanting us to do one of our “Hollywood” style video’s for their 34lb portable rock crusher and the timing was good, so we accepted the project. We spent several weeks working on this project and the video turned out spectacular! http://youtu.be/-O80NthOnnE

A promo video like this is not cheap, it takes several weeks of planning and several more weeks of filming and editing and most of you who have done a few video’s know that, especially when you are doing a video on an item that has so few moving parts, you really have to get creative in order to pull this off, but this article is not about the video, it’s about the item that was sent to us for the video.

Out of the box…

The Crazy Crusher…when it arrived, was packaged nicely and when I opened the box to gaze at the contents I could tell it would be easy to assemble, it was very heavy duty and well made with thick steel and quality welds, the only thing I had to do (to put it together) was bolt the arms to the body and presto it was ready to go. Now if I wanted to use it out in the field, it came with a hitch mount and the crusher could then be bolted to that, making it completely portable for use anywhere your imagination will take you, or at least anywhere a 2″ hitch is available whether it be the back of your truck, buggy or even your quad! It also comes with four solid legs, so if you wanted to bolt it down to your work bench and use it in your workshop or garage you could lag it down for a more permanent location.

Crazy Crusher legs bolted to the hitch mount.

The right location…

The Bucket & Boomer compound, located in sunny Santee California, is strewn with decomposed granite and rock from the side of a mountain facing the back yard, so there is no shortage of material to run through the crusher if one wanted to practice using this machine. We had other idea’s though and opted to run only quartz thru it and since there was no quartz here, we would have to wait until it was time to film the video before putting the Crazy Crusher through it’s paces.

We picked a wash 1 1/2 hrs east of San Diego to begin filming and this was to be the initial test of the Crazy Crusher as well, we chose this undisclosed location due to the fact that there was quartz in abundance running all through the wash. We had never been to this location before but we had to find a spot fairly close to home, yet to be true to the theme of the video, it had to be filmed in the desert so after a few searches for the right spot on google earth, we found this place and it was pretty much picture perfect for what we were looking for.

The adjustment screw for adjusting the jaws.

6am..

Bucket & Boomer have always liked filming on a Monday for two reasons…#1-We all have that particular day off and #2-Places just seem to be a lot less crowded on a weekday and it just gets too hard to film with too many distractions. So 6am Monday morning we headed out to our predetermined location to crush some quartz and make a video. The drive out is very scenic as we roll through the small town of Ramona and then past chicken ranches, cow pastures and even a camel farm before reaching the next town of Julian…well known as a gold mining town with some old cowboy like flair to it. We then head down the back side of Banner grade and the scenery slowly changes from Oak and Pine tree’s to ocotillo and cactus and eventually we find the spot we picked out on the map and it was loaded with quartz and looked to be the perfect spot for filming. The video would require a total of four trips to this location and luckily the weather was perfect all four times!

A topside view of the lid and jaws.

Getting Crazy…

Finally we would get the chance to get crazy and really give the Crazy Crusher a first class workout, so we hooked up the crusher to the truck hitch and propped it up with a motorcycle stand to prevent the truck from bouncing but a 4×4 post would do just fine if that is what you had available. We picked some quartz out from the hill sides and collected it in a bucket and brought it back to run through and began the task of figuring out how to use this machine.

The Crazy Crusher is quite simple, as you look it over it’s almost self explanatory, you adjust the jaws to the size of the quartz you want to come out at the bottom. If you get too crazy and adjust the jaws to tight, the rock will be very hard to crush  and you will find yourself working way too hard, we found the best method is to start with a fairly open jaw and adjust from there getting smaller and smaller each time you run the same material through until it is of the classification you are looking for whether it be for use in the Bluebowl or for panning or whatever method you plan to process this material with.

The way we went about it worked just about right, we took some large quartz rock from the bucket, smacked it with a hammer and dropped the broken pieces into the “hopper”, you then close the lid  which is there to prevent you from losing one or both of your eye’s since the principal behind this is to crush stone and the pieces can fly all over as it breaks up in the jaws. You then pump the handle up and down and the jaws mesh together (the up part is easy) most of the pressure is on the down stroke! So with a little practice we had manage to crush the better part of a 5 gallon bucket of quartz rock in short order, and to this day I still haven’t panned out that quartz we crushed to see if it has any gold in it, I think that will make for another youtube video in the near future.

It’s many uses…

Full view of the Crazy Crusher

The primary use for a rock crusher like this I would suspect would be related to (but not restricted to) gold prospecting. Geologists could crush mineral samples and gold prospectors could crush ore suspected of carrying gold, but pretty much any type of rock that needs to be ground down to a finer powder can be run through the Crazy Crusher as well as glass bottles…yes glass bottles can be broken and then run through the Crazy Crusher and the end result will be glass powder that could be used in rock beds or gardens. The many uses of this machine can be up to your imagination and what you might happen to need it for, it was a very fun machine to use and we enjoyed it thoroughly. The Crazy Crusher is built to last and will be a permanent addition to the many prospecting tools we use on a regular basis and many more video’s will be forth coming with the Crazy Crusher.

So to sum it up, I would like to bestow the official Bucket & Boomer stamp of approval for a well built  and very useful gold prospecting tool!!

The Pomona show could also be slow due to the fact that Taxifornia as a state… is not very friendly to mining or miners rights to begin with so a lot of out of state vendors aren’t going to go out of their way to do business here and I don’t blame them. On the other hand it is apparent that capitalism will not be stifled…now or ever!! Here in Cali…or anywhere else!! No matter how hard they try, with high taxes and business killing legislation because I saw more than gold sparkling at that show yesterday, I saw creativity! I saw determination! and a will to succeed even if their own home state is trying its best to snuff their lights out, such as with the case of Pat & Mark Keene and their band of merry men from Keene Engineering, out of Chatsworth, Ca, they truly are a great group of guys…very friendly, very upbeat and very determined to keep going and get through this brutal economy in a state that wants to put them out of business, they had a nice spot up front right when you walk in the door and appeared to be doing quite well with a nice crowd gathered around looking over the equipment, I thought about buying one of their dredges so I could store it in my garage here in Santee Ca, for the next forty years until it becomes a museum piece but  realized I probably won’t be alive in forty years and if I was I (beyond a shadow of a doubt) will not be living in Taxifornia. But if you want to help out a great business, these guys might just have the gold gettin’ prospecting gear your looking for at www.keeneeng.com/ give em a shout, tell em yer pal Bucket sent ya!!

Another group of  guys that think out of the box so to speak were my Bakersfield buddies over at BBR Prospector mfg, these guys just plain got tired of shakin’ buckets and classifying dirt all day instead of doing the fun stuff like drywashing, sluicing or panning, so they decided to do what men have been doing for thousands of years…and that is figuring out a way to make a crappy job easier!!! Thus I present to you the results of long hours of refinement, trial and error, the “Earthquake Classifier” you just dump in dirt, grab a cold frosty and turn it on, now that’s prospecting!!! I think these guys had the most unique and outside the box item at the show but if you didn’t make the show stop by at www.bbrmfg.com and see what all the fuss is about.

After spending some time at the Keene and Earthquake booths it was time to sit down, take a breather and rest the back and get ready for round two,

Boomer, Caroline, Ted, Bucket

we were sitting in some of the few chairs provided at the back of the hall when I happened to spot my pals Ted & Caroline heading our way, just in case you have forgotten, these two went out to Last Chance Canyon last year and managed to find one of the hardest “Geo-Boxes” I think we’ve ever planted!! Next to a tree that had since then fallen down making it even harder to locate but they did it and pulled out the box known as “The Hangin Tree” you can see their story in our “Finders Hall of Fame” so we took some pics with them , it was very cool.

I was able to stop by the ICMJ  booth and talk with Chris Ralph who was in pretty good spirits coming off the success of his monster book “Fists Full of Gold” .We also had some words with Sue and Jim from The American Prospecter, www.aptsgold.com…out of Temecula,Ca… very cool if you ever want to try an outing and your in the Southern Cal area, they not only run a prospecting store front but have outings on a regular basis and they are our local store. I also saw the gang that sell the trinity gold pan…very cool, I already own one and I like it and recommend it.

One of the other booths that seemed to garner a lions share of attention and someone who’s been fortunate enough to have one of their products on the Discovery Channels monster hit show Gold Rush Alaska was Mike Pung, Steve Wilcox and the “Gold Cube”. Mike knows what he’s talking about and he knows how to market his little baby, he was very cool and very friendly to talk to the whole time and the Gold Cube was a compact little unit that you have to see to believe, lets just describe it as a sluice that looks like an accordian and instead of sticking out it goes down to the next level where it starts over again …you know what I mea…. oh never mind!! its hard to describe this thing you just have to see it for yourself at www.goldcube.net

So to wrap up the day which was about 2:30 for us, (others were still just arriving)  and on the way out as usual I have to stop by the GPAA booth and have a brief chat with my buddy Dominic (who looked like the fry guy at the end of a Friday night shift at “In and Out burger”) he was lookin a bit worn out and ready to head for home, so for the GPAA I figured it had to have been a decent weekend, he said he had a lot of fun and met a of good folks and was ready for a rest before doing it again at the next show.

So as the Bucket & Boomer Crew wound out the tour at the 2012 GPAA Gold and Treasure show in Pomona, Taxifornia. I came away with the same feeling as I did last year in Vegas, I got to meet a lot of folks that I normally just do business with over the internet, its always cool when you met them face to face it was well worth the five schillings it cost to get in and even though the parking was a bit high…at ten bucks… I can’t get too pissed off, after all isn’t that capitalism as well?

Brought to you courtesy of Bucket & Boomers Prospecting Adventures

Now I don’t know how he ended up stuck up in NY but being from Arizona that’s just got to be brutal. What I do know is that Terry knows lemonade!! At first you could tell his spirit was a bit down, he wasn’t even on the forums for a while…then he started squeezing the lemons, got himself a Tesoro Sandshark and started working the beaches, with a good degree of success I might add, then his normal posts came rolling in to the forums accompanied by some photo’s and some youtube video’s,  yep… ol’ Terry was back!!

That got me to thinking …I got started in this hobby of metal detecting back in and around 94-95  with beach detecting, and now I’ve kind of put it to the side and focused on gold prospecting, maybe Terry’s on to something !! Maybe it’s time to get back to my roots. So there it was..sitting in front of me like the winning lottery ticket at the local SPMA door prize giveaway, my own Tesoro Sandshark all wrapped up in bubble-wrap and waiting to be put together and put through its paces.

I considered several models before settling on this one, nothing was based on price, it was just based on what was being said on the forums about the particular models I was considering, one high end model had folks talking about cheap dials that would break off and they were ending up replacing them with aftermarket dials (forget that!!) but there was one detector that everyone was happy with (Including Terry) and that was the Tesoro Sandshark. Most of the detectors I currently own will work at the beach but they are of an aging fleet…the newest being at least ten years old, so I wanted something current and made specifically for what I’m going to use it for.

The Internet…when used to your advantage can be the greatest tool of them all for finding treasure!

So now the game plan is to put this detector together and hit the beach this weekend and practice, practice, practice, needless to say 5 am is a bit too much for me so I opted for an afternoon run to a beach in Coronado,Ca…near the historic “Del“.

I took my 12 yr old daughter for company and to see if she would have enough attention span to work the Bounty Hunter I bought her a year ago, its hard to buy a kids style detector because they typically have a hard time swinging anything heavy and when you get a light kids version like this Bounty Hunter they typically don’t go very deep, and if a kid isn’t pulling coins out every two feet well…you all know what happens their attention span fly’s out the door.

Anyway when we arrived at the first beach we unpacked and found that the clouds and overcast had kept the beach fairly vacant which is perfect for us we… or I should say (I) worked about a hundred yards with nothing but bottle caps…not good because my daughter gets her lack of attention span from ME!! So we left for another beach just down the road.

The next beach we hit was called “The Silver Strand” State Beach and it usually charges 10 bucks to get in during the summer months and stops charging after Labor Day so I thought I was in good shape but when I arrived low and behold there was indeed a park ranger at the booth wanting ten bucks from ol’ Bucket. I told her I thought they quit charging after Labor Day and she said they charge year round now…no problem I thought to myself, I’ll just flash her my credentials (a Bucket&Boomer T-shirt) have my daughter giver her the sad eye’s and we’ll be on our way for free!! Anyway..so after getting the boot from what I would consider a very unwavering park ranger, we were parked across the road in a residential area…(for free I might add) and making our way to the beach, when we got there we fired up our detectors and got to work, now being the first time I’ve ever used this detector I’m not about to slap on some hip waders and get waist deep in the hoopla (Pacific Ocean) I wanted to figure some things out first, and let me tell you that the learning curve for this particular beach detector…as is with most Tesoro’s  is very short!

In no time I was yerking up bottle caps 10 inches down (yes I did say “Yerking” its Cali talk for “digging up”) so I new I was on the right track, I worked the storm break of piled sand and in one three foot area between me and my daughter we pulled up 34 pennies in our sand scoops, one of them being a 1927 wheat cent or wheatie! At one point we were scooping pennies three at a time from their sandy graves…a bonified cache!!  (OK maybe that’s going a bit too far), and as the pennies thinned out so did my kids attention span so I was left to myself to work the rest of the storm break while she chased birds up and down the beach. As I headed south down the break I hit a nickel then a dime…at this point I’d swear I was “Loaming” as the denominations were getting bigger then I ran into a Heineken bottle cap , and another and another so I figured there should be roughly six of these screwing me up, if I can gather all six I should be clear of these false treasures, well at around ten of em I was impressed with this guys drinking skills and knew I had a twelve pack to contend with, once I found that 12^th and final cap I was happy now I could focus on this area…sure enough..no more bottle caps and shortly thereafter I pulled up a couple dimes, a quarter and a very thin and fake gold ring!

Day One.

The afternoon had by now, given way to the evening and it was getting dark and time to call it a day, but I was very happy with the way that this metal detector handled the beach, it was very stable, very easy to use, fairly light and best of all very reasonably priced, as a matter of fact…I would actually call it a steal!!  I plan on…in the coming months regularly using this Tesoro Sandshark and posting on its successes. Terry motivated me to get back to the beach and now its my turn to pass it on!! So get out there all you taters at home and make your own……LEMONADE !!!!!!!

When I got into gold prospecting…it introduced me to a whole new set of toys that I now refer to as “Tools” and I still try to pick up some of these handy “Tools” every year, my 3 sheds are full of em. The last tool I bought was the Catch It II Water Table, which I ordered through my pals at www.GoldRushTradingPost.com and as usual, it came in pronto and very reasonably priced, what prompted this order was the fact that I saw this item at the Vegas GPAA show with Gramps in the drivers seat running this machine and it just looked freakin cool, I didn’t pick one up at the show because I didn’t want to carry it around, so I just logged this one down as something I just had to have in the very near future.

I ordered this tool because our next gold prospecting video “The Bullhead Chronicles” was going to focus alot on fine gold clean-up and we wanted to test out several items in this particular show. I usually prefer to not even open new items until I am ready to give em a go, so you…as the viewer can see how well we can bungle the process right before your very eyes, as I am sure alot of you can relate..you know how it goes, first you throw the instructions in the trash because you are smarter than the average bear and don’t really have time to read about something that looks so simple and then its downhill from there. This time I couldn’t resist so I opened the box, pulled it all out assembled it, hooked up the water and let’ er rip!!  I didn’t run any dirt thru it, I just wanted to watch it run water, I think Grampa Howie should come out with a desk top version (for gold prospecting corporate execs) because just watching it work was strangely soothing and mesmerizing at the same time, so after watching it work to my satisfaction, I packed it back up in the tub it came in and put it away for our trip coming up the following month.

When the time came to once again pull it out and actually work some classified dirt thru it, let me tell you…. this thing was sweet! I have alot of “Tools” and this water table.. in mere seconds shot to the top of my favorites list. Its easy to assemble, its easy to adjust, its easy to use, its easy to clean, and the bottom line is.. it works! After only a few scoops of 30 mesh classified concentrates I was starting to see gold sitting there, under a chrystal clear sheet of running water just waiting for me to brush it to one side and after running this water table for 20 minutes or so I was more than ready to put the other tools away, I think from now on Bucket & Boomer have found a new home for Grampa Howie’s invention. The small details in this thing..from the built in height adjustment nuts to the filters at the top are unbelievable, Its simple yet effective!!

You will see us working this machine quite often in the next few years and through our next few shows because its just simply that good! So for making something that even Boomer could put together without instructions, I have got to give Grampa Howie and the Catch It II Water Table the official Bucket & Boomer field tested stamp of approval.

I love this thing, and its yet another tool that makes gold prospecting fun!!

We decided to rest up on one of the days and try our luck at crack vac-ing once the sun went down so around 8pm we headed for a very nice looking ravine with multiple areas that were very near bedrock, the ravine was very steep in spots as well,  so it was a bit of a challange to hike all of our gear,camera equipment, lanterns and such to a spot that looked to good to pass up, after many attempts to light the lanterns in a bit of a wind… we settled for two out of three lanterns and a couple of headlamps for light to work with. Now this particular ravine had many, many shallow spots with virtually no overburden so in the spot we chose at the bottom of a six to eight foot drop-off there wasn’t much to do except take a whisk broom and sweep off the light brush and cactus needles from the surface before we were able to fire up the now infamous pile of junk we call a crack-vac that has failed us more times than its actually worked, yet here we are in the dead of night twenty miles from civilization once again wondering whether this thing is going to start or not and why the hell we haven’t gotten a new one yet….

As the motor sputtered and popped before coming to life as its done many times before we new we were on a time limit before this thing konked out, so we got right on it.. sucking up two pockets of dirt that had been trapped in the shallow holes. So with Scotty manning the video camera, Bucket working the nozzle and Boomer trying to keep the motor running, limited light and a fair breeze whisking up the ravine made for less than perfect conditions to work with but the pockets were small, roughly 1-2 sq ft in diameter and were easily sucked into the nozzle, about 1/2 way through the second pocket wedged in a crack was a real beauty!! Just sitting there waiting for three kooks with a crack-vac and a camera to come by and collect it…whodathunkit!!!

So there we were in amazement over our good fortune when the crack-vac decided its had enough and konked out on us, we were in a frenzy to get it started so we could work some other spots while our luck was good! but while we did manage to get it going for short periods of time, it finally died for good. So we packed up and hiked back to the buggy, all in all pretty happy about the experience, by now it was roughly 1am so we hopped in the buggy and were ready to embark on the hour long run back to the house we were staying at but there was one last problem….the buggy wouldn’t start!!!…..next time we’ll discuss what to do when your Sh!t don’t start, So to wrap this up lets just say that gold prospecting at night takes every bit as much preparation as it does during the day and then some!! We will at some point do it again but will come better prepared….next time.

I noticed as I weaved my way through the crowd that the venue was just the right size because there was never an empty booth, folks were 4-5 deep as they moved along down the rows, I took a methodical approach and started on the north side and went to each and every booth and wouldnt you know it at the very first booth I bought some leg levelers for my bluebowl and a micro-mini sluice. I saw Tom Massie getting set up for whatever he was going to do, I had the perfect opportunity to chat with him and take a photo but I had bigger fish to fry…I was on a mission…to find “The Legend” now I wasn’t too sure he’d be there but I was hoping and by the time I got just passed the middle of the show there he was….BOO-COO!!! now I was stoked! I chatted it up with ol Boo-Coo for probably 20 minutes and what a great guy he was, and friendly as ever.

So so far this GPAA show has been well worth the 10 schillings it cost me to get in and I still got a few rows to go so I make my way over to the back, where the second GPAA booth was at and I tracked down my buddy Dominic Ricci….I dont remember what he does at the GPAA….. he’s bigtime…but cool. We were talking for a minute or two then some dude cuts in and starts talking about getting hit by a car in Nome Alaska and barely surving etc,etc, then the crowds came rolling in and the booth got busy again, so I moved on to another popular booth where some cat named Grampa Howie or something was demonstrating this mini flow table, it was very cool but  I didnt buy one, for fear of having to carry it all day.. Instead I waited till I got home and ordered one from The Gold RushTrading Post. As usual Denise and Larry at www.GoldRushTradingPost.com took care of ol’ Bucket and now I cant wait to try this thing out in our next video. I also caught a bit of Kevin Hoagland’s  Minelab seminar, it was standing room only and he was tearing it up. So If anyone ever gets the opportunity to check out one of these GPAA shows, I can tell you first hand it was a fun time to be had by all.

Knowing that the geo-cacher’s rules do not allow for caches to be buried, we thought our boxes would be safe until the video was edited and on the market, well that wasn’t the case as there are so many caches out there, and so many geo-cachers out there that it wasn’t long before one of our Geo-Boxes was found and if you go to the “Groundspeak forums” under the title “A perplexing find” on Geocaching.com, you can see the reaction a geo-cacher had when he found one of our boxes, and as it turns out, we were correct in assuming it would be a big hit for those that find them, of-course being true to his roots and rules of geo-caching he put the box back….he was supposed to keep it….that’s Bucket & Boomer rules, and the reason we made the Geo-Box because at that time we still didn’t quite understand why you would hunt for something of no value.

After many many e mails with this geo cacher, trying to figure out the logic, which in turn will improve my skills for hiding our Geo-Boxes, I think my view on the hobby is much more clear. He told me that its not uncommon to get up at 1am to try and be the first to find a new cache and have two other geo cacher’s show up at the same time, so that tells me this sport is huge! Now being three weeks away from starting another full feature video, we have ten brand new, hand crafted, very nice Geo-Boxes ready to be put out there, and I would prefer that they not be found until the dog-gone video is released!! and in order to do that I needed the knowledge this guy has provided me. The guy I had the pleasure of consulting with is an attorney from Los Angeles so there is no real profile for a geo cacher, they could be Doctors, Lawyers, Plumbers or anything else, and I also learned that there is no limit to the distances they will travel to pursue a cache, and as he has told me over and over…. “its all in the hunt”,  the cache you find means very little, its all in the hunt!!!!

So Bucket & Boomers Prospecting Adventures now brings to you a new game which you will need both, prospecting skills and geo-caching skills all in one adventure….hey if your not having any luck with locating some gold nuggets, well….. switch gears and go find some Geo-Boxes, they are guaranteed to please and whats inside is all yours to keep!! Just make sure you drop us a line to let us know you found one, they are all handcrafted and each box has its own unique design on the lid and a numbered coin on the lid, let us know the coin number and design of the box you found so we can cross that one off our list and mark it as being found. A nice picture of you and the box would be greatly appreciated so we can add your goofy looking mug to our “Finders Hall of Fame”!!        So the new Geo-Box, geo-caching game gets the official Bucket & Boomer hand stamp of approval!!

“Of course it does….we invented the game.”

Brought to you courtesy of the twisted mind of……Bucket

JUST KIDDING!!

Sometimes as I begin to ramble I tend to look back on myself as an example, so work with me…as I am a recovering gold-a-holic, and I love to test out various types of gadgets designed to make gold recovery either faster..easier.. or funner, but one cannot forget where it all began, and thats with the very simple yet still effective gold pan.

Gold pans come in many different shapes, sizes, and colors, the round ones are the typical pan most people are familiar with, but all are designed to keep the heaviest material at the bottom. Back in the 1800′s the miners used round metal pans and more skill was needed to keep the gold in it until the Chinese miners invented the riffles, if you pound out riffles in your metal pan and get the angles and depth just right well… it sure is alot harder to lose your hard earned gold, and they (the Chinese gold prospectors) were some of the most efficient miners to hit the gold rush!! They went at it in a very methodical and well planned way, and left nothing of value in their path, when they were done working an area you better believe it was cleaned out.

Over the years my gold pans have served me well, as a hat..as a plate…(it holds alot of chunky soup, although the peas get stuck in the riffles…the potatoes are easily panned out)…and as a frisbee when bored, but after using alot of  gadgets and toys for finding gold, one usually ends up right back at the panning tub for a final cleanup, so don’t forget to always keep at-least a gold pan in your recreational vehicle just in case you come across a spot that just looks too good to NOT have gold in it, because its cheap and doesn’t take up much space behind your seat and its easy to use, and don’t forget there are plenty of articles and websites online that can teach you how to pan for gold, as well as video’s on “you-tube” under “gold panning” But its up to you to practice your gold panning, so get out there and pan for gold !! with a little practice you’ll be a gold panning pro in no time!

Brought to you courtesy of the twisted mind of……Bucket

Now let me roll back the clock a bit and start by saying that back in 94′ I had just purchased a brand new Baja Bayrunner center console fishing boat and being into fishing I would always look for some shows on that particular sport and there wasn’t much to be found.  Now, you can go to the outdoor network or one of the other outdoor related channels on TV and find fishing shows all day long, and I think that as a growing hobby, gold prospecting can get to the point where there are at least more than just one show on TV.

Take a look at Gold Rush Alaska on the Discovery Channel, that was their highest rated show ever!! It beat out Deadliest Catch and all the rest of their line up, which kind of reinforces what Boomer and I have been saying for years and that is.. that the market is out there, and there are more and more folks joining the ranks for their shot at finding gold. Its fun, its good exercise, its camping, its enjoying the great outdoors, and if your lucky…well then… its also profitable, but if not, then at least you always have fun.

Picture this….your driving your 4×4 down a trail, 35 miles from the nearest paved road, you locate a nice clearing off the trail with plenty of area’s to work your drywasher or metal detector, enough room to set up a couple of tents and have a nice fire so you pull over and in an hour or so, boom! your all set up and ready to spend the next two or three days having fun.

when the sun goes down you fire up the grill, throw on some big ol’ fat steaks with some whole sliced tater’s and some veg-all and your ready for a feast, after dinner you pull out the radio, pop on your I-pod and enjoy some music, (I have a cd by  “Crazycharlie” he’s got a song on the cd called “the story of gold” its gotta be one of the best ever written on gold) light the campfire, crack open some frosties and then threaten all your buddies with the fact that you will be the one who finds a 1 ounce nugget this weekend…and come up with a game plan for tomorrow..whilst spinning some yarns of the past. If you haven’t done this yet…you aren’t living!!

Now lets just say for the next two days you don’t find any gold, could you then call it a bad trip?? No way! don’t forget there’s still fun in the hunt! Next time will just have to be in a better spot that’s all, good thing is… you haven’t seen another person or vehicle go by the entire weekend, just the peaceful serenity of the desert interspersed with the mechanical yet beautiful chug-chug of a drywasher or the audio threshold of your metal detector, it does NOT… get any better than that! Now you might not roll the way we do, and you don’t have to, just to have fun, sometimes just being out there is fun enough.

So as the years go on and this hobby of gold prospecting grows, so will the information, new websites will pop up, older ones will get bigger and better, and maybe…just maybe, there will be a whole variety of gold prospecting shows on TV as well, but until then you’ll just have to pop in the latest Bucket & Boomer video and have some laughs, and gold prospecting fun with us!! We don’t mind having you along!!

Brought to you courtesy of the twisted mind of…Bucket

First, I needed to see if my beach detector was still working, so i pulled it out of its canvas tomb of the last 8 yrs and loaded the batteries in it, closed my eyes, and fired it up….ah yes music to my ears, I thought to myself as my Whites Spectrum XLT came to life with a very bird like, digital acknowledgment of power. As I examined my detector I noticed the cover over the liquid chrystal screen was coming off, this was very strange because it hasnt been touched, moved, or anything else for 8 yrs and now all of a sudden the screen is falling off, oh well if it actually still works then I will glue it back down later….for now its three pieces of scotch tape and we’re golden, the next problem is that the liquid chrystal screen is kind of …well, unreadable, in that it has horizontal blank lines going through the screen every 16th of an inch making it very hard to read any of my old programs and for those of you that are familiar with the White’s Spectrum XLT, you know that this was indeed the Cadillac of detectors back in…say 94. It was an amazing machine that you could program the way you want, it had a big beautiful liquid chrystal screen that told you everything you need to know about whats under your coil except the date on the coin!! It had pinpointing, it had a depth meter, and it would even tell you the denomination of the coin and be fairly accurate! and now my screen was…unreadable!!

Well too late to change plans I will work it out at the beach! 6am came quickly on Sunday…a little too quickly and I decided that 6am was foolish! 7am would be much more accommodating, well  there I was, ready to go and it was only 8am and still cool outside.      At the beach I had my scoop and my detector, normally I carry a small trash bag but I didn’t want any trouble with the city’s union workers so when I uncovered a piece of trash, I just left it there for the union workers to pick up at a more convenient time.

Now my screen was still not working perfectly but I figured if I used the detector for a few hours it might work itself out, it did show enough for me to set up on one of my old programs….the rest will have to be done “Jedi” style, strictly by feel, anyway off I went swinging my “Hothead” aftermarket coil and living the dream!! Three hours and roughly 7 cents later I figured that I had sufficiently sharpened my detecting skills…”Jedi” style….ofcourse, while also lending the city’s unions a helping hand by leaving dozens of pulltabs and tin foil wrappers exposed and ready for pickup, and now I was beat and ready to head for home, on the way home I was thinking what a great detector this has been over the years and how I would like to get it back into perfect working condition, and anyone who has ever owned this particular model of White’s, knows that this puppy has earned its stripes and will forever be one of my favorite all-time machines, and for that i would like to endow this magnificent machine with the Bucket & Boomer Stamp of Approval!!

Brought to you courtesy of the twisted mind of…Bucket