6hr clad hunt and personal best with the Cortes

[thump7]

First off, this post isn't to put down or belittle anyone. It is about Canadian clad and how ridiculously hard it is to identify and cherrypick.

My main focus in metal detecting for the last few years has been to cherrypick clad. I started cherry picking clad with the Vaquero and did pretty good with it. Until I found the fisher 1265x, which is what I have used until now.
I bought the Cortes early this spring with the intentions of trying to focus on jewelry. I put about 40-50hrs on it so far, maybe 10hrs looking for jewelry and haven't found any gold yet.
So, anyways, this afternoon I decided to put the clean sweep coil on it and give the local football field a try. Now, I've already pulled $80 off this field with the 1265x and so I figured it would be a meagre try at best to find any clad.
As I was going along, I would get these erratic readings, #'s all over the place, target I'd bouncing everywhere. Finally I decided to dig one, lo and behold a loony popped out. I kept on digging them and almost everyone ended up being a coin. So, I gave up looking for jewelry and cherry picked every coin I came across. I dug at least one or 2 handfuls of junk, usually throw it away as soon as I can.

The Cortes made it easy, If I seen the target Id start to smear and bounce all over, I knew that the chances of it being clad were pretty good. If I seen smearing together with a 95, chances were pretty good it was gonna be a looney or tooney.

Steel core clad, the shiny one is 2010.
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This is how the 2010 quarter reads on the Cortes. (Junk) The # will go from 0 and bounce back and forth into high #'s.
On normal targets there will be a full bar (maybe 2 half bars side by side) in the target Id range, the target # will agree with it and stay steady
[attachment 315645 image.jpg]

Total of $62.48 a personal best!
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[JimGilmore]

Do canadian banks have issues accepting the rusty looking coins ??
Nice haul...

 

[thump7]

Do canadian banks have issues accepting the rusty looking coins ??
Nice haul...

I used to roll up and cash in some pretty ugly looking clad, just scrapped the rust blobs of the worst ones, they never said anything but it got kind of embarrassing after a while.
Now I put all the clad in a 5 gallon bucket (1/4 full or less) half full of water. Then keep jabbing in there with the back of a hockey stick. This cleans it up pretty good. Whatever rust is left on I might try scrape off it is real bad when I go to roll it up.

 

[mudpuppy]

I must commend your great haul there! You are right, I dont know how anybody can hunt Canadian clad with any hope of success..its 5X as hard to hit as the US clad...

We get a bit over here in Michigan, and I find a few, but dang, it's not a signal most would lock on to or go after...Good on you for your huge day and getting this figured out! A guy can do alright with those kind of numbers!
Mud

 

[Mega]

A nice haul,we also have the same iron core problem over in the UK,our 1 and 2 pound coins are also the same as yours and of course the detector is going to reject it as basically iron.Although this is not a massive problem as such on farm land as most of the coinage is pre-decimal but for the folks who beach hunt for jewellery and also the above mentioned beer tokens which would be modern drops that is a big problem.

These modern iron core coins on the beach also corrode away very quickly and to see the state of them after a few years when compaired to say a silver hammered coin that has been in the ground for say 1000 years is amazing,salt water and modern coins do not mix very well.

 

[Sven]

I throw all my clad in a rock tumbler for an hour, then it looks pretty clean so the Coinstar coin machines accept them.
Hard to find a metered machine that will ID CA clad without a lot of bouncing or rejecting as iron. There are a number of them that work
extremely well, once you know the numerical bounce reads on the screen. Newest clad, new compostition is nasty.
Non metered Tesoros are Canadians best friends as long as you don't disc out the dime. Will get them on edge and next to nails.

Great haul of coins, bet everyone else who hunted that field didn't use a Tesoro.

Now for kicks go back in with my Mirage, you might be surprised at what you missed.

 

[thump7]

I dont know how anybody can hunt Canadian clad with any hope of success..its 5X as hard to hit as the US clad...

It is kind of a blessing at the same time, if it was a good signal it would probly have been already dug by someone else. It also helps that there isn't very much competition where I live.

I throw all my clad in a rock tumbler for an hour, then it looks pretty clean so the Coinstar coin machines accept them.
Hard to find a metered machine that will ID CA clad without a lot of bouncing or rejecting as iron. There are a number of them that work
extremely well, once you know the numerical bounce reads on the screen. Newest clad, new compostition is nasty.
Non metered Tesoros are Canadians best friends as long as you don't disc out the dime. Will get them on edge and next to nails.

Great haul of coins, bet everyone else who hunted that field didn't use a Tesoro.

Now for kicks go back in with my Mirage, you might be surprised at what you missed.

Non metered machines work good, but not with the clean sweep coil. The clean sweep, being a DD doesn't discriminate the junk iron and still accept the coins very well,

I find myself in a unique situation, unemployed for the next 2 months and I don't know how I'm gonna get by. I know there is a lot of clad out there to be found, so that is the reason for trying to just cherrypicking it and leaving all the canslaw, pennies and other crapola in the ground.
Sometime when I have a job and extra time I'll take the mirage in there and see what pops up!

 

[Sven]

What will pop up are all the coins on edge, they excite the Mirage into giving a louder report. Especially the Loons and Toons.
Plus any of the gold and silver that every other machine missed.
Just go back in there for 3 hours and see what pops up. Being unemployed finding gold means more than finding clad............
You may just find you'll have a different mindset regarding using my PI after going back in with it. The one I send you is a killer
for that purpose.

Having no competition is a bonus.

PS, I don't offer my PI to any one local, don't need the competition. Competition around here is pretty fierce if you have a VLF.
I love going back in after they hunt a place............................surprise surprise.

have fun

 

[kaolinwasher]

welcome to the jungle . It gets worse every year , think if the masking that is going on because of those steel slugs in the ground , ohh my word

 

[thump7]

What will pop up are all the coins on edge, they excite the Mirage into giving a louder report. Especially the Loons and Toons.
Plus any of the gold and silver that every other machine missed.
Just go back in there for 3 hours and see what pops up. Being unemployed finding gold means more than finding clad............
You may just find you'll have a different mindset regarding using my PI after going back in with it. The one I send you is a killer
for that purpose.

Having no competition is a bonus.

PS, I don't offer my PI to any one local, don't need the competition. Competition around here is pretty fierce if you have a VLF.
I love going back in after they hunt a place............................surprise surprise.

have fun

I'll take it out there tomorrow for the afternoon. Some spots like behind the bleachers were just so trashy I had to leave some areas alone, I know the mirage excels in spots like this.

 

[upnorth]

Excellent clad digs indeed. As much as I appreciate and respect Tesoro machines, most of them lack that extra information given by a visual display. And watching clad bouncing and spiking high on some coins reveals why displays/numbers help. Try water for jewelry. I have been in the water only four times this year and found three rings and a gold chain in those few visits.

 

[thump7]

Excellent clad digs indeed. As much as I appreciate and respect Tesoro machines, most of them lack that extra information given by a visual display. And watching clad bouncing and spiking high on some coins reveals why displays/numbers help. Try water for jewelry. I have been in the water only four times this year and found three rings and a gold chain in those few visits.

Good to hear from you!
I bought a sand scoop earlier this year, only had it out once so far.
The water is where the gold is from what I hear, I plan on getting out there a lot more this year if it works out.
Nice score on the chain btw, I've never dug one without a pendant attached, let alone it being gold.
Take care and best of luck.

 

[nick hunter]

I throw all my clad in a rock tumbler for an hour, then it looks pretty clean so the Coinstar coin machines accept them.
Hard to find a metered machine that will ID CA clad without a lot of bouncing or rejecting as iron. There are a number of them that work
extremely well, once you know the numerical bounce reads on the screen. Newest clad, new compostition is nasty.
Non metered Tesoros are Canadians best friends as long as you don't disc out the dime. Will get them on edge and next to nails.

Great haul of coins, bet everyone else who hunted that field didn't use a Tesoro.

Now for kicks go back in with my Mirage, you might be surprised at what you missed.

Well, assuming you are hunting for clad coins with steel cores or pure nickel alloys, there is one way to set them to have a stable (high) ID on metered machines, and that is to ground balance the unit to salt.

In doing so, the ferrous response will be eliminated, leaving the other metals present in the alloy to respond as they should.

I discovered it one day when, coming back from wet salt sand at the beach, I forgot to re-ground balance for dry sand, that was with a spectrum XLT, but should work fine with any metered unit that has manual GB.

HH

Nick