A
Anonymous
Guest
Howdy,
Now so far I have found gold nuggets with the Infinium (see http://www.akmining.com/mine/jour139.htm) and done well with jewelry (see http://www.akmining.com/mine/jour141.htm).
Since the Infinium has a dual tone id system it has some interesting potential as a coin detector. To test this and to simply get in more use with the machine I went out to a local playground yesterday. The loose pea-gravel around the playground equipment has thawed out, and I wanted easy digging material as I wanted to dig all items in this test.
The picture shows the results.
The group of coins on the right, plus two pieces of wire and a nail all came up lo-hi tone. Quarters, dimes, and copper pennies. Basically, if I only dug lo-hi tones I would have dug nothing but coins and a small amount of trash!
The results on the left are from the hi-lo "gold range" tones. This equates to the jewelry range on VLF detectors and as any jewelry hunter knows this is also the foil, pull tab, aluminum range. The Infinium also reveals it's love for wire in this range, in particular bobby pins and paper clips. I found quite a few broken zipper parts.
The stuff by the battery that looks like large wire is actually string and other items with small metal connectors. The bent shallow "V" shaped item is a plastic ink tube from a pen, and several of the smallest targets were pen tips. Also a few pencil eraser ends, a common school yard find.
There were also a couple very rusted nuts. Most large iron items normally read lo-hi but if they rust enough they sometimes come in as hi-lo, as these did.
This is also where you get the nickles and zinc pennies. And jewelry. I found an earring, a couple pieces of broken chains, a couple pins, and a pendant.
It looks to me that if you are in the right area and willing to forgo the nickels (and nobody cares about zinc pennies) then the Infinium might actually work very well as a coin detector. Just dig lo-hi tones only.
No surprise on the hi-lo tones. If you go for the jewelry range you are going to dig lots of junk. Not bad on a beach or in the pea-gravel, but it would wear you out in an average park setting.
In a nutshell the hi-lo tone equates to the zinc penny and lower range on a VLF detector, and the lo-hi tones equates to copper penny and higher. The wild-card is iron items which can id in either range depending on shape and amount of decomposition (rust).
I can't comment too much on the depths as the ground was still frozen below the pea-gravel and I had to abandon deep targets. Everything was less than 6" deep. However, I did have my Fisher CZ-5 and White's MXT along, and the Infinium easily detected a dime buried beyond the discrimination range of both detectors while correctly giving the lo-hi id. The only way the VLF machines could hit it was to go to all-metal mode. But I had the 14" coil on the Infinium so I guess that was cheating!
Needless to say I plan on trying this in a couple heavily worked "old coin" sites after the ground thaws to see what might turn up.
One thing I did find is that the Infinium has what is referred to as a "modulated audio" In other words, smaller or deeper targets sound fainter. I did find that I could reliably predict many of the nickels and could have dug less small trash as the nickels really bang out on the Infinium. It hits nickels harder than any other coin due to the machine being tuned for gold range targets. If I did not think jewelry finds were a possibility I think I could get many nickels and dig less trash by paying attention to the intensity of the audio. The wire items also seem to "move" as you walk around the target. The coins stay centered.
I hope this gives some insights into the Infinium dual-tone id system.
Steve Herschbach
Now so far I have found gold nuggets with the Infinium (see http://www.akmining.com/mine/jour139.htm) and done well with jewelry (see http://www.akmining.com/mine/jour141.htm).
Since the Infinium has a dual tone id system it has some interesting potential as a coin detector. To test this and to simply get in more use with the machine I went out to a local playground yesterday. The loose pea-gravel around the playground equipment has thawed out, and I wanted easy digging material as I wanted to dig all items in this test.
The picture shows the results.
The group of coins on the right, plus two pieces of wire and a nail all came up lo-hi tone. Quarters, dimes, and copper pennies. Basically, if I only dug lo-hi tones I would have dug nothing but coins and a small amount of trash!
The results on the left are from the hi-lo "gold range" tones. This equates to the jewelry range on VLF detectors and as any jewelry hunter knows this is also the foil, pull tab, aluminum range. The Infinium also reveals it's love for wire in this range, in particular bobby pins and paper clips. I found quite a few broken zipper parts.
The stuff by the battery that looks like large wire is actually string and other items with small metal connectors. The bent shallow "V" shaped item is a plastic ink tube from a pen, and several of the smallest targets were pen tips. Also a few pencil eraser ends, a common school yard find.
There were also a couple very rusted nuts. Most large iron items normally read lo-hi but if they rust enough they sometimes come in as hi-lo, as these did.
This is also where you get the nickles and zinc pennies. And jewelry. I found an earring, a couple pieces of broken chains, a couple pins, and a pendant.
It looks to me that if you are in the right area and willing to forgo the nickels (and nobody cares about zinc pennies) then the Infinium might actually work very well as a coin detector. Just dig lo-hi tones only.
No surprise on the hi-lo tones. If you go for the jewelry range you are going to dig lots of junk. Not bad on a beach or in the pea-gravel, but it would wear you out in an average park setting.
In a nutshell the hi-lo tone equates to the zinc penny and lower range on a VLF detector, and the lo-hi tones equates to copper penny and higher. The wild-card is iron items which can id in either range depending on shape and amount of decomposition (rust).
I can't comment too much on the depths as the ground was still frozen below the pea-gravel and I had to abandon deep targets. Everything was less than 6" deep. However, I did have my Fisher CZ-5 and White's MXT along, and the Infinium easily detected a dime buried beyond the discrimination range of both detectors while correctly giving the lo-hi id. The only way the VLF machines could hit it was to go to all-metal mode. But I had the 14" coil on the Infinium so I guess that was cheating!
Needless to say I plan on trying this in a couple heavily worked "old coin" sites after the ground thaws to see what might turn up.
One thing I did find is that the Infinium has what is referred to as a "modulated audio" In other words, smaller or deeper targets sound fainter. I did find that I could reliably predict many of the nickels and could have dug less small trash as the nickels really bang out on the Infinium. It hits nickels harder than any other coin due to the machine being tuned for gold range targets. If I did not think jewelry finds were a possibility I think I could get many nickels and dig less trash by paying attention to the intensity of the audio. The wire items also seem to "move" as you walk around the target. The coins stay centered.
I hope this gives some insights into the Infinium dual-tone id system.
Steve Herschbach