dense red clay machine?

[bailey1]

I have a Fisher cz6a that I have had calibrated and certified by Tom Dankowski and converted to cz3d specs as well. The detector was certified to 11.2" in Toms Florida soil. I have been unable to get more than about 5" on coins in my soil which is dense red clay. So my question is, if any of you guys are detecting in red clay soil, are you getting better depth with your detector and what are you using?

 

[REVIER]

I live in Birmingham Ala and we have some areas with nicer black dirt but most of it is that thick red clay.
On top of that and especially here in the city we have a huge amount of iron infused into the soil everywhere and iron slag mixed into most of the soil used as landfill as the city was building up from the 1800's.
This whole area, most of the state as a matter of fact, is notorious for pretty much having a curtain at about the 5" level which is usually about the limit where most of the older targets are recovered from.
It is not really that we can't get deeper but more like the signals that come from depths past 5" are so masked, so skewed and so screwed up and crazy confusing that most just pass everything by from there including the good ones.
I also had experience hunting in totally different and almost perfect soil in Kansas so I know all my detectors can easily go twice as far as they do here with good ID's in that great dirt.
I always suspected there was a huge amount of great targets at the 6"+ area here and if I was ever able to crack that code and figure out and actually ID the signals from those deeper areas with consistency I would be rewarded and for the most part I have done just that.
It took a lot of work, trial and effort and experimentation and learning a whole new language and behavior pattern but I have a bunch of older dimes, wheats, IH's, nickels and even some silver jewelry recovered from the 6-8" depth level...gold from a shallower slot but it was still masked pretty good.
These are from mostly public parks that have been scoured and picked over for decades.
I have done this using an F70 and three different coils and have figured out ways to do it in both disc and all metal.
I bet your CZ's can do it too, you just gotta learn some new out of the box thinking to do it.
I have posted my methods, settings and theories along with my better finds from this crazy soil throughout this forum starting back to last July when I moved back to this area.
Do a search in the F series forum only all dates under my name using the terms F70, settings, soil and they will all pop up.

 

[bailey1]

Thanks for your response. Here in upstate S.C. we have red clay from the surface in alot of areas. Some areas, especially low lying, have several inches of top soil. I don't know about the iron content and I am not aware of iron slag used as fill in this area. The cz balances easily and remains stable at higher sensitivity settings, which I thought was attributable to low mineralization. I have had several different detectors over the years and they each have areas where they excell. However, they all have struggled to punch through the clay. I will say, I have dug alot of very old artifacts (minnie balls, flat buttons,etc.) from shallow depths in this stuff. I will read your posts and keep pounding with my cz. Just thought there might be a good mate to the cz that can see into this clay a little better. Thanks again REVIER.

 

[REVIER]

I hunted here for my first 1.5 years in the biz and have friends that have never hunted anywhere else.
Then I moved to Kansas and hunted for 3 years in soil that can only be described as heaven compared to this stuff.
Low mineralized black and beautiful, what a difference in signals, stability, depth and everything else, I bragged to my friends here and invited them out constantly to see how the other half live.
Then we had to move back and I knew what I was in for...depression set in.
It would have been better that I didn't know what I knew and experienced if it was all going to be taken away.
I seriously considered getting a TDI or other PI unit because I thought that would be the only way to combat these horrible conditions.
Then I got here and started to experiment and slowly made progress over the last few months in making headway in depth and ID's at depth.
If you would have told me last June I would have gotten this far and have been his successful I would have called you crazy.
I have to credit my F70 and all its settings for my success...I don't have a clue what I could have learned to do with other brands with screens but I don't need to know
I do have a Vaq and a Compadre but I don't pull them out much because I am on a roll with my Fisher but some of the things I learned with that does transfer over to my Tesoros so that is a bonus.
Never used a CZ but I hear good things, try a few new things and see what happens.

 

[supertraq]

Here in n.w Florida we have dense red clay anywhere from the surface on the crown of a hill to as much a 2' down.
Anything that hit the clay stops,nothing makes it into the clay.
So if the clay runs at a shallow depth I would think low sensitivity and experimenting with ground balance settings.
CZ's handle bad ground pretty good.

 

[Dighistory]

Briefly hunted recently in Piedmont S.C. Soil conditions were not to different from here in Charlotte NC. My Minelab Explorer II was amazing at pulling coins 8-10+ routinely in red clay. That said...I have changed to the CTX-3030 and am very much still in the learning mode 6-8 consistently so I too am trying to break the red clay code. I'll be in the Greenville SC area on business about once a month for the forseeable future, will let you know if I figure anything out. Good Luck

 

[rbholt80]

I replaced my cz6a groundbal. Pot with a 10 turn precision pot. And it helped me bust down into greater depth in the east Texas red sand and clay. That one mod to the cz6a changed the world for that detector.