After all the posts by those whom I consider to be very accomplished and expert detector operators, I had to try the all-metal settings today.
For my site, I picked an old (for this area) fairgrounds that has beautiful grass and nice black dirt all the way down. Its a large area, so though its been pounded by many over the years, the sheer size of it tells me there's some deep goodies left.
I used the stock 10" coil with the following settings...
Iron mask at -32 (all metal), display in smart mode, primarily smartfind, not digital.
Sensitivity 17-18, manual (this was the highest I could set it because of ground conditions...don't think its too mineralized, but TRASH or whatever caused some instability.
Gain at 7 (see above)
Deep mode on
Ferrous response mode
Threshold Tone at 4
target pitch variation level set at 9 - (more on this later)
Threshold-just audible
Volume-10
I think that's about it for settings....
The first thing I noticed after doing the noise channel select, and taking my first scan, was the sound of a bass sax playing flight of the bumblebee! This area is LOADED with iron. I suspect they are deep, old wire fence fragments and nails from stock pens long gone...(since the 1860's). I proved this later by digging a few (8+ inches down). It was a real wake up call, literally! Had I been in discriminate, there would have been very few sweeps where I could have heard the threshold or anything else due to nulling. It took a few hours for me to train my ears to regard the iron sound as just another 'background noise' of no consequence, and start listening for any high pitched sounds in between or next to them. I think I'll call this "Detector Zen" from now on, as it takes a lot of concentration....
At first it seemed like the high pitch good signals were frequent too, but I later realized that many were long spike type nails. The cursor didn't want to to lock on and moved from left upper to right upper corners, back and forth. A quick check on digital showed 31-31 (I'm not used to Ferrous sounds yet). I soon learned to pass these up, as no amount of wiggling or angle manipulation would find a stable reading (a few dug targets confirmed the deep nail suspicion).
I went slow due to the multitude of target responses, and did get the occasional shallow clad. (I passed up shallow cents today to get more time to find the deep ones...only dug quarter signals).
I finally got the signal I was looking for. It was deep, high pitched and I really had to work to segregate it from surrounding trash. I pinpointed and dug a deep plug (because I'm optimistic!). A second scoop of nice black soil was taken out and I was now down about 8-9 inches. I use a Uniprobe pinpointer that has excellent depth and put this toward the bottom of the hole. This time I got the squeal in the center of the hole instead of the side (usually a nail). Another table spoon of soil was removed and I saw the small green disk. Pretty heavily caked it was, but after brushing off some of the crust I could see the date 1885 on the Indian head cent. Always look in the hole after you find one...I always do. Got another squeal with the probe, and this time, another half inch down was...a three inch long rusty nail!
After 4 hours of hunting, like this, I called it a day and drove back the 60 miles home.
My impressions of all metal hunting are as follows:
1. Its going to take more practice and discipline to concentrate on ignoring iron and listening for those in-between signals.
2. This method of hunting IS effective in trashy areas! No way would I have found that I.H. cent with any other machine I know of, or in a discrimination mode. It COULD have been a seated dime!
3. Putting the target pitch level at 9 does a better job at separating the iron from good sounds, but that high level pitch is irritating to me, and it sounds much fainter to my old ears than level 8. 8 is not as high a pitch, but quite a bit louder to me. (will the pros tell me 8 will work OK too?)
4. As stated by some experts here, the stock 10" coil may be too hot for this method in very heavy trash. I've ordered both the 12" and 4 x 7.5" Excelerator coils, and I think they will be more stable, with greater depth at higher sensitivity levels. Anyway, I HOPE so, as I don't have a lot of money to experiment by acquiring all kinds of coils. I don't think the 8" stock coil would have found this deep target either, but I haven't used it much.
5. With practice, and a different coil, I think I could be very optimistic about visiting old sites again, and getting the deep ones. Fortunately, not all have this level of iron trash, but on the other hand, the trash that's there is probably what will allow me to find what has been left behind by others, so....good trade!
Thanks to all who've shared their experience on all metal hunting here. I was hesitant to try it but its something that CAN be mastered and is going to be a very productive way to hunt from now on...
Knipper
For my site, I picked an old (for this area) fairgrounds that has beautiful grass and nice black dirt all the way down. Its a large area, so though its been pounded by many over the years, the sheer size of it tells me there's some deep goodies left.
I used the stock 10" coil with the following settings...
Iron mask at -32 (all metal), display in smart mode, primarily smartfind, not digital.
Sensitivity 17-18, manual (this was the highest I could set it because of ground conditions...don't think its too mineralized, but TRASH or whatever caused some instability.
Gain at 7 (see above)
Deep mode on
Ferrous response mode
Threshold Tone at 4
target pitch variation level set at 9 - (more on this later)
Threshold-just audible
Volume-10
I think that's about it for settings....
The first thing I noticed after doing the noise channel select, and taking my first scan, was the sound of a bass sax playing flight of the bumblebee! This area is LOADED with iron. I suspect they are deep, old wire fence fragments and nails from stock pens long gone...(since the 1860's). I proved this later by digging a few (8+ inches down). It was a real wake up call, literally! Had I been in discriminate, there would have been very few sweeps where I could have heard the threshold or anything else due to nulling. It took a few hours for me to train my ears to regard the iron sound as just another 'background noise' of no consequence, and start listening for any high pitched sounds in between or next to them. I think I'll call this "Detector Zen" from now on, as it takes a lot of concentration....
At first it seemed like the high pitch good signals were frequent too, but I later realized that many were long spike type nails. The cursor didn't want to to lock on and moved from left upper to right upper corners, back and forth. A quick check on digital showed 31-31 (I'm not used to Ferrous sounds yet). I soon learned to pass these up, as no amount of wiggling or angle manipulation would find a stable reading (a few dug targets confirmed the deep nail suspicion).
I went slow due to the multitude of target responses, and did get the occasional shallow clad. (I passed up shallow cents today to get more time to find the deep ones...only dug quarter signals).
I finally got the signal I was looking for. It was deep, high pitched and I really had to work to segregate it from surrounding trash. I pinpointed and dug a deep plug (because I'm optimistic!). A second scoop of nice black soil was taken out and I was now down about 8-9 inches. I use a Uniprobe pinpointer that has excellent depth and put this toward the bottom of the hole. This time I got the squeal in the center of the hole instead of the side (usually a nail). Another table spoon of soil was removed and I saw the small green disk. Pretty heavily caked it was, but after brushing off some of the crust I could see the date 1885 on the Indian head cent. Always look in the hole after you find one...I always do. Got another squeal with the probe, and this time, another half inch down was...a three inch long rusty nail!
After 4 hours of hunting, like this, I called it a day and drove back the 60 miles home.
My impressions of all metal hunting are as follows:
1. Its going to take more practice and discipline to concentrate on ignoring iron and listening for those in-between signals.
2. This method of hunting IS effective in trashy areas! No way would I have found that I.H. cent with any other machine I know of, or in a discrimination mode. It COULD have been a seated dime!
3. Putting the target pitch level at 9 does a better job at separating the iron from good sounds, but that high level pitch is irritating to me, and it sounds much fainter to my old ears than level 8. 8 is not as high a pitch, but quite a bit louder to me. (will the pros tell me 8 will work OK too?)
4. As stated by some experts here, the stock 10" coil may be too hot for this method in very heavy trash. I've ordered both the 12" and 4 x 7.5" Excelerator coils, and I think they will be more stable, with greater depth at higher sensitivity levels. Anyway, I HOPE so, as I don't have a lot of money to experiment by acquiring all kinds of coils. I don't think the 8" stock coil would have found this deep target either, but I haven't used it much.
5. With practice, and a different coil, I think I could be very optimistic about visiting old sites again, and getting the deep ones. Fortunately, not all have this level of iron trash, but on the other hand, the trash that's there is probably what will allow me to find what has been left behind by others, so....good trade!
Thanks to all who've shared their experience on all metal hunting here. I was hesitant to try it but its something that CAN be mastered and is going to be a very productive way to hunt from now on...
Knipper
