Getting killed by bottle caps

[beez0404]

I got out today to an older home. It would seem there was a lot of drinking going on there over a long period of time. The yard was FULL of bottle caps. I was digging one after another afraid I was going to miss a good target as all the bottle caps gave excellent signals. When I hit 25 with not a single good target I lost my patience and came home.

Now I've been reading the post of the forum about this problem. I want to ask if I am understanding correctly. I detect in 8khz as a rule with a program I set up. Do I make a duplicate of this program and set it at 4khz and then switch from the 8khz program to the 4khz program and if the VDI goes higher it's a bottle cap and if it goes lower it's a good target? Did I understand this correctly? Only had the Deus 2 weeks now and like it but find myself struggling with certain aspects of the machine. Your advice is appreciated.

Jay

 

[samandnoah]

Jay, you got it exactly right. But 2 caveats. First. a lower reading in 4 kHz means it's not a bottle cap, but I can't promise you a "good" target! Second, if the area is that littered with bottlecaps, you may want to consider cleaning them out. Bottlecaps, especially closer to the surface, mast a HUGE volume of dirt, and as good/fast as the Deus is, you still may not unmask good targets with that many bottlecaps around. But knowing they're bottlecaps makes it a touch less frustrating to dig them out -- at least for me! I hunt really trashy parks, and I can tell you that focusing on a specific area and getting rid of those bottlecaps can help you find some nice keepers.

Good luck!
Rich

 

[beez0404]

Hi Rich,

Thanks so much for your reply. Like a dummy I completely forgot to grab a newer bottle cap and a rusty bottle cap today to plant in my test garden that I'm getting ready to build. My home is older so there is a LOT of "stuff" I have to remove from the ground where the test garden is going to be located. I hope once I get that built I can start to really learn the Deus and become a proficient hunter with it.

Jay

 

[Portagee Kawika]

How deep were they? Not only is this potentially a good piece of information about the site's history, but if I hit obvious junk signals that are shallow enough to "pop," I pop them even though I know it's junk. It's good for the Earth and, more importantly, as Rich mentioned it could be hiding something that I want.

 

[beez0404]

They varied in depth from an inch to 3 or 4" deep. The deeper ones were rusted some but still gave strong clear signals.

 

[Ism]

While it's not a bottle cap, I had a zinc penny masking a 9" deep merc dime last fall.
The zinc was just under the surface a few inches away from the merc.
Normally I ignore telltale zincs (those that detect as corroded) but I was in an older area and I wasn't digging many targets.

Many times rusted bottlecaps have a very nice signal at the proper ID for dimes/quarters. I have used the pull back method and raised the coil method.
Both will work in a clean area but a trashy area can be deceiving if you have many targets under the coil. Using the drop frequency method works well virtually every circumstance. I have found silver dimes next to nails that behave like a bottlecap.
I recommend you dig every decent sounding target for a while so you can learn the Deus and how it responds to various targets and conditions. (I found more goodies when I did that but spent a lot of time on my knees).
As you dig targets you will notice that occasionally you will get TID blending. If a lower ID target is next to or on top of high ID target, many times they will blend to create an ID somewhere in the middle.
A good example is a dime directly on top of a nickel or a nickel on top of a quarter. I've had a small piece of foil around 5 inches sound like a deep coin and ID as one. Fortunately that doesn't happen very often with V3.x.

That may be common to ID detectors but I've only owned a couple (short lived) before the Deus and never noticed that effect as I do with the Deus.

 

[samandnoah]

Great post, lsm. Spot on with my experiences with the Deus, and great advice about digging more rather than less, at least early on. In terms of TID (or VDI) blending, I've seen it as well with deeper nickels. And recently one target seemed "too big" to be legit, and the numbers were odd But the 4 kHz check implied it wasn't bottlecaps. Turned out I found a very large pocket spill with 7 quarters, 5 dimes, and 2 pennies, and all but 1 of the coins clearly fit within the area of the 11" coil (and all were within 1/2" of topsoil -- so it was an audio overload situation). All clad, but I was happy to take that change home.
Rich

 

[Big Boys Hobbies]

Make exact the program settings in another saved program with 4 KHZ as the frequency and you can hear the difference. Hitting the + or - button from the main screen will switch programs with 1 press.

 

[beepsilver]

I'm equally frustrated with bottlecaps. I hunt around all types of bottlecaps, aka crown caps: new and shallow and old and deep. So one thing I do (not sure if it's recommended or not since I have only about 30 hours with the Deus under my belt) is to create that adjacent program in 4K like others recommend, but also set your silencer to 4 in that program. If the target becomes very choppy or no longer produces anything but chirps, chances are you have a bottlecap. If you're still getting a good tone with silencer at 4, then there's likely something other than a bottlecap under your coil. The folks who've been using the Deus longer may shoot holes in this, but it seems to be working. I don't have a lot of luck with the wiggleback method (can't hear the iron sound when nosing around the edges. And the xy screen can trick you if the bottlecap is laying flat and isn't bent out of shape. I haven't gotten in the habit of checking TDI numbers changing between freqs, but I'll try that one out too.

 

[CZconnoisseur]

You can make an adjacent program in 4 kHz that will almost completely wipe out bottlecaps, but not all of them. Use 4 kHz, Reactivity = 2 or 3, Silencer = 2, and Notch 91-99. A clean silver half dollar will ID at "89-90" so any smaller silver coins will hit above "75"...If the target is indeed a bottlecap it will either be notched out (many I've come across fall into "92-94"), but if it's a coin the VDI will drop significantly. Full tone audio will give an andible decrease in audio tone when switching to 4 kHz. Full tones is not necessary, but for me I like to hear the difference between freq changes.

Another method is to momentarily sweep the coil FASTER over the suspect target. Many times a bottlecap will get silenced this way, while a coin just becomes more "chopped" when you speed up the sweep speed. This takes less time than pressing those silly buttons on the control box, and after a few tries your ear will be able to tell the difference!

 

[beepsilver]

Thanks CZ, that's great advice...I'll add it to the bottlecap "maneuver!"

 

[Leo234]

Ok, here is another idea. It takes a little more effort but it works. How many times have you detected a rusty bottle cap that gave you a good signal. You carefully cut a 3/4 plug and gently lift the plug only to reveal a rusty bottle cap. Arghh!! Without removing the rusted cap you replace the plug and re-sweep just for curiosity sake and low and behold you no longer get that clean signal. In most instances, the signal is now gone or now sounds broken like a rusted bottle cap should sound. What you did is disturb the matrix or "halo" surrounding the rusted bottle cap when you cut the plug. So, what you can do is take a screw driver and stick it in the ground near the target center and disturb the soil a little and then re-check the target. Play around with this and see what happens, I think you will be surprised. Good Luck!