Gold vs. Nickle help I'm overwhelmed with Nickles.

[coondog]

Recently I had a chance to search a drained man-made swimming lake. I only had 6 hours to scan 3 acres. The bottom was a virtual bed of coins. Sometimes as many as 4 in one sweep. Had as many as 4 nickel s in one sweep. I had to egnor all coin hits and try to dig all other lower tones. I managed 4 gold rings and one silver.
I should add I'm using a ctx3030

My question is to you beach and gold experts is, if I passed on over 1500 nickles how many gold rings did I leave behind?

My gold hits where a 12.16, a 12.15, X12.19, and a 12.08.

I think I could hit this lake one more time before it gets refilled. But I can't possibly dig all the nickles. Any advice as to how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.

Oh one more question. Is there any other machine out there that could have possibly sorted these rings and nickles out as well as my ctx3030. I'm looking for a lighter back up for me and any quests that come with, but not willing to give up much except weight. I'm leaning towards an F75.

 

[steve herschbach]

There is no way to tell how many rings are in your lake that read like nickels without digging them. If it were me I would just notch out the nickels and dig the rest. If time allows then dig the nickels. It is all about how much time you have and the odds. usually I would be happy to fill my pockets with nickels but in your case they are sort of a trash target.

 

[OldBeechnut]

I would find the most productive area, say 10 by 10, dig all the nickels and see what kind of results you get. If the CTX has a depth meter...dig the deepest good numbers, where as with the Excalibur you would dig the faints, and I guess this would work well if the bottom is sandy since the gold should be deeper then the nickels..?



One thing on the backup, I can tell a nickel most of the time from a ring, nickels sound perfect up to a certain depth, And this is using a remote PP on the Excalibur and reverse hunting...Lots of information being able to combine the two modes with just a flick of the toggle and a good set of headphones. Out of over 100 rings I would say only a few have sound perfect and those are the shallow one's... But once out of the hole they do sound even better. And some may ask how I can remember the tones, I can't but I've been recording most of my hunts since 2008, so it is nice to set back and see what things really sound like...easy forgotten after being out all day and hundreds of targets.... getting old does not help on the remembering either...

 

[mudpuppy]

I would concur with OBN...find the most likely area in that pond where there was a diving board or slide or where there was a raft...especially with the limited time...then, I'd be going after the foil/scratchy chain signals like a banshee...if a guy had the time, start in the deepest part and as it fills, work your way into the shallows...but really, find the zone and get as much as you can as fast as you can. even if you just sort of scoop targets into a tub or plastic kids sled and drag it along with you and dont even try to see what you found until you got as many targets out of there that you can...drag that sled full of mud up on the bank and dump it all on a tarp if you have to, just keep sweeping and scooping and dumping up on the bank, get them all if you can! Wait until you get home and hose it all off on a screen or something... There has got to be some big chains in there that can equal the weight of several rings, the signal is tough though, typically a trash target signal. Not at all like a ring or nickel. That target heavy of an environment if you approach it right, you should be able to come out of there with 1000 targets in a few hours, that is, if you dont stop to examine every single one..or dink around listening to tones, just grab it all as fast as you can! This once in a lifetime time sensitive spot needs to be harvested, not hunted!
Mud

 

[coondog]

Thank so much guys I am going to apply all your ideas. First I will start by going to where I found the most which was an area wher the water is about chest deep normaly. I will dig any nickles signals in that area for first couple hours, just dump them in a bucket and keep moving. Later I can take bucket to water area and sleush it out. If any gold shows up I will keep doing it If not I Will block out nickles and rescann the whole productive area.

Unfortunately the diving board area still has a lot of water sitting there yet and probably still does like maybe 10 feet and it's dam cold!!!

The pool was dug in the 70s so I'm sure there is very little silver coinage. The good thing is there are very little amount s of Pull tabs or other garbage. I will pay attention also to scratchy sounds and jumpy or scratchy nickle tones.I'll post again next week if I get any more gold.

The photo is my booty from 1st hunt.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Gee, a "virtual bed of coins" ? Sheeesk I think most of us "wish we had your problem" right now. My heart bleeds for you!

I have been in beach conditions like that, here on the west coast, that a person can dig 100 coins per hour easy (essentially as fast as he cares to pinpoint, often-times multiple-coins per scoop with the sandscoop). Unfortunately, those days are few and far between, haha. But when it DOES happen, I too have mused about the possibility of digging only the low conductor signals. (and skipping "pesky coins"). I had never thought of also passing nickels as well, but I guess if they represented only a small percentage of potential gold rings, then sure, you could pass them as well as the high conductor coins.

There were studies done decades ago, when TID technology was first introduced (1980s), where this very subject was studied. It was for purposes of "ring enhancement" programs. Someone would take hundreds of random gold rings to scan (I guess they had a friend who owned a jewelry store), and make note of where the landed on the TID scale. Then they took randomly recurring turfed urban park junk (foil, tabs, etc...) and scanned them too. Then it was merely an exercise of putting all the results on a spread sheet, and doing numerical statistical odds of the best likely numbers to dig.

While your situation is a bit different than that, yet I'm reminded of it. Because I specifically recall that the # of sample tested gold rings that read *exactly* in the nickel range, was actually only a very small percentage of gold rings. Perhaps only 5% of those tested or whatever (I forget the exact ratios). A gold ring that fell right on nickel would be something akin to a lighter weight men's band, or a thicker women's ring, for example.

Those studies though from the 1980's "ring enhancment programs" were done before the advent of the 2-axis screens though. I think they were done back when it was only an ascending/descending numerical scale, not left-right/up-down, like we have today. So today, perhaps if you zoned in on exact "nickel" (assuming non-corroded and not terribly deep), and passed just those, you'd probably miss not too many gold rings. While it's true that you might miss a percentage, yet .... given the shear size of the acreage you have to cover, if you had to spend your time digging 300 nickels, then passing them gives you more time (time spent not digging them) to hone in on targets which have a higher percentage odds of being a gold ring.

If it were me, I'd probably just dig the nickels, but this is an interesting question and site indeed

 

[John(Tx)]

1500 nickles, you left some rings behind. If u don't have time limit to hunt, go back n hunt till u drop. Let us know how u do..HH

 

[SonnyFl]

n/t

 

[ken ward]

I forgot where you said this hole is located. Would you refresh my forgetful head please.... I will dig them nickels.... KEN