Here's a Q for the Ring masters....Have you had a gold ring in the zinc range?

[Darkflight]

I'm thinking of making a small adjustment to the coin check button on my Troy X2. This normally blanks out anything below a dime but it can be adjusted. Since I installed my larger coil I've been having a harder time telling when I've got a zincon. With the stock coil they would crackle just a hair-but enough to gain my trust in what it was telling me after digging many zincons.

I don't want to accept the zincs just hear them break up better.

In the X2 guide he mentions that he never had a gold ring make a peep with the coin check. I have found this to be true on every ring I've found or tested. I was lucky enough to find a fairly thick one too. Even with 2 of my fattest rings together I'm still under the zinc range.

I know I have minimal chance of finding a monster gold ring or piece of bling. But I'd love to leave the zincs without risking that one in a gazillion chance.

So-Have you ever had a ring that rang in the high zinc range?.

Thanks if Y'all can help.
Carl.

 

[jim tn]

n/t

 

[Monte]

Both were 24 K, both Chinese made and nicely designed, and both locked in on a 1

 

[JB(MS)]

I've found 7 or 8 that were in the zinc range but they were all large rings. One was a huge 10 kt nugget ring, one was a custom made 18 kt ring that's the largest ring I've seen and the others were big high school boys class rings that were returned to the owners. I found the 18 kt ring twice. The owner lost it in the mid 1990's and again in June of this year, both times in his yard..

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Yes there's some big enough men's rings, that could conceivably read up into the zinc range. Particularly if their 10k. But even 14k, if you've got a big enough one (like perhaps the big honkin men's college rings, or a superbowl ring, etc...) can read up at zinc area.

But consider this: Decades ago, when TID first came out, on the first machines (1982 and '83-ish), some enterprising fellows sat down to make "ring enhancement programs". They sampled hundreds upon hundreds of random gold rings (like, perhaps they had a friend who owned a big jewelry store, eh? haha). They took records of how every single one readed, and fed it into computer charts, to develope ratios, odds, etc.... Although that was done for a different purpose than what you're asking, it is still none-the-less interesting, to note that the gold rings that read that high, up to zinc range, probably represented an ttteeennnny portion of the rings in average usage/circulation. So for example, if you tested 500 average "man on the street" passerbys, out of those 500, you *might* find 1 or 2 that read that high (I'm just making up this ratio, but you see the point).

So while there's no doubt people on md'ing forums, who will hold up a giant gold ring, and say "it read right at zinc, therefore we should all never pass up zinc", you have to realize, that you will find 5000 zincs, in the average blighted urban junky park, before you will ever find a gold ring of that size, going strictly by numerical odds. And, of course, location plays into this too. On a beach, after erosion pulls out all the lightweight zincs, then perhaps a remaining signal in the zinc range, will be much more ... uh ... "interesting".

But as a function of odds, for the average junky park, ....... it's going to be so rare, that you might as well just dig foil too, because afterall, someone can hold up a heck of a lot more gold rings that read down in foil and tab range too.

 

[Darkflight]

I do have a ground balance modification on my X2 & silver for when I swap coils around. According to Troy in his how to on the X2-he had never had a ring chime in when using the coin check button. I guess he didn't find any high carat honkers,But the odds are super slim. It does a great job rejecting items in the high zinc range that make a squawk-chirp but not a solid signal. If it beeps solid I dig-hoping for a coin after sizing of course. The opposite is true & even more exciting. if it goes silent & size it & dig. Potential gold but more likely a tab nickel or wadded foil.

I went out today in a new to me soccer field.Using the stock coil & dug a few zincs just to be sure-so to speak-then left the rest behind. Slim pickins today no jewelry & few coins. But on my machine I can usually tell a zinc as the sound is "smeared" when doing a fast pass. Its because the dang things are eroding & spreading minerals around I'm guessin. But the small-loud targets in that range I still dig. I count on a big ring also being really distinct & loud so hopefully I'm not gonna miss a honker.

I do hunt in the foil range. I found 1 small wedding band & a few stud earings in that range so it pays for me. I use the "Tesoro shake". I describe it in the Tesoro forum thread about the "language" of Tesoro's. I find thin foil will blank out or break up using that technique. But wadded foil will fool me every time.

I'm land locked & rarely get to the saltwater beaches. But I'm not complaining as I've done pretty well considering its my 1st year. But I've also run the pickins slim locally so hopefully some research in the rainy season will open some new turf.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions on the honker gold rings-

Cheers!
Carl.

 

[Hombre]

Some of my neatest finds have came to light by digging the zinc penny range signals, sure, you find a lot of twist off aluminun screw caps and crappy zinc pennies. Then there are the indian head pennies, watch fobs, millitary buttons, large mens class rings, old brass keys, etc. that come in at zinc penny. JMTC's worth.

 

[Larry (IL)]

I have only found one large mens gold ring in that range in 30 years, but Hombre hit the nail on the head but didn't mention the possibility of a gold coin in that range too. I'm sure there are other goodies to be found as well, one example is a zinc signal I dug and I found a large junk skull and bones ring ......... BUT......through the ring was a nice gold chain.

 

[jim tn]

Right, Larry...and then there the neat foreign coins read like a zinc. HH jim tn

 

[Hombre]

I have only found one large mens gold ring in that range in 30 years, but Hombre hit the nail on the head but didn't mention the possibility of a gold coin in that range too. I'm sure there are other goodies to be found as well, one example is a zinc signal I dug and I found a large junk skull and bones ring ......... BUT......through the ring was a nice gold chain.

Hi Larry

I never mentioned a gold coin because I've never found one, but the neat targets I mentioned that came in at zinc, I've found before. I've only dug two men's 10Kt gold class rings that have came in at zinc penny range and they were honkers and I found the owners to those rings and returned them

PS; I almost forgot........The old two cent pieces come in at zinc penny too, and I've only found two of those in an old house yard on the same day.

 

[Dan-Pa.]

To answer your question....yes I have found several but were large college 10kt gold rings. Lets not forget the smaller sterling silver religious medals also along with large gold bracelets old tokens and yep two cent pieces, 5-10 dollar gold coins, indian head pennies. So indeed many goodies in the zinc penny range but if in an area with a lot of zinc pennies be prepared to dig....

 

[Darkflight]

I guess a little more digging is in order indeed. I need to keep them in mind after the umpteenth corroded zinc.I just get annoyed that even the coinstar machines won't take the durn things.

In almost every park here zincs abound. So yep lotsa extra digging-hoping for long term rewards it is..

Thanks! Y'all!!
Carl.

 

[BarberBill]

A year or more ago I read a post that pointed out that some jewelry fell in the zinc range. I'd been skipping over zincs as so many are a corroded mess. Anyway, I dug the first probably zinc hit after reading that post which turned out to be a small, black hills gold ring. I've found several more jewelry pieces since. It seems that we need to do a bit more than dig tabs to be sure to get the gold. As so often posted "Dig it all to be sure".
BB

 

[Critterhunter]

I have done just such a study on over 120 gold rings. These rings were found by a friend water hunting digging every signal above iron, so the test pool is not biased in any way. In other words, if the test pool was accumulated by favoring any one "zone" such as the nickle range then that would slant things, so this test pool offers a look into the percentages broken down by conductivity zones. Although this was done using a Sovereign GT (And a M6, which a link is provided to another thread in another forum for that), you can easily see the same conductivity zones to relate to on your machine. Later in the thread I break down the VDI numbers into common trash target ranges (tabs, nickles, etc,), and after that provide bar and line graph mapping of the numbers by 5, ten, and twenty digit spreads to further illistrate differences. What is of interest is that most rings do NOT range in the nickle range or the tab range for that matter, yet some of these gold rings do indeed make it up to the zinc and even clad/copper/silver coin range. In fact, there is a larger portion in the high tab to zinc range than I would have initially expected. More than anything, the foil range provides fully almost half of the rings to be found. This is the range below nickles and thus of course tabs. Still, the numbers can look very different depending on how they are sifted. In particular, when doing 5 or 10 digit spreads things look very different than catogorizing things by common target conductivity ranges. It's an interesting read, gets more interesting later in the thread (with the further break down of numbers by conductivity zones), and it has provided me with useful insight as to how to avoid a particular trash target that is loaded in an area and still dig roughly about 75% of the rings. For instance, I can notch out 84% of all round and square tabs (which I also grafted and provided percentages for) and still recover most rings. That saves a lot of work when a site has thousands of them, and yet I'd still recover somewhere around 70 to 76% of all the rings. Link to that thread....

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?21,1096415,page=1

Comments or critism welcome, provided it's civil.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

critter-hunter, ever since the earliest days of TID (about 1982 or 83-ish when it was first seen on teknetics), people have attempted to do, what you are talking about. Very early on, "ring enhancement" programs were developed, by people who tested a myriad of gold rings, and a myriad of commonly recurring junk items, and put them on statistical odds programs. When machines like the Eagle came out, where there was a 95 pt. scale, and programming/editing got easy, these "ring enhancement" programs were very much looked into. And yes, the exact nickel #s on these very minute scales, represented a very small portion of the random selections of rings tested. And yes, machines with much more broad 5 or 7 quadrant type categories (like the CZ6) this was not possible to do.

And you are right: to be totally representative of what commonly worn as rings, by the general public, you can not simply take some md'rs collection, and start air-testing each one, UNLESS it can be determined that he 100% of the time digs 100% of all targets above iron (because otherwise he may have subconsciously favored one target ID over another, etc....). Or better yet, if you know someone who owns a jewelry store with a large stock of rings, if they would let you go in some day after closing hours, and test each one, one-by-one

I don't recall from those that made such studies, that very many came in at the zinc range or higher. Very few would have read that high. Like maybe only beefy men's college rings or whatever. The vast majority, as you say, came in in the foil ranges. And a good proportion (mens bands, for instance) came in around the square tab range, which is above round-tab.

 

[Critterhunter]

I look at these numbers as more of a way to disprove myths in metal detecting more than anything else. We also heard "Dig the nickle zone", or "dig the tab zone", if you want to find gold rings. The numbers don't prove that out. You'd have just as much luck digging certain other zones, and probably more luck because the trash to treasure ratio in other number ranges are much lower. For example, digging the tab zone in an old park that has billions of them is an excercise in fruitillity unless you plan to dig each and every one out. Avoding that number span you'll dig much less trash and still recover most of the rings. One can further discriminate rings by sound and stable ID, as the vast majority of them tested on my GT would provide stable VDI numbers (only perhaps changing by a digit or two, rarely three) and provide good round, smooth, soft, robust, signals...While a lot of trash, in particular oddly shaped stuff, won't lock well into it's VDI, will sound rough around the edges, and so on. Further trash uniform in shape can sound harsh, tinny, hollow, bangy, and so on. A good machine that can provide these telling audio traits is key for this type of ear discrimination.

I feel the reason why the two myths about digging the nickle or tab zones have kept popping up in detecting circles has to do with two factors. First, most machines (in particular older ones, but still may of today's units) don't have enough resolution in the nickle or tab zone to split hairs on these targets. The window or "zone" for what they would call "nickle" or "tab" was much wider, often taking in a large portion of the foil range as well as a good portion of conductivity above a tab. Therefore, more rings would read "nickle" or "tab" for people. Still yet, as more people concentrated on those particular zones when ring hunting more rings would naturally be dug in those zones, and so the myth gets further enforced by faulty and biased results.

What's more useful to me about these numbers is the ability to avoid specific number ranges that are high in a particular trash item for a sight while digging other high percentage ring zones. For instance, if the area is loaded with can slaw and foil but not as much tabs then I'd concentrate on that zone. Or, if the area is loaded with tabs but doesn't have a huge amount of foil and can bits laying around then I'll dig that zone. Either zone has just as much chance for rings, yet your trash to treasure ratio will drastically change.

I've said this many times before...I look at hunting rings like playing cards. You wouldn't bet all your money on one hand regardless of the odds, so why dig every target and ignore the odds stacked against you for a particular area? Unless you plan to make it your life's work to dig say each and every tab out of a huge park then why even begin that process? Avoid those and concentrate on all the other "odd" number rangers that fall above and below those. Further discriminate by ear for smooth, warm, round targets if you want, and I guarantee you you will have dug most of the rings out of that park long before the next guy ever comes close to digging all the tabs out of there years later.