REVIER
Well-known member
I just had three amazing hunts with my F70 and some new settings.
In my mostly mineralized soil I also have lots of extra iron in most of my sites here in the city.
Many public sites had old homes and neighborhoods knocked down, several were the site of old dumps and this city was built on coal mining first but all the ingredients for making iron and steel exists naturally in this state's soil so iron and steel manufacturing became the backbone industry upon which this city was built starting about the 1880's.
There is not only millions of nails, nuts and bolts, thick plates and whatever else buried from all those old neighborhoods but we suspect tons of iron in slag form and all others were discarded by these old steel factories and somehow mixed into the fill dirt that was used almost everywhere as the city was built up...in public and commercial grassy areas but also in many of the lawns and properties of the neighborhoods as they were built.
There is just too much iron here and it is daunting plus we have the normal amount of trash you see in cities that are 130+ years old.
Especially in the public parks...it is like nobody in this city ever figured out what a trash can is supposed to be used for.
There is usually some iron everywhere we hunt, I see it in the suburbs here and it was at most sites when I hunted in areas all over Kansas and MIssouri but here in the city there is way too much...it just ain't normal.
I talked to a homeowner once as I was doing the curb strips in the neighborhood and he says he tried doing this hobby years ago but he gave it up...way too much iron for him to deal with and I wonder how many others tried to do this hobby and did the same around here?
The effect of this combination of mineralization and iron is usually depth is extreamly limited...most I know of rarely get beyond 5" and dug good targets in the bad stuff, even in some better dirt like some black stuff in the lawns of homes and in some woods going up some hills and small mountains maybe we can reach 7-8"...in Kansas and Missouri I could easily get to 12" and beyond with my F70 or my Vaq...here that is just a dream, usually.
I have come to find out we all actually can get deeper than that 5" mark in the bad stuff but the signals are so different, skewed and screwed up that they don't make much sense.
I have tried to break the code and make sense of these deeper signals and have made headway, I always suspected there was a layer of good targets at 6" or more here and by learning new settings, techniques, indicators and behavior I have managed to find many from the 6-8" range so far...a major accomplishment if you ever hunted here and knew what we are up against.
Masking is the major issue here, directly related to that depth problem but anything much past 3" seems to be affected and sometimes even on some more shallow targets.
Iron minerals in the red dirt, bits of tiny nodules of iron mixed into even lots of the black dirt, all the small iron from the buildings long gone now and bigger iron pieces that seem to be both shallow and deep at all depths.
Luckily, the Fishers do something that is programmed into them that helps me find these oh so masked targets I have found so far, they up-average all signals around iron, and this is behavior that has helped me ID and dig lots of those deeper targets and recover them...once I noticed what was happening.
I have been able to use this to my advantage and find deeper targets and even shallow ones that were so masked that they were missed by every hunter that have visited most public sites for decades and have culled pretty much all of the obvious easy to find stuff.
I can tell you it's a little strange to dig nickels here shallow or all of the so many I found out west at all depths that usually come in at around the 31-33 range but here if they are at the 5-8" depth range every one comes in at between 88-92...I mean that is silver dollar range for goodness sakes.
BTW the one silver dollar I did find here was only 4" deep but came in at a steady solid 98-99 on every pass from every direction.
I only went after that one in the concrete like drought dry dirt at the time because it was so odd and unusual, it really made me curious because I never saw or heard a signal like that before...but now I am sure glad I made the effort.
So iron masking and how to understand it, deal with it and somehow get around it is the major goal here if you want a shot at some truly spectacular treasure it seems, shallow clad is no problem or shallow jewelry either.
However if you want to dwell in the deeper areas to look for the older stuff and not spend most of your time digging deep trash and high falsing rusted iron you had better have a decent tool and more importantly some outside the box thinking about settings to reach that goal and some special understanding about some weird deep target behavior.
I have done pretty good in my endeavors, found plenty of older great targets including coins, jewelry and even flat buttons among other targets and most were not even particularly deep but all were severely masked including those flat buttons none of which were deeper than 3-4".
One way I have done this is using what I call my blast through settings...most everything maxed out to "blast through" all this mineralization and iron and get even just a piece of a better non ferrous target hiding.
All metal, sense maxed, thresh maxed, even used boost but now I believe DE speed is still a bit better at unmasking...I got the need for speed.
In this environment this blast through method seems to work just as well for me as a extremely iron infested site I learned it at back in Kansas.
Better dirt but huge amounts of crazy iron in a knocked down farm house site.
Recently I tried something different, I use all metal a lot here but even on low volume that constant threshold tone and all the signals I am trying to process is mentally fatiguing so I am always on the the lookout for good disc settings, quieter settings that still will enable me to dig deep and unmask good targets at any depth.
Usually I will use monotone, disc low below 5 at 0-1, sense as high as I can stand it up to 85 most of the time and thresh about -2 to -3.
Still really noisy here, EMI is a problem at many of my sites but I can deal with a lot of noise if I need to.
Going up higher on the sense and especially the thresh is usually even too much for me but I have found much at these settings so a favorite combination for me.
The other day I tried something new...wasn't sure how I would love them because I am a gold hunter and this method entails major disc so the what if's can bother me but I also am on the hunt for old coins so what the heck, nothing ventured nothing gained.
I know about high thresh settings, I have read many posts from hunters that use it and I have seen the vid on YouTube of a hunter hitting an 8" quarter in his test garden with his F70 and thresh really high but his sense on....1.
Here high thresh was just too much for me so I decided to mix it up a bit.
Still using monotone, turned the disc up to max 65, the sense I settled at 97, thresh went to max at +9 and just to keep me sane I notched back in the entire nickel range just in case...Still a gold hunter at my core.
Changed over from my sniper to the big DD coil also for better coverage.
Picking between targets with the sniper is great but I have lots of practice doing that with my big DD too.
I was shocked when these settings were quiet...eerily quiet, so quiet I thought there might be something wrong with my F70.
Nope there was some chatter but hardly any and I went about my business hunting some spots in my local neighborhood park that I pretty much have lived at for about the last 18 months.
It was great, I could ID most trash, dug more than usual checking things out and even some high tone deeper stuff that kinda acted like deep coins but more like rusty high falsing deeper iron and guessed iron...and it was every time.
Then on the last signal of the day I walked over an area I have hunted a million times, it is one of the entrance areas I use entering and leaving this park.
Found plenty of clad here in the past, even a silver religious medal plus a deep buff in an area about 40 yards away but lately not much good was showing up.
This signal was decent, a little jumpy because there was some iron near it and some big iron deep under the area but I got some nice higher numbers and a good crisp tone when those higher numbers showed up as I maneuvered that coil.
I ended up opened and closing that hole three times before I found a treasure, it was elusive.
The rusted piece that caused me some grief was a small thickly rusted disc which I believe is a steel war cent, the deep iron I didn't go after but the treasure was a 1948 Rosie...I was floored that this thing was here and even more that I had missed it in all my other visits with several machines and coils and settings.
The next day I came back to this park with the same sittings, found a bit more clad I had missed and on the way home I hit a permission house I had hunted more times than I could count last year but now had no more good signals.
I found a ton of great stuff at this house but every time I returned there was nothing else but iron signals so I thought I had cleaned it out pretty good.
I never believe any site is ever hunted out but this is a tiny lawn and I had done my job well here in the past.
I thought nothing of this hunt, just a quick scan for a few minutes and I expected nothing but once again I got a good signal, high numbers that repeated and repeated from two directions, very few if no drops to iron and something so obvious I would have dug it in the past if I came across it.
Turns out that was a sterling pin or clip, a sash pin or hair barrett that was about 4" deep and had to be down there for awhile.
Kinda shocked about this, I should have found it before but didn't, this was an area I gridded, hit from several directions, used all kinds of coils and and even used two other different detectors at least once and yet this time it was a good signal an obvious signal to dig.
What it that high thresh, the quieter settings, I have no idea but now I was two for two silver hunts with these settings.
Yesterday my third hunt with these settings again at this same park and again exploring areas I have been so many times before.
Nothing really eventful but eventually I ambled over to an area I have also been over a lot before.
Supposedly old homes existed here but now long gone, I know this is probably true because I have found several iron and trash targets like you would find around old home sites.
I dug some trash dug some iron too because I am still experimenting but then I got another good signal.
I figured a shallow clad quarter, this area is in the path of all the frisbee golf guys that travel through here because it is right between a tee and one of their goals.
Iron all around it, I opened a small hole and dug a really rusty large nail on the left side about 4-5" down but after I got that out my Propointer say there is still something in the wall of the right side at about 2-3".
I stuck my digger high over it and pried out a big chunk of dirt from that area and it fell into the middle of the hole and that's when I saw the edge of a silvery round disc still mostly covered with dirt in that pile.
Alright, a silver Washington I thought which was great and rare for this park because despite that silver dollar all the rest of the silver coins I pulled out of this park had been dimes.
I grabbed it and cleaned it off and then saw it was a Barber...a holy grail coin I just couldn't find to save my life since I started in this biz and a quarter to boot!
I think this coin might have been standing up on edge also but I can't say for sure.
Deep shock, happiness, joy, excitement and everything else hit me all at once.
Three for three silver hunts with these new settings.
Now thinking back I am still not sure what is happening here.
Is it the high thresh that is helping me do this?
The quieter environment helping me to notice some good signals better?
Most of the other settings I have used before, why is it so easy to get these decent dig me signals now?
Was it luck, not getting my coil over any of these targets before?
Could be the first thing but I had to go over at least one if not all three of these targets before but never got any indicator to dig.
I am going back to that same Barber area again in a few minutes and maybe hit a few more other areas where I found great things so I spent more time there in the past.
Can this happen again...hope so.
I will add I did notch in foil in addition to that nickel notch for awhile yesterday and it increased the chatter a lot.
Not just because of the many foil targets but EMI seemed to be more of an issue.
I am going to do a reset and go back to just that nickel notch or maybe try using only a foil notch instead.
For my purposes using these settings and staying as quiet as possible might be just a one and done thing regarding notches but we will see.
Maybe reduce the gain a bit, could sharpen things up even further for all I know.
Silver and all other older coins is the real goal right now, hopefully I am on to something new here that can help me for the rest of my career.
Really high thresh...who would have thought?
I am sure thinking about it more now.
In my mostly mineralized soil I also have lots of extra iron in most of my sites here in the city.
Many public sites had old homes and neighborhoods knocked down, several were the site of old dumps and this city was built on coal mining first but all the ingredients for making iron and steel exists naturally in this state's soil so iron and steel manufacturing became the backbone industry upon which this city was built starting about the 1880's.
There is not only millions of nails, nuts and bolts, thick plates and whatever else buried from all those old neighborhoods but we suspect tons of iron in slag form and all others were discarded by these old steel factories and somehow mixed into the fill dirt that was used almost everywhere as the city was built up...in public and commercial grassy areas but also in many of the lawns and properties of the neighborhoods as they were built.
There is just too much iron here and it is daunting plus we have the normal amount of trash you see in cities that are 130+ years old.
Especially in the public parks...it is like nobody in this city ever figured out what a trash can is supposed to be used for.
There is usually some iron everywhere we hunt, I see it in the suburbs here and it was at most sites when I hunted in areas all over Kansas and MIssouri but here in the city there is way too much...it just ain't normal.
I talked to a homeowner once as I was doing the curb strips in the neighborhood and he says he tried doing this hobby years ago but he gave it up...way too much iron for him to deal with and I wonder how many others tried to do this hobby and did the same around here?
The effect of this combination of mineralization and iron is usually depth is extreamly limited...most I know of rarely get beyond 5" and dug good targets in the bad stuff, even in some better dirt like some black stuff in the lawns of homes and in some woods going up some hills and small mountains maybe we can reach 7-8"...in Kansas and Missouri I could easily get to 12" and beyond with my F70 or my Vaq...here that is just a dream, usually.
I have come to find out we all actually can get deeper than that 5" mark in the bad stuff but the signals are so different, skewed and screwed up that they don't make much sense.
I have tried to break the code and make sense of these deeper signals and have made headway, I always suspected there was a layer of good targets at 6" or more here and by learning new settings, techniques, indicators and behavior I have managed to find many from the 6-8" range so far...a major accomplishment if you ever hunted here and knew what we are up against.
Masking is the major issue here, directly related to that depth problem but anything much past 3" seems to be affected and sometimes even on some more shallow targets.
Iron minerals in the red dirt, bits of tiny nodules of iron mixed into even lots of the black dirt, all the small iron from the buildings long gone now and bigger iron pieces that seem to be both shallow and deep at all depths.
Luckily, the Fishers do something that is programmed into them that helps me find these oh so masked targets I have found so far, they up-average all signals around iron, and this is behavior that has helped me ID and dig lots of those deeper targets and recover them...once I noticed what was happening.
I have been able to use this to my advantage and find deeper targets and even shallow ones that were so masked that they were missed by every hunter that have visited most public sites for decades and have culled pretty much all of the obvious easy to find stuff.
I can tell you it's a little strange to dig nickels here shallow or all of the so many I found out west at all depths that usually come in at around the 31-33 range but here if they are at the 5-8" depth range every one comes in at between 88-92...I mean that is silver dollar range for goodness sakes.
BTW the one silver dollar I did find here was only 4" deep but came in at a steady solid 98-99 on every pass from every direction.
I only went after that one in the concrete like drought dry dirt at the time because it was so odd and unusual, it really made me curious because I never saw or heard a signal like that before...but now I am sure glad I made the effort.
So iron masking and how to understand it, deal with it and somehow get around it is the major goal here if you want a shot at some truly spectacular treasure it seems, shallow clad is no problem or shallow jewelry either.
However if you want to dwell in the deeper areas to look for the older stuff and not spend most of your time digging deep trash and high falsing rusted iron you had better have a decent tool and more importantly some outside the box thinking about settings to reach that goal and some special understanding about some weird deep target behavior.
I have done pretty good in my endeavors, found plenty of older great targets including coins, jewelry and even flat buttons among other targets and most were not even particularly deep but all were severely masked including those flat buttons none of which were deeper than 3-4".
One way I have done this is using what I call my blast through settings...most everything maxed out to "blast through" all this mineralization and iron and get even just a piece of a better non ferrous target hiding.
All metal, sense maxed, thresh maxed, even used boost but now I believe DE speed is still a bit better at unmasking...I got the need for speed.
In this environment this blast through method seems to work just as well for me as a extremely iron infested site I learned it at back in Kansas.
Better dirt but huge amounts of crazy iron in a knocked down farm house site.
Recently I tried something different, I use all metal a lot here but even on low volume that constant threshold tone and all the signals I am trying to process is mentally fatiguing so I am always on the the lookout for good disc settings, quieter settings that still will enable me to dig deep and unmask good targets at any depth.
Usually I will use monotone, disc low below 5 at 0-1, sense as high as I can stand it up to 85 most of the time and thresh about -2 to -3.
Still really noisy here, EMI is a problem at many of my sites but I can deal with a lot of noise if I need to.
Going up higher on the sense and especially the thresh is usually even too much for me but I have found much at these settings so a favorite combination for me.
The other day I tried something new...wasn't sure how I would love them because I am a gold hunter and this method entails major disc so the what if's can bother me but I also am on the hunt for old coins so what the heck, nothing ventured nothing gained.
I know about high thresh settings, I have read many posts from hunters that use it and I have seen the vid on YouTube of a hunter hitting an 8" quarter in his test garden with his F70 and thresh really high but his sense on....1.
Here high thresh was just too much for me so I decided to mix it up a bit.
Still using monotone, turned the disc up to max 65, the sense I settled at 97, thresh went to max at +9 and just to keep me sane I notched back in the entire nickel range just in case...Still a gold hunter at my core.
Changed over from my sniper to the big DD coil also for better coverage.
Picking between targets with the sniper is great but I have lots of practice doing that with my big DD too.
I was shocked when these settings were quiet...eerily quiet, so quiet I thought there might be something wrong with my F70.
Nope there was some chatter but hardly any and I went about my business hunting some spots in my local neighborhood park that I pretty much have lived at for about the last 18 months.
It was great, I could ID most trash, dug more than usual checking things out and even some high tone deeper stuff that kinda acted like deep coins but more like rusty high falsing deeper iron and guessed iron...and it was every time.
Then on the last signal of the day I walked over an area I have hunted a million times, it is one of the entrance areas I use entering and leaving this park.
Found plenty of clad here in the past, even a silver religious medal plus a deep buff in an area about 40 yards away but lately not much good was showing up.
This signal was decent, a little jumpy because there was some iron near it and some big iron deep under the area but I got some nice higher numbers and a good crisp tone when those higher numbers showed up as I maneuvered that coil.
I ended up opened and closing that hole three times before I found a treasure, it was elusive.
The rusted piece that caused me some grief was a small thickly rusted disc which I believe is a steel war cent, the deep iron I didn't go after but the treasure was a 1948 Rosie...I was floored that this thing was here and even more that I had missed it in all my other visits with several machines and coils and settings.
The next day I came back to this park with the same sittings, found a bit more clad I had missed and on the way home I hit a permission house I had hunted more times than I could count last year but now had no more good signals.
I found a ton of great stuff at this house but every time I returned there was nothing else but iron signals so I thought I had cleaned it out pretty good.
I never believe any site is ever hunted out but this is a tiny lawn and I had done my job well here in the past.
I thought nothing of this hunt, just a quick scan for a few minutes and I expected nothing but once again I got a good signal, high numbers that repeated and repeated from two directions, very few if no drops to iron and something so obvious I would have dug it in the past if I came across it.
Turns out that was a sterling pin or clip, a sash pin or hair barrett that was about 4" deep and had to be down there for awhile.
Kinda shocked about this, I should have found it before but didn't, this was an area I gridded, hit from several directions, used all kinds of coils and and even used two other different detectors at least once and yet this time it was a good signal an obvious signal to dig.
What it that high thresh, the quieter settings, I have no idea but now I was two for two silver hunts with these settings.
Yesterday my third hunt with these settings again at this same park and again exploring areas I have been so many times before.
Nothing really eventful but eventually I ambled over to an area I have also been over a lot before.
Supposedly old homes existed here but now long gone, I know this is probably true because I have found several iron and trash targets like you would find around old home sites.
I dug some trash dug some iron too because I am still experimenting but then I got another good signal.
I figured a shallow clad quarter, this area is in the path of all the frisbee golf guys that travel through here because it is right between a tee and one of their goals.
Iron all around it, I opened a small hole and dug a really rusty large nail on the left side about 4-5" down but after I got that out my Propointer say there is still something in the wall of the right side at about 2-3".
I stuck my digger high over it and pried out a big chunk of dirt from that area and it fell into the middle of the hole and that's when I saw the edge of a silvery round disc still mostly covered with dirt in that pile.
Alright, a silver Washington I thought which was great and rare for this park because despite that silver dollar all the rest of the silver coins I pulled out of this park had been dimes.
I grabbed it and cleaned it off and then saw it was a Barber...a holy grail coin I just couldn't find to save my life since I started in this biz and a quarter to boot!
I think this coin might have been standing up on edge also but I can't say for sure.
Deep shock, happiness, joy, excitement and everything else hit me all at once.
Three for three silver hunts with these new settings.
Now thinking back I am still not sure what is happening here.
Is it the high thresh that is helping me do this?
The quieter environment helping me to notice some good signals better?
Most of the other settings I have used before, why is it so easy to get these decent dig me signals now?
Was it luck, not getting my coil over any of these targets before?
Could be the first thing but I had to go over at least one if not all three of these targets before but never got any indicator to dig.
I am going back to that same Barber area again in a few minutes and maybe hit a few more other areas where I found great things so I spent more time there in the past.
Can this happen again...hope so.
I will add I did notch in foil in addition to that nickel notch for awhile yesterday and it increased the chatter a lot.
Not just because of the many foil targets but EMI seemed to be more of an issue.
I am going to do a reset and go back to just that nickel notch or maybe try using only a foil notch instead.
For my purposes using these settings and staying as quiet as possible might be just a one and done thing regarding notches but we will see.
Maybe reduce the gain a bit, could sharpen things up even further for all I know.
Silver and all other older coins is the real goal right now, hopefully I am on to something new here that can help me for the rest of my career.
Really high thresh...who would have thought?
I am sure thinking about it more now.