Hunting on fire sites

[TrpnBils]

A buddy and I got into an old homestead recently where a house had burned down about 70 years ago. It's a totally bizarre site because the bulk of our finds have come from the other end of the property away from where the house was....not sure if debris was bulldozed there or what. The thing is, we're finding stuff as recent as wheats and even a Franklin half all the way back to as old as a Connecticut copper and a KGIII. The more recent stuff is all fire damaged. I dug a 1954 Roosevelt out of there that I thought might have been a cob at first because of how distorted everything was, the Franklin half was shaped like a bowl, another Roosevelt I dug was bubbled up, and a Barber half that came out of there was severely damaged. All the old stuff is fine though, so we have to assume there was something else there at some point that would have brought people in.

Anyway, what we've noticed is that almost all of our signals are reading different than what they should by quite a bit...like the Roosevelts for me came up in the 30s, my buddy's Franklin half came up as a 05-39 on his Etrac, and so on. We aren't seeing ash layers or anything like that in the field, which again makes me wonder if things were bulldozed over. Do fire sites like this produce weird numbers normally because of something in the soil or could the detectors just be picking up the damage to the coins?

Along those lines, I was told by a guy recently that wood ash masks pretty badly. In his words, you can stick a silver dollar under an inch of wood ash and the detector will completely miss it. Any truth to that?

 

[amberjack]

burnt wood turns to carbon so I think there maybe a lot of truth to the carbon masking coins etc.. also the amount of heat on the wood would dictate that also.

elements are strange yet predictable things its the human element that's unpredictable as in how we interpret the things we see in life detecting or not.

AJ

 

[TrpnBils]

My mind went less to carbon and more toward melted/recrystallized minerals in the soil.

 

[amberjack]

that's possible also but most minerals are high melt temp , but if the ground is mineralized adding heat will make it harder to detect for sure.

AJ

 

[TrpnBils]

that's possible also but most minerals are high melt temp , but if the ground is mineralized adding heat will make it harder to detect for sure.

AJ

I figure with the amount and type of damage we're finding on the coins coming out of there that the temps had to have been real high. One of the worst condition finds we pulled out was a stack of four pennies (we're assuming wheats and indians from the looks of it) that are melted together.

 

[amberjack]

that's pretty hot !! your doing well getting coins etc out of there places like that will always be a challenge to detect for lots of reasons nails and heat are the big ones, so well done !!

AJ

 

[trojdor]

I figure with the amount and type of damage we're finding on the coins coming out of there that the temps had to have been real high. One of the worst condition finds we pulled out was a stack of four pennies (we're assuming wheats and indians from the looks of it) that are melted together.

That's hot...we're talking temps around 2,000 degF (1,000 degC) to melt copper and silver...that's kind of on the warm side.

mike

 

[JFlynn]

Dig about everything conductive would do the trick. Last Year I hunted where a 150 yr old house had burned to the ground and as soon as they got it cleaned up and removed all the debri and made it flat I found where evidently a piggy bank had burned in the fire too. Hundreds of coins in a square yd spot burned up really bad. Houses that old, here anyway, most were made out of heart of pine. That stuff gets really hot but not in the 2000 degree range. I would imagine in the right scenario, burning heart of pine and the right place and a lot of air entering at the correct spot would really stoke a fire on up. Anyway there was a lot of fused together coins, not melted now but it got plenty hot. The best place for us is at older homesites that heated with a fireplace for some reason there seems to be a lot of coins around about every now torn down houses fireplace. I just dug a burnt 1895 barber dime that was toasted in one. Keep on digging!

 

[jayhop]

I'm thinking the odd shape of the coins will effect the numbers being displayed.
In the last three months I have dug about 60 case shot that were from cannon balls and artillery shells plus about 7 or 8 mini balls from one farm field. The shot and bullets are made of lead and for some reason animals will chew on them.
Most of these pieces of lead register 12-36 to 12-39 when they are in their original shape.
But several of the shot had been chewed and where odd shaped. You can clearly see the teeth marks in them. These deformed pieces registered as low as 12-23 to 12-30.
The shape of a target definitely helps determine the number that is displayed.

 

[amberjack]

I agree with that numbers change if a coin etc has been changed even if only slightly.

AJ

 

[AngerManagement]

I have found that Carbon and lots of charcoal / burnt timber... TID's all over the place and we have to make changes to settings. And diferent when wet.

Also a field that has had a heavy spread of some fertilizers can also play with the machine.