Info on sand banks.

[thirdbornau]

Hi all,

I was wondering if someone could shed a little information on "Sand Banks" at the beach, should they be searched or is it fruitless. I put this question in the classroom forum but had no luck with replies. I have detected around them but i never seem to get signals and was wondering if this was normal.

Thank you Maureen..

 

[bdahunter]

The troughs between the banks is where you will find the majority of your good and heavier finds, 3rdborn. That said I work a fairly small beach so I do check the sand banks and I have made finds on them. Usually though, the place to look is around the endges of these banks where the retreating tide had to go around and therefore make cuts.
Hope this is some help.

BDA

 

[thirdbornau]

Hi Hunter,

When you talk of troughs would you be meaning cuts in the sand banks? most of the ones we see are all in one piece and very very long. If i see any breaks in the sand going towards the water i check these too am i doing the right thing.

Thanks for your reply pal Maureen..

 

[bdahunter]

When hunting the dry stuff you want to find a beach that is cut, otherwise you should hunt the towel line. By cut I mean a distinct drop off running parallel to the waterline where the waves and tide have stripped away a layer of sand to form two distinct levels in the beach, the bigger the drop the better.
What you are trying to do is extend the range of your detector by working areas of beach that are newly exposed ie. before the sand was stripped away to the new level you would have had to penetrate that depth of sand before you even reached the new level after the waves/tide stripped away the sand. The sand having been stripped away now allows you to search areas of the beach depth-wise that would have been out of the detecting range of your machine prior to the stripping away. Essentially you now have a new beach to hunt with access to better targets as the gold tends to sink deep because of its density, but search it right away as the next tide will allow the gold to start settling deeper and out of your detector's range.
Always check the 3 feet of beach back from the cut as this area will actually have coins thrown up onto it by wave action, weird but true.
Searching sand dunes that have been created by wind action is largely a waste of time as the sand was deposited by wind and therefore cannot hold anything heavy like coins or gold. Searching an area between dunes and at the edge may yield some results if the area is water deposited sand, like after a storm or hurricane/typhoon. As the wind shifts the sand it may expose finds that were deposited by wave action.
I suggest you view the website thegoldenolde.com for more info on this topic. Norm is dead now but his site has information that is timeless.

Cheers from your pal in Bermuda,

BDA

 

[thirdbornau]

Krikey Bermuda i better dash down to that beach again,those sand dunes were about 10 meters long and about half a meter thick they had this real high drop and we poked around a bit but because we didn't get a signal we moved on. We had just had some real rough weather sounds like what you are talking about and there were so many of them too Well that will be another lesson learnt and thanks pal.So in front of them is interesting too hey.

Maureen happy

 

[bdahunter]

n/t