Iron Questions

[bday]

Hello All,
First post, although I have been a lurker since April and an SE owner since May. Unfortunately or not for me I purchased my SE about a week before the pro coil emerged.I'm not new to detecting as my previous machine and my back-up now is a Whites 6000 di series 3. My question is about iron. My home is an 1870 farmhouse and as far as I know I am the only one that has detected it. I have had it for about 20 years. I had been previously been unable to have many successful finds with the White's due to extremely high iron content in my yard. When I got the SE I have pulled out over 150 clad/new coins and 20 wheats, 1 IH and 2 rosies. I know that good stuff is there but I'm having trouble with the iron. I have had good signals that will not repeat from the opposite direction, signals that look good only to have the cursor hit upper left when in pinpoint, when in All Metal can't hardly move the coil without a signal and when in "Coins" have many feet of ground that is in null. When these are dug all I get is pieces of cut iron nails. I recently have orderd a SunRay x-8 in hopes of being able to cut through the trash a little better but is has been backordered and I don't know when it will arrive. Any suggestions about what settings would be better. I'm running about 22 sens semi auto, 22 on IM, Fast on, have tried both cond and ferrous. I kinda like cond but in IM it drives me crazy.
Also anyone in or near Southern Illinois, I would like see how an experienced SE user operates.
Thanks
Bob

 

[razr]

Sounds like you might need to try a small coil if you have that much stuff in the ground.

 

[Frase44NY]

take 1 day to dig everything. maybe grid a small 20' by 20' foot section and pay attention to your swing. not too fast. If its tolerable and not too trashy, you will get a better feel for what you are digging. Some of those signals that arent repeatable both ways are going to be keepers. So write off the day...expect some trash, and dig everything while keeping track of how they sound and appear on the screen. Hope this helps...HH

 

[bday]

Started gridding out my front yard this morning. I did a 5'x5' section and came up with 20 pieces of cut iron nails and 2 wheaties. I'm hoping that smaller coil will be here next week.

 

[mattockman]

asumming your detector is set up correctly.....for your tones ....to your ears...

I would use ferrous sounds, manual sens. and lower sens. like 10-18...start low and try it....then work your way up... you will get better seperation of targets and find the shallower stuff hiding in the iron. When you get a smaller coil, you will do the same thing, but be able to go higher in sens. range. Try it in smart screen cleared all metal and then try it with some tight discr. pattern.....then after hitting it hard for sometime...take a 11' pro coil and turn up the sens. and get some deepies......the coil can see between close targets like a smaller coil can.....but smaller coil is necessary....5", 6"

 

[JoeinMemphis]

This works! I did it Saturday on a site that is an 1849 plantation site and supposedly a CW hospital for a battle site nearby. I did exactly as some of you said, since neither of my hunting buddies showed up I could play and not have to worry about " keeping up with the Jonses ". For grins I set the machine up as I normaly hunt ( SE Pro, sens on manual at 22, ferrous, deep, smartfind rejecting nails only, and IM somewhere around 28 ) and hit a 10' X 10' square that I use WallyWorld plastic tent stakes and 10' of bright red nylon cord from Lowes to grid with. With the machine set up as above I couldn't hit anything but nulls... LOTS of nulls, nothing I would have dug. So I turned the sensitivity down to 15 and started removing some of the offending iron, but concentrating on those nulls that begin and end in some form of tone. I ended up finding old shotgun shell bases, the first one really got the blood flowing since it came up without the shell, and it was just the back portion with the writing, with a primer intact. Before I got to clean it it looked exactly like a button! Anyway, I continued this way all day and covered 800 square feet, the notable finds were 6 .22 bullets (the lead only) some of them old enough to be white, 3 shotgun bases, 1 1950 D penny ( the first coin found since the 3 of us have been hunting the site over a month now) and a very large bullet (3 ring) that I am yet to ID. I am not home so I don't have access to my grain scale but the base is around .530 and mangled, and another unidentified piece of lead. None of the iron were "keepers". It takes a WHILE but will get results. I know exactly how you feel wading through the iron, you cant make a swing on this place without at least 5 nulls... HH Joe