REVIER
Well-known member
Another long one.
Even though I still believe the combination of different problems I deal with at my local sites, even more at this particular site described below is somewhat unique, I hope that somebody out there might be able to use something I have tried that could possibly work at their own difficult sites that might work for them.
Got some good rain at the beginning of last week so I am taking advantage.
Using my new monotone settings I am getting some nice, clear, sharp signals even if they still are a bit jumpy in my mineralized soil also filled with iron.
When things dry up the signals can be slightly different...not quite as sharp on the ends.
I have been concentrating mostly in a relatively small area, the entrance to a big ol' park that us just down the block from my house.
This area had been hit over and over for decades by who knows how many others and also by myself countless times using many detectors and coils, too.
I come here every time I make any change in my settings to see if it makes any difference at all and to maybe find just one more good target.
A very difficult site to hunt...a stretch of dark black soil, but most of it is the red clay filled mineralized stuff we have to deal with in the SE., but a larger problem is the iron.
Little microscopic bits infused into all the soil that is naturally occurring because of our unusual geography, iron slag mixed into most of the fill dirt from the steel and iron industries and spread out all over the city as it was being built up in the late 1800's and after, plus lots of other iron pieces from small pieces of wire and nails to larger nuts, bolts, longer nails and all sorts of other rusted items left over from what I think we're several old homes that used to be standing if not exactly on this spot not far away.
There is also some very large iron deep that screws up signals of targets laying in layers high above them in digable depths, plus certain stretches of areas, about 3 I have noticed so far that are about 5' wide and run for several dozen yards long, that seem virtually unhuntable because there is something huge that runs under these areas that I suspect are some very large iron pipes that were for water or sewage that probably serviced the neighborhood that used to exist in the area just past this entrance site and more into the park proper.
Also the normal can slaw, foil and other junk you find in parks including tons of beaver tail tabs of all kinds from large to small going back to the era when they were invented.
Oh yea, one more thing....there are some power lines going right over the center of this site so I have to deal l with that when I am under them.
When I say this is my own little laboratory, an area that has been forsaken by just about everyone else that does this hobby around here because of the extreme difficulties and that the easy to find stuff has been culled from this site long ago...decades ago, probably...I mean it.
I have brought a few friends over here in two hunts to try their luck and a wheatie or two came up for them and some modern clad, but I have spent hours here experimenting and have been more than successful.
Nothing is a solid or normal signal if it is past 1" deep, all kinds of jumping with iron signals mixed in and I had to learn a new language to target and understand how deeper non ferrous signals behave, but I believe I did exactly that.
I look for signals that stay in a higher range, even if that range jumps up and down 4-8 numbers, don't have many drops to iron and then I turn and hit them from 90 degrees looking for the same exact behavior.
Most times I will do one more check with my F70 and switch to program 2 which is set up with my all metal, blast through settings where everything is pushed to the max...sense and thresh and more often than not SL speed.
If that signal stays the same using all metal, (sometimes it doesn't), I dig and even if all metal shows something else I usually dig also because you never know.
I have found that most good non ferrous targets, bad ones too like some can slaw chunks, will usually stay in that higher than iron range and won't change much when you hit them from 90 degrees.
I have gotten signals that acted this way from one direction but dropped to iron from the other...these have always been iron.
Run over a big rusty nail one way and then turn and hit it along another axis and see what happens.
I have gotten these high signals that hit one way and completely lost them going the other way...also usually iron.
I have gotten hits that go high on a sweep from left to right then when I sweep back from right to left they go low into iron every time on every pass...these have been iron every time...so far.
I say usually on the others because darn it, not all targets have been iron and I have found a couple of good targets on one way hits...coins on edge I assume or maybe something else.
This does keep me digging some iron, can't really avoid it especially in conditions like this, but most of the time I suspect I am digging a bad target so if I do I am not usually disappointed if that happens.
Also getting one more piece of iron out of the area might unmask something better so all effort is not wasted.
This soil is so weird I have gotten the kind of high tone signals thrown off of rusty iron, usually big rusty iron, on some very small items several inches away from my coil especially if the soil is moist.
This surprised me the first time it happened and I dug up a tiny nail instead if a larger rusty target which I expected but such is my lot in life.
Using several different settings I have found a surprising amount of great targets in this specific area.
My all metal blast through settings, disc up to 65 but notching foil, tabs and nickels back in using 3-4H tones, disc on 6 per Dankowski's iron hunting advice using monotone, disc up to 23 to knock out most low end junk, 1F, 2F tones among others.
All seemed to work for the most part and this is just a few of the targets I managed to find including a couple in areas just passed over by others using different brands of detectors.
2 buffalo nickels, several copper Lincoln cents, some older wheaties back to 1910, a couple of Indian heads in the early 1900's to the 1800's, an 1875 seated dime, three other silver dimes one merc and two rosies, two very old pocket knives, some old spoons, forks and knives at the best silver plated, a couple old padlocks and a few other targets like junk jewelry that were non ferrous plus some modern clad here and there.
I also found a silver Masonic coin at the 7" death level in the small patch of black dirt that was the only signal that was normal, non jumping and just like the old days when I hunted in the good soil in Kansas.
Solid, 82 from 2 directions and I was shocked and then thrilled when I found something great when I dug the hole.
Except for shallow clad at 1" or less that was the only signal here that was what most of you would consider normal, all others were skewed numbers, jumpy and usually much higher than normal due to a quirk in programming the F70/F75 platform employs, maybe others in the Fisher line too.
I use this quirk to my great advantage.
These units are designed to up-average all targets around iron, I think I read not only iron like I have here but in normal sites like some good dirt in Kansas I hunted with tons of iron from knocked down homes and I think even mineralized soil to a certain extent.
The red clay we have here in the south is red for a reason...iron oxides.
The reason I look for those consistent higher signals is because everything in the ground comes in higher than normal and the deeper they lay the higher the numbers soar.
I look for targets at any depth but the good stuff is usually at 4" or past, the oldest usually at 5-6" and I found a few at 7-8".
All copper cents and dimes I have found deep here were not the normal 71-74 or so but all have been in the high 80's to low 90's.
A Peace dollar in another part of this park was a 98-99 on every pass.
I have found several nickels here, the couple of buffs, some other Washington's from the 60's back and one I didn't mention in the list above an 1880 something V nickel every bit of 7.5-8" deep.
Even those nickels come in high and never at the normal 33 number.
I have dug nickels here and many other sites in the city and this is how it goes.
At 1-2" normal, maybe 3", at 4" I dig them at numbers like 50's to 60's, at 5" they move to a minimum of the 70's and several I found at 6" or more all soared to the same high 80's to low 90's as all my other usually high tone coins.
All of them.
The first time this happened I was surprised but now I know this is normal...just part of learning that new language I mentioned.
This is big advantage to us Fisher folk, it happened when I dug a gold ring at 10 higher numbers than out of the ground between 2 pieces of iron in much better Kansas soil, it happened on all non ferrous targets dug at a few iron intensive iron filled sites also in Kansas and it now happens here on every target I dig past 3"...everywhere.
If you hunt in iron infested sites remember this because it could come in very handy, it does for me everyday.
A little aside here, that V nickel I dug was worn thin as a dime in the middle of this site with all these problems and was as solid as any I have ever come across and as deep or deeper than anything I have ever dug in Alabama.
My settings were those strange ones with disc at 65 but with lower ranges except iron and zinc notched back in to find jewelry and get this...I was using the small DD sniper coil.
It has been said that these Fishers don't lose depth as you raise the disc higher and this kinda proves it to me.
Using all these ideas and knowledge and a slight change in my settings for the last couple weeks I think I might have found my best setup so far.
Basically Dankowski's iron setting but slightly different.
I am good at using my all metal settings but that constant threshold noise gets to me eventually so I am always looking for settings in disc to hunt quieter but still reach depths I can achieve in all metal.
Here, getting past 5" was my first goal because I am certain there is a layer of good targets at 6" and beyond that most never could understand with most detectors.
I used to think our detectors couldn't get past 5" in the bad stuff...now I believe they can but most signals make little sense and act so strange they remain undug.
For me to get to the 6-7-8" level in the worst of conditions is something I didn't think possible here without a PI unit...but I was wrong.
SETTINGS
Disc is not set at 6 as NASA Tom suggests to knock out tiny nails but all the way down to 1.
Never 0...that might work for some but it kicks my detector into a noisy, chattery mess with skewed sound on all tones which I don't like.
I would rather hunt in all metal.
Tom's disc on 6 works well and so do all other disc numbers but something about that disc on one gives me the clearest and most precise picture everything that is happening below my coil and might even be unmasking more targets than all other higher disc settings...maybe.
I just sense that it does or seems to.
All I know is I get many more signals now than I did before using other settings.
Monotone setting on tones, not 1F, 2F or anything else just 1 tone.
Sense as high as I can go without much chatter, around this site that ranges from mid 70's to mid 90's.
This changes because if WiFi, whether I am under those power wires and some other things happening.
I have tried lower into 60 and even a bit below to knock out some if the signals from the really deep bigger pieces of iron and it seems to work but I still think higher gain penetrates into the soil a bit better and here even 1/2" might make a difference.
Thresh I have been trying -4 and lately -5.
The lower you go supposedly the more you cut out smaller items but I am still finding really tiny bits of metal with these settings...surprisingly tiny, and all coins and normal jewelry should come in fine.
Reducing that thresh makes for some pretty quiet hunting I found, even at higher sense settings.
Sometime I will try moving it down even further.
SLspeed.
DE is faster and usually recommend for hunting in iron but I found I get better, louder, clearer signals at deeper depths using SL even if that depth is only at 6".
In normal soil this would be different, DE got real deep in Kansas but here SL is better.
No notch.
I have been using the big DD coil for the past few weeks and I found with these settings I can get these pretty sharp, good signals if I move the coil very slow.
Many more good signals than I believed were still here when I swung a bit faster.
Using this coil in the last few hunts I found some modern coins, a nickel spill with 2 in the hole one a 64 and the other wrecked with a date I can't read but I suspect the 50's, a very tiny pin that I think is an Order of the Eastern Star variety which is an offshoot of the Freemasons for both men and women.
Every one well hidden and masked, every one a victory.
The best thing I found was a flat button that I can date back to 1820-1840 and so my oldest good target to date.
I thought this was a fluke, dropped by a passing hunter or trapper long ago.
Then the good signals dried up again.
I don't grid this site and usually just wander around but if I don't get any good signals for awhile I think a change us in order so that is what I did.
Yesterday I changed back to the sniper coil and wandered around this site again using the same settings.
Found a few more things and one got me really excited....excited enough to write up this novel to once again share my settings and knowledge gained through my experimentation.
Yesterday's hunt found me a few more modern cents from the 60's on up, 3 Luger 9mm shell casings all in the same area, another nickel this time dated 1940 and something else...another flat button!
I thought that first button was a lucky one time find but now I found another which makes me think this area might have, hold and be hiding way more and older history than just back to the late 1800's as I thought.
A beautiful one, says London Double Gilt on the back, still has the loop but just bent over and I think was made in the 1830's or earlier.
No gold left but who cares, these buttons and their age seems to impress the wife more than anything else I ever dug up and showed her so far so that is also a little bonus.
The park and the neighborhood surrounding it were dedicated in the mid 20's, people were hanging out before that I assume because of the older coins I found but going back this far to when this area was little more than hunting grounds and wilderness...that I had no inkling of a clue.
Now I am getting excited, if those people that lost these buttons were here could they have dropped a few coins too?
Hopefully, but now I have some pretty good settings that might give me a shot at them if they did.
Nobody else seemed to have figured out how to find and dig the things I have in this site so I figure if not me, who?
Even though I still believe the combination of different problems I deal with at my local sites, even more at this particular site described below is somewhat unique, I hope that somebody out there might be able to use something I have tried that could possibly work at their own difficult sites that might work for them.
Got some good rain at the beginning of last week so I am taking advantage.
Using my new monotone settings I am getting some nice, clear, sharp signals even if they still are a bit jumpy in my mineralized soil also filled with iron.
When things dry up the signals can be slightly different...not quite as sharp on the ends.
I have been concentrating mostly in a relatively small area, the entrance to a big ol' park that us just down the block from my house.
This area had been hit over and over for decades by who knows how many others and also by myself countless times using many detectors and coils, too.
I come here every time I make any change in my settings to see if it makes any difference at all and to maybe find just one more good target.
A very difficult site to hunt...a stretch of dark black soil, but most of it is the red clay filled mineralized stuff we have to deal with in the SE., but a larger problem is the iron.
Little microscopic bits infused into all the soil that is naturally occurring because of our unusual geography, iron slag mixed into most of the fill dirt from the steel and iron industries and spread out all over the city as it was being built up in the late 1800's and after, plus lots of other iron pieces from small pieces of wire and nails to larger nuts, bolts, longer nails and all sorts of other rusted items left over from what I think we're several old homes that used to be standing if not exactly on this spot not far away.
There is also some very large iron deep that screws up signals of targets laying in layers high above them in digable depths, plus certain stretches of areas, about 3 I have noticed so far that are about 5' wide and run for several dozen yards long, that seem virtually unhuntable because there is something huge that runs under these areas that I suspect are some very large iron pipes that were for water or sewage that probably serviced the neighborhood that used to exist in the area just past this entrance site and more into the park proper.
Also the normal can slaw, foil and other junk you find in parks including tons of beaver tail tabs of all kinds from large to small going back to the era when they were invented.
Oh yea, one more thing....there are some power lines going right over the center of this site so I have to deal l with that when I am under them.
When I say this is my own little laboratory, an area that has been forsaken by just about everyone else that does this hobby around here because of the extreme difficulties and that the easy to find stuff has been culled from this site long ago...decades ago, probably...I mean it.
I have brought a few friends over here in two hunts to try their luck and a wheatie or two came up for them and some modern clad, but I have spent hours here experimenting and have been more than successful.
Nothing is a solid or normal signal if it is past 1" deep, all kinds of jumping with iron signals mixed in and I had to learn a new language to target and understand how deeper non ferrous signals behave, but I believe I did exactly that.
I look for signals that stay in a higher range, even if that range jumps up and down 4-8 numbers, don't have many drops to iron and then I turn and hit them from 90 degrees looking for the same exact behavior.
Most times I will do one more check with my F70 and switch to program 2 which is set up with my all metal, blast through settings where everything is pushed to the max...sense and thresh and more often than not SL speed.
If that signal stays the same using all metal, (sometimes it doesn't), I dig and even if all metal shows something else I usually dig also because you never know.
I have found that most good non ferrous targets, bad ones too like some can slaw chunks, will usually stay in that higher than iron range and won't change much when you hit them from 90 degrees.
I have gotten signals that acted this way from one direction but dropped to iron from the other...these have always been iron.
Run over a big rusty nail one way and then turn and hit it along another axis and see what happens.
I have gotten these high signals that hit one way and completely lost them going the other way...also usually iron.
I have gotten hits that go high on a sweep from left to right then when I sweep back from right to left they go low into iron every time on every pass...these have been iron every time...so far.
I say usually on the others because darn it, not all targets have been iron and I have found a couple of good targets on one way hits...coins on edge I assume or maybe something else.
This does keep me digging some iron, can't really avoid it especially in conditions like this, but most of the time I suspect I am digging a bad target so if I do I am not usually disappointed if that happens.
Also getting one more piece of iron out of the area might unmask something better so all effort is not wasted.
This soil is so weird I have gotten the kind of high tone signals thrown off of rusty iron, usually big rusty iron, on some very small items several inches away from my coil especially if the soil is moist.
This surprised me the first time it happened and I dug up a tiny nail instead if a larger rusty target which I expected but such is my lot in life.
Using several different settings I have found a surprising amount of great targets in this specific area.
My all metal blast through settings, disc up to 65 but notching foil, tabs and nickels back in using 3-4H tones, disc on 6 per Dankowski's iron hunting advice using monotone, disc up to 23 to knock out most low end junk, 1F, 2F tones among others.
All seemed to work for the most part and this is just a few of the targets I managed to find including a couple in areas just passed over by others using different brands of detectors.
2 buffalo nickels, several copper Lincoln cents, some older wheaties back to 1910, a couple of Indian heads in the early 1900's to the 1800's, an 1875 seated dime, three other silver dimes one merc and two rosies, two very old pocket knives, some old spoons, forks and knives at the best silver plated, a couple old padlocks and a few other targets like junk jewelry that were non ferrous plus some modern clad here and there.
I also found a silver Masonic coin at the 7" death level in the small patch of black dirt that was the only signal that was normal, non jumping and just like the old days when I hunted in the good soil in Kansas.
Solid, 82 from 2 directions and I was shocked and then thrilled when I found something great when I dug the hole.
Except for shallow clad at 1" or less that was the only signal here that was what most of you would consider normal, all others were skewed numbers, jumpy and usually much higher than normal due to a quirk in programming the F70/F75 platform employs, maybe others in the Fisher line too.
I use this quirk to my great advantage.
These units are designed to up-average all targets around iron, I think I read not only iron like I have here but in normal sites like some good dirt in Kansas I hunted with tons of iron from knocked down homes and I think even mineralized soil to a certain extent.
The red clay we have here in the south is red for a reason...iron oxides.
The reason I look for those consistent higher signals is because everything in the ground comes in higher than normal and the deeper they lay the higher the numbers soar.
I look for targets at any depth but the good stuff is usually at 4" or past, the oldest usually at 5-6" and I found a few at 7-8".
All copper cents and dimes I have found deep here were not the normal 71-74 or so but all have been in the high 80's to low 90's.
A Peace dollar in another part of this park was a 98-99 on every pass.
I have found several nickels here, the couple of buffs, some other Washington's from the 60's back and one I didn't mention in the list above an 1880 something V nickel every bit of 7.5-8" deep.
Even those nickels come in high and never at the normal 33 number.
I have dug nickels here and many other sites in the city and this is how it goes.
At 1-2" normal, maybe 3", at 4" I dig them at numbers like 50's to 60's, at 5" they move to a minimum of the 70's and several I found at 6" or more all soared to the same high 80's to low 90's as all my other usually high tone coins.
All of them.
The first time this happened I was surprised but now I know this is normal...just part of learning that new language I mentioned.
This is big advantage to us Fisher folk, it happened when I dug a gold ring at 10 higher numbers than out of the ground between 2 pieces of iron in much better Kansas soil, it happened on all non ferrous targets dug at a few iron intensive iron filled sites also in Kansas and it now happens here on every target I dig past 3"...everywhere.
If you hunt in iron infested sites remember this because it could come in very handy, it does for me everyday.
A little aside here, that V nickel I dug was worn thin as a dime in the middle of this site with all these problems and was as solid as any I have ever come across and as deep or deeper than anything I have ever dug in Alabama.
My settings were those strange ones with disc at 65 but with lower ranges except iron and zinc notched back in to find jewelry and get this...I was using the small DD sniper coil.
It has been said that these Fishers don't lose depth as you raise the disc higher and this kinda proves it to me.
Using all these ideas and knowledge and a slight change in my settings for the last couple weeks I think I might have found my best setup so far.
Basically Dankowski's iron setting but slightly different.
I am good at using my all metal settings but that constant threshold noise gets to me eventually so I am always looking for settings in disc to hunt quieter but still reach depths I can achieve in all metal.
Here, getting past 5" was my first goal because I am certain there is a layer of good targets at 6" and beyond that most never could understand with most detectors.
I used to think our detectors couldn't get past 5" in the bad stuff...now I believe they can but most signals make little sense and act so strange they remain undug.
For me to get to the 6-7-8" level in the worst of conditions is something I didn't think possible here without a PI unit...but I was wrong.
SETTINGS
Disc is not set at 6 as NASA Tom suggests to knock out tiny nails but all the way down to 1.
Never 0...that might work for some but it kicks my detector into a noisy, chattery mess with skewed sound on all tones which I don't like.
I would rather hunt in all metal.
Tom's disc on 6 works well and so do all other disc numbers but something about that disc on one gives me the clearest and most precise picture everything that is happening below my coil and might even be unmasking more targets than all other higher disc settings...maybe.
I just sense that it does or seems to.
All I know is I get many more signals now than I did before using other settings.
Monotone setting on tones, not 1F, 2F or anything else just 1 tone.
Sense as high as I can go without much chatter, around this site that ranges from mid 70's to mid 90's.
This changes because if WiFi, whether I am under those power wires and some other things happening.
I have tried lower into 60 and even a bit below to knock out some if the signals from the really deep bigger pieces of iron and it seems to work but I still think higher gain penetrates into the soil a bit better and here even 1/2" might make a difference.
Thresh I have been trying -4 and lately -5.
The lower you go supposedly the more you cut out smaller items but I am still finding really tiny bits of metal with these settings...surprisingly tiny, and all coins and normal jewelry should come in fine.
Reducing that thresh makes for some pretty quiet hunting I found, even at higher sense settings.
Sometime I will try moving it down even further.
SLspeed.
DE is faster and usually recommend for hunting in iron but I found I get better, louder, clearer signals at deeper depths using SL even if that depth is only at 6".
In normal soil this would be different, DE got real deep in Kansas but here SL is better.
No notch.
I have been using the big DD coil for the past few weeks and I found with these settings I can get these pretty sharp, good signals if I move the coil very slow.
Many more good signals than I believed were still here when I swung a bit faster.
Using this coil in the last few hunts I found some modern coins, a nickel spill with 2 in the hole one a 64 and the other wrecked with a date I can't read but I suspect the 50's, a very tiny pin that I think is an Order of the Eastern Star variety which is an offshoot of the Freemasons for both men and women.
Every one well hidden and masked, every one a victory.
The best thing I found was a flat button that I can date back to 1820-1840 and so my oldest good target to date.
I thought this was a fluke, dropped by a passing hunter or trapper long ago.
Then the good signals dried up again.
I don't grid this site and usually just wander around but if I don't get any good signals for awhile I think a change us in order so that is what I did.
Yesterday I changed back to the sniper coil and wandered around this site again using the same settings.
Found a few more things and one got me really excited....excited enough to write up this novel to once again share my settings and knowledge gained through my experimentation.
Yesterday's hunt found me a few more modern cents from the 60's on up, 3 Luger 9mm shell casings all in the same area, another nickel this time dated 1940 and something else...another flat button!
I thought that first button was a lucky one time find but now I found another which makes me think this area might have, hold and be hiding way more and older history than just back to the late 1800's as I thought.
A beautiful one, says London Double Gilt on the back, still has the loop but just bent over and I think was made in the 1830's or earlier.
No gold left but who cares, these buttons and their age seems to impress the wife more than anything else I ever dug up and showed her so far so that is also a little bonus.
The park and the neighborhood surrounding it were dedicated in the mid 20's, people were hanging out before that I assume because of the older coins I found but going back this far to when this area was little more than hunting grounds and wilderness...that I had no inkling of a clue.
Now I am getting excited, if those people that lost these buttons were here could they have dropped a few coins too?
Hopefully, but now I have some pretty good settings that might give me a shot at them if they did.
Nobody else seemed to have figured out how to find and dig the things I have in this site so I figure if not me, who?
