My Trick To Finding Nickels

[mapper65]

Hi guys, after reading a post today that was talking about nickels and some others over the past few months I figured that I would chime in with my thoughts about finidng nickels. I do pretty well finding nickels but it's taken me some time to come to what I feel is a proven method. At least it works very well for me.

I've found for me that the first step of digging up an nickel is first getting a nice solid target ID of 12. Most of the time you will get a solid 12 or a 12 that occasionally bounces to a 14 but more of a 12 than anything. Very rarely will I find a nickel if a 10 is involved or a solid 14.

Once I get my solid 12, before I dig I go into pinpoint mode. If you get a higher pinpoint tone 95% of the time it's a pull tab or a piece of can slaw. If I get a lower tone similar to the sound of an old steam train whistle it's usually a nickel. Let's just say a "woooo" sound rather than a "weeee" sound for lack of better terms.

One last thing that I've noticed is that I use a Garrett Pro Pointer and even though I've used the above method with the detector to find and pinpoint what I think is a nickel, once I put the pinpointer to the ground, if it's a pulltab or can slaw, the pinpointer will usually detect it even before I've dug the plug. If it's a nickel, it typically doesn't register until I've dug the plug. I realize that there are exceptions like if the nickel is barely below the surface but for the most part I think that you will find what am saying here to be very true.

I think the difference in the tone coming from the detector between the two in pinpoint mode is that the pull tab or can slaw is a little more conductive which causes the detector to give off the higher pitch tone and the nickel being less conductive produces a lower tone. In the normal detect mode I don't believe that there is a difference in the tone between the two, just seems to be apparent in the pinpoint mode.

Hopefully this helps aout few people..

Have fun!

 

[kirk01]

Thanks for the tip.

I will give it a try.

Have you tested it with targets lying on the ground or must they be underground?

I imagine it might also work with a gold ring, many of which also show up as a 12.

Good Hunting

Denny

 

[Big Boys Hobbies]

Great info mapper. I will try it!

 

[Mtnmn]

My nickel readings correspond with Mapper's readings when using the 10.5" DD MF coil. The stock MF coil seemed to read slightly higher on nickels if I remember correctly. Once did a lot of research on exactly where gold rings hit at and it appears that only about 10% of all gold rings hit in the nickel range. With almost exactly half of all gold rings hitting in the nickel range and below and the other 50% hitting above that of nickels all the way up to the very low silver range. We pretty much have to dig everything between iron and silver, if we are really serious (not me) about finding gold rings.

 

[mapper65]

Have you tested it with targets lying on the ground or must they be underground?

I have not tested this with anything on top of the ground. Other then trying to see what ID certain items show up as, I typically don't do any air testing because that's not the normal environment that we would be looking for items in. But hey, anything more that we can learn about this hobby is always beneficial.

 

[TURNMASTER]

I find that Nickels have a more solid tone from both directions, usually. However in my soil with the 5x10 or 6" DD I get Nickels all the way to 18 on the TID, but the tone is usually better than what I get with a pull tab. The pull tabs are usually more broken or poppy sounding. They are not clean tones. The problem I have here is that some of my best Nickels were iffy at best and yet I just knew there was a Nickel in the hole.

Please remember though I regularly hunt ground that GBs from 10 to 40 and often as not I am GBing in the teens and twenties. I hit a property up north that ran anywhere from 11 in the front yard to 43 in the back yard. Also I run the DD coils exclusively and primarily the HF coils. Oh yeah I also hunt a lot of places that have EMI issues, and I believe that can vary the numbers a bit, but that is speculation and I can not prove it. My last V came in at 18 until it was dug then it hit 12. IIRC it was 4" to 6" deep and it was very close to a Buffalo.

Its all about the tones just as mapper says. Nickels are cleaner sounding, more solid and just a bit different from pull tabs, less jumpy (sound and ID).

Jeff