Pics Of Finds In Last 3 Hunts With GT & 12x10, Some Found First Via Pin Point Mode While Moving Fast & Then Checking In Disc...

[Critterhunter]

First, before the pics, refer to this thread about the key date Indian pics below and a few other items, that I hadn't posted the pics of in that thread, so they are listed below with the last two hunts as well pics wise...

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?21,1885033

There is no doubt, that while the 12x10 allows me to move fairly fast in disc without costing depth or unmasking ability, where I'd say I can move at about a medium to maybe even higher medium speed of a Whites in swing speed without performance loss or nulling...That pin point mode allows me to move and cover ground even faster, as it will sound off to anything the coil even sniffs to the edge to get my attention. Full volume, full sensitivity is possible in PP on these BBS units even in bad ground/EMI, and will blast deep at PI-like depths. Once I hear something to catch my attention, I'll stop and see if it has iron like traits in PP. If it doesn't, then I'll flip to disc and wiggle right over it so see what is up.

Another advantage to this reverse discrimination type of hunting is that in bad grounds or at extreme depth, unless you find it in PP and then get right over a target and wiggle in disc you may never even hear it. And I plan to start digging targets in PP beyond disc's ability to reach, so long as PP doesn't indicate they are probably iron. Might find some really deep coins that way at some sites, beyond even the incredible ability of BBS to punch deep in disc in bad ground. That's when you probably are going "where no man has gone before" at a site, even with a Minelab.

OK, let's get started with a little show and tell, some of which is about certain aspects of the 12x10, such as it's tiny target sensitivity...

First is of a silver pendant that read like a wheat at 178. Despite it looking silver in the hole, I knew it was plated due to the slightly lower VDI # than 180. Still had my heart going when I saw the head as I thought it was some kind of old coin perhaps not made from higher amounts of silver and mixed with another metal to bring it down a bit in VDI...
[attachment 261785 pendent1.jpg]

Next is the key date 1872 Indian. It read 167 on VDI. According to my chart and testing various Indian date ranges in the past, I think this year should have read 173 if I remember right by the chart, but due to it's poor shape it read 167. These pics are before I bathed it in boiling peroxide. Yea, never clean a key date coin but this puppy is so far gone that I figured it couldn't hurt it's value any more, and besides I probably won't ever sell it.

There was a plug about 2 feet away from this coin, and that always makes me think when that happens that if you don't pass your coil over a target and miss it with the edge of your coil or so, you'll never know it was there. I wonder how many coins we've missed over the years by doing that. I will be posting pics of this coin after several boiling peroxide baths, but below are the "before" pics.

You bring a shot glass of peroxide up to a boil in a microwave for like 20 seconds or whatever it takes to make it boil, and then throw the coin in there. If it needs repeated baths to bust off the crud, re-heat and do, letting it soak for a few hours between boils. I saw a few coins done this way and the results were amazing.

Bronze or copper coins that looked much worse than this one and yet cleaned up with amazing shape and detail you would have never guessed was there under all that crud, and yet still without removing the patina. I've read that it's also very hard to spot silver coins or such done this way have been cleaned, so long as you don't start removing too much patina. If any pitting shows up with the crust removed, I read that these pitts were already present and not caused by the peroxide. I guess this coin, based on closed fleabay selling prices, is probably worth in the $25 to $50 range or so...
[attachment 261786 Indian1.jpg][attachment 261787 Indian2.jpg][attachment 261788 indian3.jpg]

Second hunt the other day I got this 1945 merc...
[attachment 261789 1945merc1.jpg]

It looks in fairly good shape judging by the feathering in the hair, but I need to clean it up more. The other pic in this thread that shows all my finds for the last 3 hunts shows a blob of gold colored foil sitting next to the dime that was in the hole sitting right beside it, yet the merc gave a perfect signal from any direction as I wiggled over it. The super sharp DD line of the 12x10 allows you to snipe stuff right up against junk in the left/right perspective with ease. The stock 10" Tornado will do this, just not as "effortlessly".

The next pic shows that same merc with a small round lead shot next to it that was very deep. What confuses me is it read down into the upper pull tab range. I've dug lead shot from old flint locks or muzzleloaders in the past and they usually rang only as low as 173 (zinc penny) if they were small like this. I'm thinking the led is mixed with a lower conductor to make it a harder bullet...
[attachment 261790 mercroundballtinything.jpg]

You can also see in the above pic a tiny little thing that says "fore eyes" on it, which I think was a label off of sunglasses. It read like a wheat penny at around 176 or 178 from any angle and banged hard, yet it was in the 6 or 7" range if I remember right. I think this shows the said excellent sensitivity of the 12x10 to small items, as well as the improvement of the GT in that respect that some say it has over prior Sovereign models as well. These BBS units will bang hard on even the thinnest/plainest of women's gold bands at extreme depths, due to them being an intact loop, but with fine gold like thin chains or tiny gold earrings, Minelabs will struggle with that.

Ran out of photo space for this post, so next message with more pics below...

 

[Critterhunter]

OK, the other pics, which are from yesterday's hunt...

A button somewhere in size between a nickel and a quarter or so...
[attachment 261791 button1.jpg]

It has a very heavy layer of crust on it, but I think I can see what looks like two horsehoes on it or harps or something in a "U" shape, one of which overlaps the other and is offset to the side somewhat from it. This pic is after the first blast of boiling peroxide I dumped it in fresh from the microwave. It may not look like it did much yet but the shot glass was dark brown and had tons of floating gunk in it after only about 10 minutes. I will be doing repeated boils/soakings after each in it for an hour or two, and then re-boiling and doing it again, with me brushing it with a soft brush in between to help any loose crud flake off. When it's done I'll post after shot pictures.

Here's a before/after screen shot somebody posted somewhere shows the before/after of this peroxide process....
[attachment 261792 1820beforeafter.gif]

Amazing, ain't it? I've read you can use a toothpic on copper or bronze coins to clean out crud between fine tight areas of detail after using the boiling peroxide method. The toothpic is said to be soft enough not to scratch a copper or bronze coin, but I wouldn't try that on a silver coin as it's a softer metal.

As I think I said before, this method can be a crap shoot with some bronze/copper coins, and might reveal bad pitting under the crud, but it was already there and not caused by the cleaning. Also, while I've heard this method is the most "hidden" to a coin being cleaned, and can be used on silver as well, if you go too far and too much patina is removed it'll be obvious somebody cleaned it...

And here's another find from yesterday besides the button along with an old key (key in last pic below showing all the three day finds). This one is a 1911 barber. I dinged two edges of this coin bad! It has no mint mark but had it had one I think it might have been worth decent bucks even in this condition if I remember right.

As it stands right now it's about "Good" rating, somewhere between that and G8, as I can see 2 and 1/2 letters in the word "Liberty" on the head. The back looks in better shape with the latin words on the banner readable. The pics do not do it justice, as I was slightly out of focus for both it and the prior 45 merc I posted. Hard to get things right with a camera with a manual focus. Yea, it's got pleny of wear, but it's rare to pull a barber quarter with this much wear or less on it. I have dug at least one barber quarter in near mint condition though that was far better than this...
[attachment 261793 barber1.jpg][attachment 261794 barber2.jpg]

And here's the pic of all the items that I considered "keepers" over the last 3 hunts in the last 7 days or so roughly...
[attachment 261797 all1.jpg]

You can see the old key, a pile of clad in the upper right, along with wheats by themselves at the bottom right.

So all in all not too bad bag of keepers. I'm off to a real good start this year, as my signature file below shows for 2013 "Keepers" count...

Oh, by the way, the only reason I am even moving fast(er) is I'm wanting to cover ground at the sites I was at being more wide open areas. Normaly I prefer a nice and slow sniff around sites to find any keepers lurking about, as I feel that both helps me sniff out stuff in junk or iron, and also to get a hard look at super deep stuff. In disc with the 12x10 on my GT I find no loss of depth, and in fact it seems to hit harder at depth, if I pick up the pace a bit faster than the typical said 4 sceond Minelab crawl per sweep.

Might be the case with other Minelabs, their soils, or different coils, but this GT and 12x10 in my soil or sands can cruise at what you might call a medium Whites speed. Even still I prefer to crawl slower when I'm sniffing right around just. Only when I want a max hit on deep stuff I speed it up a bit with my swing, and yet still can hear a high tone mixed in with junk great due to the 12x10's laser sharp DD line.

 

[Critterhunter]

Ooops, forgot to add...In the last pic that shows everything together, you see that shiny nut (stainless I would suspect...and much shinier than the pic seems to show, with no rust on it at all despite what it looks like in the pic)...It's got a very old rusty bolt going through it and if you look close it sticks out both ends a good bit.

Here's a perfect example of the magic of Iron Mask ON on the Sovereign. I kept getting a coin/null/coin/null hit from it from any angle, yet I knew this wasn't a typical coin false from iron any machine can experience. The "coin" portion was very "solid" and not ghostly, not having typical iron traits to a spike, so I knew something was different about it.

The GT and the 12x10 had no trouble ignoring that iron yet pulling the non-ferrous aspect of the "as one" mixed ferrous/non-ferrous signal out of it and did a wonderful job telling me there were non-ferrous traits to that "as one" signal. I'm sure the sharp DD line of the 12x10 helped to "see" and "not see" one versus the other as I wiggled over it, but even with the stock 10" Tornado the wonder and magic of Iron Mask on these BBS units has found me plenty of good coins with iron laying right with them in the hole.

I think this is why the Excalibur and Sovereign are pretty much unique among machines in that you can't lower iron rejection on them. A detection signal can tell you the ferrous/non-ferrous aspects of a mixed signal that is washing over both items at once, and I think Minelab decided maybe for that reason they didn't need to lower iron rejection, as these BBS units try very hard to speak up and tell you any non-ferrous signals might be hiding somewhere in there.

If two non-ferrous items are together and washed over by a detection signal as one, a detection field can not tell you that there are two non-ferrous targets laying together. Usually what happens then is they are both averaged between each other in conductivity, although in my tests and experience in the field the GT seems rather good at trying to hold onto the higher conducting target's tone and VDI #. Better than I ever saw before with prior machines.

Also, detection fields can't hit a shallower object in any part of the field, even way off to the side, and still go deeper and see a coin below it, even if it's dead center under the coil. This is why having the right coil for the right job is of primary importance. While the 12x10 is deadly in left/right separation, no doubt a smaller coil will have the advantage in length wise separation with less need to re-grid a spot from various angles to miss any surrounding trash with the longer DD line of a larger coil. And, if a ring of trash surrounds a coin, let's say 8" in diameter "protecting it", then good chance any coil 8" or bigger is never going to see it

So that's why I wanted the little 7.25" Tornado for certain heavy trash sites on any given day I'm in the mood to use it, and also because I hear this little coil will hit coins super deep while a smaller coil might not be able to. I've read of 10 and 11" coins dug with this tiny little thing. Excited to use it, IF I can drag myself away from the 12x10, because it's outstanding at unmasking stuff even in heavy trash, even compared to all other smaller coils I've owned on various machines over the years.

Also, last item on that plate I didn't go over, is what looks like a really old button half eaten away. I'm not sure if it's what's left of a shotgun casing or an actual button until I clean it.

 

[Ron from Michigan]

Criter,nice finds.Thanks Ron

 

[Hotcz70]

Your off to a great start this year Critter.

Good stuff!

 

[Neil]

that 1911 looks in pretty good shape, a really nice find there.

I have little luck with copper coins, most are eaten up/pitted/falling apart.

Good start to your season

 

[Critterhunter]

Thanks Neil, Bryce, and Ron...I'm happy with how this year is starting, very much so.

Neil, yea....For a barber quarter and how they tend to be very worn due to long circulation in people's hands, I'm happy with it's condition. I think I've only dug one barber quarter in better non-wear condition than this over the years. All the rest were more worn than this one I think.

Shame coppers or bronze don't hold up well in some soils, but it's a crap shoot. The other day I saw a buddy dig a wheat cent at very good depth at the same site we were at that came out of the ground looking *almost* shiny and without any crust to speak of. I've done the same at some sites. You dig a crusty old wheat and then ten feet away you dig an older Indian and it's in really good condition with no crust.

I think it's due to the luck of the draw in what kind of soil they sat in in that immediate spot, and if it had any fertilizer put on it over the years as well, along with how wet that spot gets. Really wet ground I think can either protect the coin from air, or in some cases speed up the degradation maybe. Just never know.

One time I dug a large cent that was like it was laying in the coin shelf at a coin dealer and never had been dug. The only thing it had was one heavy crust green spot in one small area of it's surface. I think that had been a piece of iron touching it at one time, and might have masked it to other hunters until enough iron washed away and one day I happened to pass my coil over it. Book value at the time (about 15 years ago) was around $40. I should look up it's prices these days and see what that thing is going for.

Same deal with silver- there are times where I've dug them and they are black or like ash grey and you'd think it was a clad based on looks. I always try to be careful at a new site and watch any "clads" I dig to make sure it's not the ground doing funky things to the silver there.

Another one that comes to mind is a stack of 3 or 4 silver quarters I dug that was in dirt that had come from a river that was dredged in a small spot. Those quarters, stuck and stacked together, where covered on the outside of the stack with a white powder like substance. Never saw anything like that before, and this was fresh water as well that they came from. Some kind of electralysis between them I suspect. Come to think of it, I wonder if the road right by that spot 10 feet away having salt thrown on it in the winter for years might have had something to do with the weird white power appearance of the stack?

 

[deepdiger60]

Good hunt Critter it,s a start for the year , this morning ill be hunting with my repaired GT box looks like its prefect . HH Jim

 

[gear box]

Congrats on the nice finds Critter! So you said the 1872 came in at 167. What prompted you to dig that target. Was it the tone or were you digging most everything? Anyway good finds.
HH Gary

 

[Critterhunter]

In the mood to dig it all for the day above iron. Doing that got me that Indian, along with that thin gold chain a month or two back, and several other keepers I wouldn't have dug if I was just sniffing for likely deep or masked coin hits like I usually do.

Rarely do I get in such moods, but when I do it usually pays off. That's why so many newbies make great finds at "dead" sites with a dime store detector. They dig what others think they know better not to dig.

Mainly over the years when I get in one of those moods, I'll pick a small say 12x12 foot area and dig all the junk out of there above iron, hoping for a great low or mid conductor find, or say a masked silver or other old coin that was under the trash.

I always chuckle when I hear guys complain all their old sites are hunted out. No site is ever hunted out until you dig everything above iron out of there, and even then just a tiny speck of iron will mask a deeper coin.

I read an excellent article once where a guy masked a silver coin with a tiny paper staple. The coin was at like 6 or 7" and he started with the staple on the surface, and kept lowering the stable in the ground until he could hear the coin. Well, if I remember right the coin couldn't be seen at all no matter how close the staple got until it was either pretty much right on top of the coin or was perhaps off to the side a bit.

And to realize the impact of this even more, once the staple got deep enough below the surface away from the coil, he no longer even got a null or a iron response to indicate the staple was there in the first place. IE: Silent Masking. You don't even hear a iron response or null to let you know it might be masking a deeper coin beneath it.

First (shallowest) target that touches any part of the detection field, even off to the side of the coil, while a deeper coin is directly under the coil, and you've got no hope to see that coin. The field warps around and interacts with the first metal object, meaning the shallowest, that touches any part of the field.

Only when the masking item directly above or even off to the side of the coin a good bit gets deep enough and very close to the coin if not touching, can the field wash over both at once and might have a chance to sound off to the coin being masked. From what I've read in the past a detection field does have some ability to "curl" around a masking item right on top of a coin, but only to very minimal degrees, and only if the surface of that coin is exposed in some places without the object on top of it completely covering it.

It's been years since I read this, but it is what I've seen in my tests over those years. For instance, I did a youtube video where I put notched out round and square tabs with the GT and then laid dimes, nickels, and pennies under each tape. When I scanned back over the tabs they now sounded off, because the coins had exposed surfaces in the gaps and holes of the tabs, and also at the edges, where the field could curl just a bit warping around the tab and wash over parts of the coins.

All this is why I prefer DDs to concentrics, because *in general* concentrics only do their best separation at the tip of the detection field where it's deepest, while a DD tends to have much better left/right separation at any depth. I've used terrible DDs with fuzzy detection fields on a few machines, but I'd have to say the 10" Tornado on these BBS machines is the best *stock* DD I ever used, with a fairly tight field, but the 12x10 steps all aspects of performance up several notches, and it's DD line is much sharper to me.

So with detection fields not being able to see around corners, or not hit a closer object like and still "shine" on something further away like a flashlight can do, I want the sharpest DD line I can have in a bigger coil, and also a tiny trash coil to improve length wise separation of the DD line without needing to re-grid a spot from as many directions to unmask certain targets.

 

[gear box]

I know what you mean about digging everything above iron I rarely do it but can see the potential. Last summer I was out of a meter for awhile and I relied strictly on my hearing which isn't very good. Whenever the tone changed I would dig and I dug quite a few good targets that I may not have with the meter. I remember a gold plated ring and a couple of tokens. A few buttons were also in the mix along with a few dozen beavertails, fliptops, square tabs and assorted small pieces of brass and aluminum.
HH Gary

 

[Critterhunter]

Gearbox, you don't seem to visit or at least chime in in the forum that regular, but I can say when you do it's always with great finds or great input on various aspects of detecting. Wish you'd offer up your finds and wisdom more than you do. Your finds prove that out...

Only problem I have when gridding a small area for all targets to dig above iron, is that such a small place can start to look like a minefield if not careful. So what I do is dig the more "solid" hits first, despite where they hit on the conductivity scale, and then come back later after the ground has healed to dig the "lessor" ones, in perhaps 3 or 4 visits after each ground heal.

And besides, these Minelabs don't like disturbed ground, so after it's healed might be a super deep coin in there that a fresh plug or two masked to the machine, and this isn't just about MInelabs...Ground balancing on conventional machines can have issues with plugs, air gaps, and disturbed ground matrix as well.