Refining that high power all metal hunting method in heavy iron...

[REVIER]

For those of you following my adventures and experimental settings in extreme iron infested sites...

As some of you know, I have been experimenting with different settings on my F70 trying to get through the unbelievable amount of iron at a site that had an old farmhouse at one time.
There is some very large iron pieces buried here, I have dug up several tools, farm implements, irregular iron and steel sections from the old house, almost every few inches there are bits and pieces of wire, iron, rusty steel in sizes that range from tiny and thin to medium size to larger.
Now let's talk about nails.
Maybe a million from small on up in all shapes and sizes...screws and bolts, too.
It is not unusual to open any given hole and pull out 3-4-5 bits of iron or nails...or more.
It is almost like they knocked down the house, took all the wood away but somehow managed to leave every bit of metal and buried it in the ground at depths from shallow to about 12".
I came here several times before with different detectors and coils and could make no headway, I know for sure a few others tried hunting here but only once, found very little if anything and then they headed for much easier sites.
I am stubborn, I kept coming back because I knew there had to be a way to get through this mess and at the good targets many suspected were here, then one day I showed up with my F70 and tried something new to me, full power, slow speed, (like boost on the F75), all metal, threshold maxed out at 9.
I got no solid signals here, everything is masked and skewed, but I looked for any signal that wasn't iron, or had blocks of higher numbers or flashes of numbers and tones mixed in with the iron signals and I turned and hit all of those type signals from a different direction to see if I could repeat that signal.
Many big pieces of iron would throw off high numbers and tones on the perimeter of the object, by turning I could eliminate most of these because they would usually go back to solid iron numbers only and I avoided digging those.
To my surprise this high power method worked, that first time I dug many targets that weren't coins but weren't iron, either.
Over the last sever a l weeks I have gone back there several times and practiced this method and got better and better at it.

So far I have dug several wheaties from the teens to the 40's, a 1917 merc, a walker half, some pocket watch pieces, 6 pocket knives, a lot of other cool objects and yesterday a beautiful 1901 Indian Head and they were all hovering at the 6" area and all extremely masked.
Many of these targets had several bits of iron in the same hole, but the F70 still seemed to get a piece of the good items and somehow let me know.

Yesterday I had the easiest time so far avoiding most trash metal and finding that Indian because I made 2 slight changes in my settings.
I switched to DE speed, much faster in this iron mess, and lowered the sense to 90.
Still more experimenting to do, maybe lower the sense a bit more and that threshold, too.
I might be able to firm up some of the good parts even more of the real targets mixed in with all those iron signals, but right now this is working well and I'm getting better at doing this with practice and with every tweak of the settings.

I am on the lookout for more challenging sites like this.
Confidence is growing and I think I can do this at any sites like this or at least I hope I can.

 

[Steve O]

That's a beautiful Indian Revier. That's the way I run the 75 in sites like you described. I don't use AM, but I crank it up. If Any disc at all it will be 4 or less. I occasionally use the 5" coil, but believe it or not, I prefer the 11" in high iron/trash....I always find more with it. Ya really have to concentrate in those sites, no daydreaming like in the field.

 

[Elton]

Nice Indian ..and sounds like a lot of varied other items you have isolated from the iron pockets..
Have you ever tried a really low sensitivity ???

 

[REVIER]

Nice Indian ..and sounds like a lot of varied other items you have isolated from the iron pockets..
Have you ever tried a really low sensitivity ???

Not yet, but considering I can find a dime at 5" in cleaner soil on about 20 sense I bet it might work and maybe better than the high settings but we will see one day.
I love this place...so challenging and my own little laboratory that I can try all kinds of different things and see what works.

I forgot to mention that before I dug this Indian at about the 6-7" mark, I got this piece of a large square nail out of the hole first and it was sitting maybe 2" above the better target.
The hole I dug was no wider than 6" so it was sitting over this coin and it might have been directly over it.
I was using the large DD coil so definitely both were being scanned at the same time.
I have never dug one good target here yet without at least one if not several pieces of iron coming out with it.
Good to know that the Fishers have the ability to see through iron or at least around it some.
I knew my F70 was good around iron and I have learned to understand it when it tries to tell me it sees something good down there in an iron field, now I am trying to find the perfect settings to make it all even more easy and obvious.

 

[NASA-Tom]

Your commendable perservering (initially painful) learning-curve will open up infinite hunting opportunities with the resultant being: prideful 'finds of a lifetime'!

 

[mudpuppy]

Yeah, the kind of concentration required to hunt in a mess like that with those hot settings is commendable alright! I agree, it will serve you well and make ANY other site a piece of cake! Excellent finds and write up...good post to learn from!
Mud

 

[REVIER]

That's a beautiful Indian Revier. That's the way I run the 75 in sites like you described. I don't use AM, but I crank it up. If Any disc at all it will be 4 or less. I occasionally use the 5" coil, but believe it or not, I prefer the 11" in high iron/trash....I always find more with it. Ya really have to concentrate in those sites, no daydreaming like in the field.

Heavy concentration, for sure, and moving that coil at the correct slow speed even in DE is a must.
I also use that big DD coil more than my standard elliptical and 5" sniper at most sites.
Turn the sense down to 30 or so and that field seems to shrink and tighten up so I can hunt in trash sites like around picnic pavilions and basketball courts easily and still pluck out some good targets.
In wide open areas the coverage gives me confidence that I am not missing much, in old parks and other sites raise the sense up a bit and I can get surprisingly deep.
I have hunted this site with all 3 of my coils and pulled out good targets, but I have used the big one the most and even in this super dense trash it seems to be working very well.

 

[REVIER]

Your commendable perservering (initially painful) learning-curve will open up infinite hunting opportunities with the resultant being: prideful 'finds of a lifetime'!

Thanks Tom.
You are correct...hunting this site initially with other detectors was a frustrating experience.
Everyone suspected good things were buried, but it was so difficult to find them most just visited here once and gave up.
With all the practice I have had this summer the lessons have been eye opening but slow in coming...but they have been learned.
Knowing what I know now I took my Vaq to this site and found an early 20's wheat buried deep in the trash, something I wasn't able to do before,
More opportunities in the future, I hope so, and also hopefully with all the different detectors I might want to use.

 

[REVIER]

Did it again using the same settings as last time.
Not silver or an Indian, and this coin is nowhere near the shape of that IH, but it is a 1919d and a 95 year old coin is a great find for me.
Especially in a place like this.

 

[wayne_etc]

Have you tried the Compadre at this site? Maybe set up with discrim just above iron and pull everthing that gives a half-way sorta decent BEEP?




w

 

[B.P.Beeper]

When hunting a site like this do you keep your eyes on the screen and check for good numbers or do you listen for a nice sounding target and then check the numbers?
Have you tried single tone with low discrimination to block small iron nails?
If so, have you found AM better at this site?
Does AM give a faster response or more stable and less falsing / better numbers?

 

[REVIER]

Have you tried the Compadre at this site? Maybe set up with discrim just above iron and pull everthing that gives a half-way sorta decent BEEP?




w

Yes I have, and the Vaq too.
They seem to work, but I still dig more nails with those than the F70.
There are more good sounding pretty stable high tones with those and without the extra screen info to back me up, as jumpy as that info is, I just have to dig them.
The Vaq did find me another nice old wheatie, though.
In some areas using my Tesoros I wouldn't mind digging trash, but there is so many bits of high tone rusty iron here the Fisher with the screen cuts out most of them and finds me more good targets in less time.

 

[REVIER]

When hunting a site like this do you keep your eyes on the screen and check for good numbers or do you listen for a nice sounding target and then check the numbers?
Have you tried single tone with low discrimination to block small iron nails?
If so, have you found AM better at this site?
Does AM give a faster response or more stable and less falsing / better numbers?

In all metal eyes on the screen at all times.
A single tone only using that so I must watch closely and see if I can get any higher numbers or blocks of higher numbers than iron at all, check to see if they repeat at all, turn 90 degrees and see if they all repeat again, then dig.
When I do use disc at this site it is mostly as a check but not to hunt in, I have been using the 3-4H modes to listen for a repeating high tone since silver or copper cents are what I am after.

One tone with low disc like Rocket Tom suggests, not really.
The way I have been doing it seems to be working but I do plan on trying that in the future.
Who knows...that way might work as well or better for me.

I have found that AM works well for me at all sites and especially and especially sites with high EMI and/or tons of trash...even with the big DD coil.
It didn't start out that way for me, I used to use AM with all settings maxed out only as a check and hunted low disc, but one day at a trashy old park on the outskirts near a street with houses or something else causing a huge amount of EMI, I forgot to switch back to disc and started swinging and found even though there was a huge amount of fast jumping in the tone and on the screen I realized I was able to pick out the good signals when the F70 stopped for a second and showed me.
Over the last several months I started using all metal more and more, and lots of times I like using 2F when I am in disc and hunting in areas like woods when I do use disc because it sounds similar to all metal.

When hunting in parks I usually use 4F when in disc and go back to listening for the good tones first and then check out the screen exactly the same way I hunted with the F2.

At this site AM seems to be the best way to do it for me, and here nothing gives stable numbers and there is a ton of high tone flashing from the rusty iron but I can still pick out the good targets easier in AM.
That's me, but I have had a lot of practice using AM in the last several months so I got used to it.

 

[Wishful-thinker]

This may sound crazy..but have you tried GBing the 70 to a large chunk of iron, like that nail.. i know it wont perfectly,but enough to unmask a few goodies....like gold hunting, but not eliminating hot rocks, but Iron instead. I have done it with another machine ,but didnt get into a site that bad enough to try it with my 70, or just dont remember trying it...just a thought. I would try it befor posting,but just had my 2nd leg surgery and layed up at the moment.

 

[REVIER]

This may sound crazy..but have you tried GBing the 70 to a large chunk of iron, like that nail.. i know it wont perfectly,but enough to unmask a few goodies....like gold hunting, but not eliminating hot rocks, but Iron instead. I have done it with another machine ,but didnt get into a site that bad enough to try it with my 70, or just dont remember trying it...just a thought. I would try it befor posting,but just had my 2nd leg surgery and layed up at the moment.

I haven't tried that, although I usually have to dig some iron targets out of an area to get a clean space to GB here, even using the small sniper coil.
At times that I did not do that I might have actually GB'd over iron, but I have been here enough to know what the GB numbers should be , and they are slightly different in areas around this site for some reason.
There is not a lot, but certain areas might have a thin layer of fill dirt brought in from other places.

After I wrote this I continued to hunt here and as the amount of non ferrous targets thinned out I eventually switched to other settings that seem to be much less jumpy and more stable that works even better than these blast through high power settings.
These settings were taken from posts that I read from by Nasa Tom.
Using 1 tone, DE speed, sense on 85, disc at 4 or below and threshold at -2 I was able to dig many more non ferrous targets, still avoid all of the big iron and most of the smaller iron nails and wire and get much more accurate numbers on those non iron targets.
Everything is still heavily masked, but using these settings I was able to pull one more older wheatie from an area I thought I cleaned up and the numbers did not jump anywhere nears as much as with the high power settings in AM and stayed in a block of mid 70's numbers in a span of only about 3-4 instead of 7-10 like the other way.
Much easier to recognize the good targets this way.
Also, these 1 tone settings, even with negative threshold numbers seem to still go pretty deep.

These new settings worked so well in iron I have been trying them at other park sites with no problems with iron in high density but massive amounts of normal park trash like can slaw, foil, pop tops and tabs of all kinds.
To my surprise these 1 tone settings seem to be able to pick though heavy trash as well as iron, and in the last week at 3 different parks in heavy trash, 2 near parking areas and one site next to an older basketball court, I have recognized and pulled out not only hidden clad but some other great targets I missed hunting these areas on other visits in the past.
4 of the best targets are pictured below.
All were surrounded by trash, the gold ring was a dead on foil signal but like the others the F70 locked on and gave me some solid numbers that didn't jump more than 3 so I dug it.
The gold ring and the fish ring were found using the big F75 DD coil, the gold and silver ring and the grill with the sniper coil.
The picture with the coins and pocket knives is pretty much the good stuff I pulled out of that iron mine after repeated visits all summer using those all metal high power settings and 3 different coils on the F70.
Not bad considering I had no luck hunting here many times before using other detectors and coils, and the only thing that I know of that came out of this site for several other hunters that were very experienced and capable using some high end detectors was one lone silver dime.


This is all exciting stuff for me.
With practice, (and it did take a little practice time and experience to get good at both of these methods and I am still working on it), I now know 2 completely different ways to hunt in heavy iron infested sites and another way to set up the F70 to hunt in heavy park trash with confidence.

Later today I am going to my last outdoor MD club meeting for the year.
This is an old site with many buildings that is private and in as far as we know has never been hunted.
Back in 1900 the original home, a large wooden building, had a fire and was burned to the ground and another was built in its place.
If I can determine where this building stood there will probably be lots of iron around the area, at fire sites there always are, but using both methods I just might be able to find some great older coins.
That is my hope, anyway.
I will report back later with my results.

As always, the shear amount of setting combinations available to me on the great F70 is just unbelievably awesome and the results I am seeing trying different ones can be jaw dropping at times.

 

[NamVetLesTreasureSeeker]

REIVER, Being there is SO MUCH various Types of IRON, I would Pick-Up a Heavy Duty MAGNET like they SELL at Harbor Freight Stores!! Their NOT that Expensive, Have an
EYELET on Them, so YOU can Attach a ROPE to them!! Then Grid an AREA by DRAGGING the MAGNET over a HEAVY Iron INFESTED Area, before YOU use Your F-70
Detector in that area!! That way, YOU can CLEAR any SHALLOW Iron from the AREA, which Should make it EASIER to Detect!! Also SCAN Your HOLES with a SMALLER
M-A-G-N-E-T, that YOU can attach to the Very TOP of your Digging TOOL, or on the END of a Piece of WOOD or a Handle that goes on a HAMMER or something!! YOU
get my jest!! BEST of LUCK, Les Robinson.