Smart Find vs Digital

[waseeker]

It's me again (the newbie) with another question. I've been doing some sidewalk strip hunting in older parts of town and have had some success in finding older wheats and silver coins.

although the sidewalk strip is public property and it is legal to hunt, most of them are maintained very nicely and so I take extra caution in retrieving coins so I don't leave ugly scars or evidence that I was there

As is typical most anywhere there are lots of lots of cents in the ground. To my untrained ears the copper ones give off a great high pitched tone. Everything in this area is pretty shallow. I don't want to leave a lot of "little holes" so I use my probe to retrieve the shallow stuff. However, my back is giving out from digging all of the memorial cents.

I haven't messed much with the SE's digital mode. Will it give me sufficient discrimination between wheat and memorial cents? How about between copper cents and silver dimes?

thanks

 

[dewcon4414]

I noticed no one wanted to tackel this so here goes. As you noticed some of the better hunters hunt in smartfind because it gives them more info on those iffy signals and they dont tend to cherry pick. The numbers are pretty accurrate for the coins you mentioned. Wheat - 4/28, memorials 7/27, indian head... bounce around but 7/25, and dimes 3/29. However, the memorials do act like dimes on occassion when they are on top of the ground so you may have to raise your coil a bit to get a correct reading. Otherwise reduce your sensitivity or use Auto sensitivity since you arent trying to go really deep. You might also try LEARN on the memorials with a small cursor size.

 

[dewcon4414]

One more thing. Go to THEBEEPGOESON DOT COM, he has a pretty good listing of many of the digital readings. These numbers may very based on your settings, but the CONDUCTIVE numbers are pretty accurate.

 

[Weasel_Loader]

When I first started learning my Explorer SE, I was stuck on digital and thought I'd never learn smartfind. I still always checked smartfind before I dug the target in hopes that one day I'll switch over from digital and sure enough, after seeing how deep silver reacts on smartfind, I now use smartfind as my primary screen, but still occasionally check it in digital before I dig. Seeing as I hunt with Conduct tones, I have to rely on the smartfind since bouncing on the top from right to left and back sounds the same when I'm using iron mask at 26.

 

[waseeker]

Thanks for the input and info folks.

I went to my local park yesterday to bury a few test coins and see what kind of readings I could get. (I don't have space at home for a test garden). I dug a couple of 3" holes and tried out different coins in them to see what kind of readings I would get. I would put a coin at the bottom of the hole, put the plug back and then sweep it from the 4 main compass points.

The Conductivity readings were very consistent from every direction. However, the Ferrous readings varied quite a bit (from 00 up to 07) depending on which direction I was sweeping the coil. That confuses me since I would have expected the readings to be consistent especially at only 3".


But I'll keep working at it and will get it figured out eventually.

 

[TokenDigger]

I hunt in Smart Screen and notice that silver coins (and clad quarters) are usually way up in the right hand corner and give off a high "sweet" pitch. Cents (and clad dimes) are slightly off from the corner and the sound isn't as high pitched. (This can change with deeper silver, especially if they have heavy tarnish). It is sometimes tough to sort out memorials from wheat ears so on tree lawns I usually dig only the signals about 3 inches or deeper. This also cuts down on the number of holes you dig, reducing the chance of leaving any "ugly scars". Use caution when digging and treat the tree lawn like it were your own lawn. I also sometimes use the smaller loop when I hunt tree lawns, unless the good signals are scarce or if the tree lawns are large. I don't usually dig iffy signals on tree lawns since there can be a lot of junk from the road or from where people put out their trash. Happy hunting!

 

[waseeker]

Thanks Token Digger. I went back to the area today where I had passed up some signals last week. I did manage a couple of wheats and a 1962 Panama 1 Centismo along with some clad. I think part of my problem is that my hearing isn't quite good enough to consistently distinguish dimes from the copper memorial cents. I'm getting better and I think as I dig more silver I'll get even better, but those durn tones just sound so good to me.