Still learning in all metal!

[Knipper]

Took the SE out for a few hours tonight to an old county park that saw a lot of activity, going back as far as the late 1850's.

No large cents have ever been found there, but there have been seated and Indian head finds as well as Barber silver in the past. Typical for this area, its been pounded to death. The one thing that makes me go back there is the incredible amount of deep trash, believe or not. There has been no extensive landscaping or soil disturbances. Most of the deep trash consists of nails or parts of nails, rusty segments of wire, and of course, deep rusty bottle caps. The latter is due to all the picnics that were held there over the years.

I hunted tonight with my new Excelerator 12" coil, (iron mask, AM) hoping to find the ones everyone else left behind. Sadly, no deep coins were found. The only consolation was a sterling silver ring found about 4" down in a section that was once a ball field (not a deep find for this machine...) . Any silver is nice, but not when you have your heart set on an old dime or quarter! I dug about 20 or so deep signals that sounded to me like a good find mixed in with trash. Frequency of iron tones sounding off in this area is unbelievable, but I only dug signals that showed deep on my screen and at least bounced into the coin area from a couple of different angles. Most of these turned out to be deep rusty nails. I'm using a Uniprobe to scan inside the deep holes. That probe will not miss ANY metal. I really dug deeper than I should have on some of them, as the signal sounded promising, but now I wonder if I'm listening for the right thing.

I'm in Ferrous tones, and all signals that were in the bottom right hand corner of the screen were high pitched. They read 00-02 to 00-05. They were distracting, of course, but the depth and read out gave them away as trash, I think (?) Some signals in the upper left corner also squealed and which surprised me. I thought with Ferrous, I'd only get higher pitches on the right hand side. I was able to keep sensitivity on the big coil to around 25 most of the time, but in some areas, I had to drop it to 22 to get at least some stability. Most of the deep targets I decided to pursue further saw the cursor land in the "coin area" at least 75% of the time, but digging just revealed iron. I dug well past the depth indicator and sometimes deeper even when there was no longer a signal coming from the hole. Naturally I checked ever grain of soil coming out of the hole. Though I found it relatively easy to single out the high pitch, or medium pitch coin sounds, after the inevitable trash came out of the hole, all was silent...even after probing and digging deeper. I did manage to call a couple of deep pull taps (the old kind) correctly before I dug them out.

So, I'm thinking I'm missing something in translating what the machine is telling me. Perhaps I'm too liberal in accepting the sounds I choose to dig. Maybe the bouncing cursor just indicates a rusty nail (or two) and not a good find mixed in. I think only digging more targets and associating the find with the action of the cursor, or index numbers, will tell. The good news is, the ton of iron signals is getting easier to ignore every outing.

When the 4X7.5 Excelator coil comes, I'll have to give it another go, though part of me worries it won't go deep enough for this park. Of course, it could be I just didn't pass the coil over any good signals tonight, too, but my gut tells me there are some real keepers still left there.

If any can shed some light on whether I'm doing something wrong, or should change to conductive, other settings, interpret signal readout consistency differently, etc, let me know. Other settings were Volume 10, Variability 10, Recovery mode Deep, Gain 7.

So many are reporting success with worked out parks with the SE and other Explorers, I want to learn what its trying to tell me as quickly as I can!

thanks for reading!

Knipper

 

[digitrich]

This is just an opinion and probably not the one you want to hear. But if you are digging bottle caps and pull tabs at over 8 inches you may be in an area with additional fill or lots and lots of years of grass clippings and leaves. Meaning your better finds might be beyond your reach of your or any other detector. Your premise is right on in the manner you're doing, however the location might not be cooperating. I have a park where anything deeper than 8 inches is either a nail or a coin, no modern trash below 6-7 inches and in a park like that, you'd clean up. Try your same theory at another location and or in the same location, just further away from the areas of modern trash so your trash to finds ratio goes down. As for the 4.5 x 7 which I own and is a great coil, depth is not it's strong suit, separation of not very deep targets close to each other is, as is the case with all small coils. In a park with modern trash deep a small coil is only maybe going to find jewelry and clad. Because if the modern stuff is that deep the older stuff is probably deeper yet, especially if you're talking about pull tabs and bottle caps, which sink slower than coins in most soils because they are lighter and yet have the same surface area. One last thing you can try at this site would be a monster coil, say a 15 inch, but if you have lot's of trash it's going to be real difficult. If you turn your gain down to 5 you will be able to tell the difference between deep and shallow targets by just the tones loudness, with out having to wait for the depth gauge to update. But you are on the right track.

 

[Chris(SoCenWI)]

Knipper,

I'll make a attempt at explaining what you are seeing:

Deep trash is very common at almost all sites, especially iron. Botttle caps are a relatively recent(last 60-70 years?) invention; they shouldn't be as deep as much of the other iron. I usually hunt with an open screen with only bottle caps disc'd out(not iron mask mode). This should help with the bottle caps because they do sound good in ferrous. As digitrich said if bottle caps are 8" down the area probably saw some fill dirt over the years and that may put the real old ones out of reach.

You will get lots of iron signals that are high tone even in ferrous. It does the same in conduct. The WHOLE key to this machine is to get as good as possible between telling the difference between iron falsing and deep/comingled targets. And many times they sound exactly the same so the only choice is dig. I also probably error on the side of digging many iffies. I have a periscope probe and use that to determine whether to dig. If you are not familiar the periscope is a probe metal detector and can determine the ID/location before digging. Probably 90% of the ones I probe are iron.

It is possible to be much pickier and only dig the ones that are most likely coins, but I know if I did this I would have missed many of my best finds. The reverse is that I have dug some REALLY iffy signals when I have found a coin spill that turned out to also be coins. If I dug every signal of this quality on a regular basis I would be have only detected about 20 yards from where I initially started out 6 years ago.

Sound to me that you are doing fine. One of the best hints for iron is that it will bounce from way upper left to right, but on the right side it usually hits a bit lower. But as Charles(UpstateNY) says there are exceptions to every rule. I recently found a key date half, it hit iron mixed with hot rock, normally would not have dug it but a little something said???. Long story short we've been discussing techniques to tell the difference on this forum for many years; there is a wealth of general rules of thumb, but it all boils down to experience. And what some would walk past others would dig and visa versa and that is why no area is ever completely worked out.

Chris

 

[Knipper]

Thanks Chris...

Digitrich and yourself are most likely correct. That site has been pounded for years. Even my deepest Barber dime there was only 6 - 8 inches deep. IH cents were the same or less. I was just thinking that the trash could mask some nice ones from the old tech detectors that originally hit the place. The bottle caps are not that deep, 4-5 " at the most. The deep iron I'm running into consists of all kinds of nails, from square nails to horseshoe nails, mostly very corroded and rusty. There are very few of the old pulltabs there, probably dug up years ago by people thinking like myself.

Its a large area, but not huge. I'm sure there are more productive sites out there, but time and opportunity haven't cooperated. At least one thing's for sure...training my ears to ignore the low toned iron sounds is working. I'm now able to pick out the higher pitched signals as they sound off while all the iron is blasting. I figure when I DO find a better site, I'll be way ahead of the game. Until then, I'll have to be content with searching the less obvious places at this site.

Two years ago, one club member ventured into the woods on the perimeter of this park. He was finding V nickels and IH's by just kicking dirt and leaves away! I got in on a little of that and found some myself...(thick woods and brambles are not fun to hunt, especially with bugs thrown in, but nothings going to stop me from old coins!)
It seems there was an old path there leading up to a small outcropping of limestone that would have afforded a good view of the lake/river. The coins were found on, and on either side of, this path. Problem is, like many places, since the woods have been allowed to go feral again, its a prime place for idiots to throw their trash, and some places have piles of it under the leaves, mostly foil and cans from picnics.

Anyway, thanks for the encouragement. It always takes time to master a new machine, that is, to the extent I like to, so I plan to be patient and keep at it!

Knipper

 

[Chris(SoCenWI)]

Knipper,

The explorer will find the deepies that others have missed, especially in trash. I always have best luck in early spring before grass starts to grow and soil is wet- assuming you live somewhere north abit. Try it then and you may start pulling seateds and large cents.

Chris