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Why run the disc below foil?

thump7

Active member
Or below the 11 O'clock mark?
I don't get it. Why would I put myself through and all day foil and trash dig so that I could hopefully find a piece of gold jewelery at the end of the day?
Where as I can regularly go out, cherry pick $10 -$30 clad while finding silver and not dig a bottlecap or pulltab with the Vaq, in 4-8 hrs.
Sure I love AM/VCO mode and will brag it to the ends of the earth, but I only use it as a technique for identifying targets, on the beach or on a really old site.
As far as running the disc below foil in a park, totlot, or homesites..... it makes no sense to me.
Every target I want will fall into the accepted range of discrimination with the disc set on or slightly above foil.
The targets missed are a very small and feasible loss to sacrifice in return for not digging all the trash that goes along with them. Coins on edge won't register, but if you know your VCO that isn't much of a problem either.

So, am I missing something?
 
You hit the nail on the head. If it is only coins and silver you want and don,t care about finding gold you can run it at foil or above. I pick and choose after being at the site for a few minutes. On less trashier sites I run the disc on my Compadre sometimes around the r or o in iron and in more trashier sites at the o or l in foil. I did find a nice gold wedding band on the iron setting. If i have little time to hunt i set my Compadre just after zinc. I think it is all about the purpose of a particular hunt as to the settings i run.
 
We're all different, and different ones of us want to find different things at different times. I guess that's why we select different settings on our different detectors.:happy:
 
Good comment, yesterday I was at an old homesite that was a trash haven. I was getting tired of it and started bumping up the disc. Well it ended up for a large part of the hunt I kept my disc just above the tab mark! Now I know some here will be shaking their head no, no ,no but that doesn't matter to me. It was my situation and my choice simply because the finds were very few and far between. Guess what, my find rate went up! I was having a better time than before and when I go out I am there to have a good time. We all know the V resets extremely fast and if you slow your swing a little Witth the disc turned up its not such a bad thing, sure you will lose a little depth but I personally don't think it is as much as some of the other detectors on the market. I don't recommend doing this all the time because I too want to find the gold jewelry, most of the time I run my disc low but if the situation is bad where I am at I will do it..

Just my own opinion,



Jeff
 
thump7 said:
So, am I missing something?

For you...no, not missing a thing if this is how you want to do it.
For guys like me, it would just kill me to think I left some precious in the ground so I dig mostly everything, and I am fine with it.
With my Vaq I used to set the disc a little below foil and I found all the clad and other cool stuff including some precious metals.
Then I got my Compadre and went over some of my old sites and found all the stuff you see in the pics.
All of these items came in in the vicinity of iron, and now I hunt with the Vaq the same way.
Sure, I am digging much more tiny bits of foil and can slaw, but I am fine with it.
Every time something real good pops up out of the ground, all that digging magically becomes all worthwhile...for me.
Whatever makes you happy, just do that.
 
Here's some suggestions to what's been posted. For those without a "tab" or other markings experiment a bit with tabs, nickels etc. and put a mark where they crack out on the disc setting. I don't want to pass up gold or buffalo nickles so I hunt with my disc set below where a nickle is lost. When I hit a target I thumb the discrimination knob up until the target drops out. If it's a dime quarter, half etc. It'll still sound off at full disc. If it's a zinc penny, tab, or other trash it'll drop out in that range. Experiment carefully and you'll be able to mark the difference between a tab and a zinc penny where they fall out below a copper penny and clad or silver. If you haven't worked this way, you'll be surprised at how often you'll ID the target correctly with this method after a bit of practice.
BB
 
It depends on location and your perspective. My perspective is that I make the change in coins to pay for our sodas at work. We never have paid for them-the coins I find have. In the meantime, the gold I find will pay for a year's "fun" finding coins. I cashed in over $600 last year. I would guesstimate I had about $300 coins. Not to downplay your post-some of the rings WERE large enough for other detectors-in fact the Silver umax found 1 or 2. But it was at min. disc.-like always.
 
One big thing everyone seems to have missed is the fact that Tump7 said "not dug a pulltab or bottle cap" Ummm seems you would have to be running a ton above foil to block out tabs, you would also remove nickels.

You would be running above tab too. Your right you wont miss a dime, quarter, penny or larger silver.

Mike
 
Well, I went out with my Compadre set at "i" in iron-just enough to get rid of paper clips. I was expecting nickels but was surprised at the dimes I found. I've been over this school with several detectors, including a CZ-5. One could be missing coins because of iron masking. Just saying.
 
I mostly run just above iron and I, too, have dug a lot of dimes. I suspect that more dimes are lost than larger coins, but my Tesoros set this way seem to love dimes.
BB
 
The only reason is gold jewelry. That's it. I have a beautiful gold wedding band I found last year in the parking lot of park. If I had been running at "FOIL" or above I would've missed it.

The downside is if you don't want to dig pulltabs, you are going to limit yourself to shallow dimes and quarters, possibly copper pennies. But to knock out pulltabs you lose nickels and "zincolns" in the process. That's fine with some folks. Just depends on your style and your mood that particular day, as there are some days I'm only in the mood to coin shoot too.
 
BarberBill said:
I mostly run just above iron and I, too, have dug a lot of dimes. I suspect that more dimes are lost than larger coins, but my Tesoros set this way seem to love dimes.
BB

slingshot said:
Well, I went out with my Compadre set at "i" in iron-just enough to get rid of paper clips. I was expecting nickels but was surprised at the dimes I found. I've been over this school with several detectors, including a CZ-5. One could be missing coins because of iron masking. Just saying.

I read somewhere that most detectors are calibrated, designed and set to find dimes the best.
It is kind of like the standard of the industry.
I seem to find dimes very easily and at surprising depths with all detectors I have used so I kind of believe it.
Makes sense...it is one of the smaller targets we aim for so if you can find those, even bigger targets should be attainable.
However my Compadre seems to go furthest on a nickel than any other coin.
Strange, but since I am a gold hunter with that one, I am thankful.
 
i use a nickle as always to set mine with, and will pull off my wedding band to check also, according to conditions. whether its my eldo, amigo II or Silver sabre Plus, i always check firt with a known target. just me. but if the ground is eat up with junk and i get that tired, crank it up, hit the silver and move on!
 
I would have responded to this earlier, but I came down with a horrible flu of somekind.
Anyways, you all make some great points!
To justify myself, I found 2 medium to heavy gold rings with the silver and only 1 small womans ring with the Vaq, both with the disc on or slightly above foil.
I am completely discouraged about running the disc lower than the foil mark. I have made a fairly decent effort at times to lower the disc and go for the small gold.
The result was a lot of targets in the foil range and less keepers than I would normally find.
Also with gold price as high as it is now, gold is in high demand. But there is so little gold out there waiting to be found.
Not only that, but how valuable is a thin chain or earing? Sure, it's awsome if you can find one, but only because noone else can.





:Left4Dead said:
One big thing everyone seems to have missed is the fact that Thump7 said "not dug a pulltab or bottle cap" Ummm seems you would have to be running a ton above foil to block out tabs, you would also remove nickels.

You would be running above tab too. Your right you wont miss a dime, quarter, penny or larger silver.

Mike

Sorry Mike, I can't give up all my secrets. Disc was set slightly above foil.
There are a couple techniques I use. 1) eliminates all bottlecaps with disc on foil.
2) find only clad (including nickles) and silver.

I cover huge areas in a short time. My clad count is hovering at $450.00 for this year and the snow melted a couple months ago.
Not to mention I missed all gold if there was any useing the second technique.
It might not make sense to people to find only coins, but hey it's fun finding a good target every time I bend over.
 
All told, I think this was a good thread. However, I think that any body swinging a detector is entitled to set their detector how they want and entitled to hunt the way they enjoy most. It's supposed to be fun, after all.
BB
 
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