1980's D-tex SK50 went out for a spin

[Sven]

Took mine out today first time actually hunting. Forced myself to leave the other detector in the car.
Had time to hit the schoolyard for about 3 hours.
First off, air testing last week, it picked up a half dime in VLF at 12", disc 11". Cool even tho I know air tests
don't mean actual ground depth, I was happy. Air testing I was able to disc. out the lowly Canadian zinc penny but, also the Canadian dime and nickel went with it. CA quarters, Loonies and Twoonies it would pick up no problem as well as all US coins silver and gold rings. Thought I could just cherry pick the higher $$ amount coins. Fantastic, no more pennies to dig.

At the schoolyard, after an hour found a few pennies and a quarter. Hmmm, should be finding more.
Started to do some ground tests, disc. set to accept the above coins proved to be a bad move. In the ground, the quarters were more or less disc'd out with a loss of some depth, same situation for the Loonies.
So I had to back off on the disc. to accept the quarter at 4". Then I started to find some coins checking targets in disc. mode. For the rest of the time I hunted in straight VLF mode and dug the loud signals and detuned them in VLF mode. Canadian coins make a short distinct sound after one retune. After two hours was able to tell junk from good about 75% of the time, when in doubt, checked in reverse disc. mode.
The SK50 hits loud and hard on coins to 5", actually too loud. The volume on my headphones are turned down as far as they go. Looks like a volume control is needed on the detectors or I have to change out the limiter in the headphones.
The auto-normal switch turns it into a slow motion machine in VLF and disc.
I did find in VLF mode it will go deep, pencil eraser top came in at 5" and a bottlecap at 6" or so. I wasn't in the mood to dig those signals that whispered a change in the threshold after I dug the first one to 8" and the target could still not be found. Who knows what that was, gave up.
My hand was sore from that bicycle grip, just removed it and replaced it with a foam grip.

So what did I find?
Twoonie--1
Loonie--4
Quarter--5
Dimes--4
Nickels--5
Pennies--24
------------------------
Coin Total $7.14

Slammerhead token
Hotwheels car
2 keys
Silver dolphin pinky ring

I was just getting the hang of the machine since the 1980's the last 45 minutes before I had to pack up a go. Look forward to getting out there again with it. The unit is heavier than todays units, my forearm felt that the first 20 minutes, kept on going....LOL. For an old machine it still has potential.

 

[Sven]

Had 3 hours to hunt that schoolyard this morning, hunted in VLF, occasionally checking with TR Disc.
This oldie works great for hunting the good stuff and not picking up the zinc pennies in VLF.

Todays haul

Twoonies--3
Loonies--6
Quarters--16
Dimes--13
Nickels--7
Pennies--25
-----------------------
$17.90
1 silver pendant
usual pull tabs and pencil eraser tops

Still wondering where all gold rings and jewelry are everyone claims to find on the soccer fields? I have over 100 hours in hunting soccer fields with various detectors

 

[jmaryt]

what!..no toonies?

(h.h!)
j.t.

 

[Sven]

Find at least one everytime out, averaging 1-3. Finding more Loonies than Twoonies.

Since your interested-----
Went out yesterday:
Hunted that soccer field again, had 3 hours to hunt.
I wasn't impressed to much with what I found today.
No rain Friday so the ground this morning was sort of hard to dig in spots. Morning sprinkler system didn't help out much.... I was prying away in one hole, felt my favorite knife's blade snap in half. Forced to use my spare knife as I lost my other main digging knife two weeks earlier. My wrist is now sore..ouch

I was throwing the junk found in with the coins. After arriving home, emptied out my bag, found a stuck together mess. Kind of funny and interesting at the same time.

Below is a pictured of the same simulated mess after the coins were cleaned up.

In the center of the mess was a piece of junk metal I dug up.

That piece of junk turned out to be an incredibly strong magnet.

So I thought about something a fellow detectorist told me his friend did to his digging knife and could yank the coins out of the ground. He magnetized it.

I guess it must work because that magnet I found will snap a quarter or Twoonie off the table pretty quick.
My brain started thinking. I am going to make a coin sniffer. Instead of sifting thru the soil looking for the coin, I'm going to pull it out with a magnet, the magnet found. I'm going to search my pile of goodies for an aluminum tube and epoxy this sucker into it. Take it out and give it a whirl.

My coin finds
Twoonie--1
Loonie--1
Quarters--8
Dimes--5
Nickels--7
Pennies 28
And a plated religious medal

 

[jmaryt]

loonies and twoonies!..hot damn!..sounds fascinating!
any silver content to 'em?

(h.h!)
j.t.

 

[Sven]

loonies and twoonies!..hot damn!..sounds fascinating!
any silver content to 'em?

(h.h!)
j.t.

No silver content, modern Canadian coins are made of nickel plated steel.
One nice thing unlike US coins after being in the ground still look almost as they did when they were dropped.
Just a quick rinse and you can go out and spend them, no tumbling needed.

Two US quarters on the left side of the picture.

 

[jmaryt]

they look better than our crap!

(h.h!)
j.t.