A big pile of clad

[Anonymous]

Hi All:
OK, so I took my new Coinstrike out this weekend to a site in the city. It's a construction site now, mostly thick grass. Before that it was a lawn for an office building, but before that it was a turn-of-the-century house lot. There SHOULD be some old stuff there somewhere.
There seemed to be a fair amount of trash, so I used a 4-40 setting, which is what I'm most familiar with so far.
I found some coins, even a nickel, so I'm not COMPLETELY hopeless, but as usual, all clad, nothing old. Most of these coins came up from 4" or less. The VDI numbers seemed to be VERY accurate, and I dug very little trash with the C$.
This told me that the site was, most likely, not cleaned out from other detectors, which has been common in my area.
The way I selected what to dig was looking at the numbers. If they stayed consistent... within, say, +/- 2, then I'd dig. If numbers went negative, I'd pass. I got a lot of inconsistent signals that wouldn't repeat well, so I didn't dig those... it seemed there were quite a few responses like that in this area. Should I have been digging these "iffy" signals? I tried narrowing the field down by lifting the coil, but this didn't seem to help me much.
Here's a question for you experienced users... does this sound like I'm doing it about right? Or am I missing something? One thing that I DON'T know yet is the "round sound" that I've heard people talking about. Can anyone describe that?
Also... I was using a probe for recovery, 'cause I don't like digging big holes when I hunt in town. Is plug cutting a necessary aspect of finding silver, in your opinion? I've also heard that the C$ will "lock hard" on silver. None of my responses seemed to "lock hard."
Also... after I worked a small area for over an hour , I went back over the same area with my Tesoro Bandido II/Cleansweep detector. I was AMAZED at the number of coins that I missed in the trash, as I found almost as much with the Tesoro. All of these were shallow, as the cleansweep coil can't go very deep at all, but I was still quite surprised. I did dig a few bottlecaps and a pulltab or two, but most of these were with the Tesoro, not the C$
So that's a lot of questions, but I'm wondering if I'm on the right track. Thanks for your help- BG

 

[Anonymous]

BG, I also run a CleanSweep coil on my Golden. That coil is a clad vaccuum cleaner <img src="/metal/html/super.gif" border=0 width=26 height=28 alt=":super">
What your post told me is that you haven't got the sweep speed figured out for the CoinStrike. But don't feel bad, because I don't either <img src="/metal/html/lol.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt=":lol">
I wish someone could tell me what "moderate" is. Is that 1' per second, or 2' per second, or 3'per second or what?
My last hunt, I had trash/iron readings in an area that I knew had to have coins. The payline around a swing. All I was getting was trash signals. I slowed down and started geting surgical with the coil. By that, I mean that I imagined what the detection field looked like in the ground and I focused on moving the field, not the coil. All of a sudden, I was able to resolve a zinc lincoln, and then another one, from what was before just a misc trash & negative readings. I did that again in another area, I got a high 32 number that went negative and with a bunch of other positive numbers. Again, I slowed down, way down, and the quarters started resolving. I had found a coin spill of 5 quarters all in a 6" area, but I found them one at a time. They were discolored by the sand, so they were ones that I had missed on earlier hunts.
I like what you did, going back over it with the DD coil. When you can clean it out with the C$ so that the Cleansweep doesn't find much, you will have the sweep speed figured out. The C$ should be able to duplicate or even out perform the DD coil performance. That may also be why you didn't find anything deep in a place where deep should exist.
Thanks for posting that info.
Happy CoinStriking <img src="/metal/html/lol.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt=":lol">

 

[Anonymous]

BG,
Your questions are good ones but the answers are not easy. I do not know the Coinstrike (here to find out), but veteran coin hunter's share your dilemmas and never outgrow them. In other words, there is always some unresolved question of whether I am sweeping too slow or too fast, or not digging enough iffies, or have optimal settings.
In the end, you have to decided on tradeoffs. Some iffies WILL turn out to be something good, but most will not. Slowing down WILL help certain targets be detected in certain trash settings, but you will cover less ground.
Finding only clad is very common. In fact, when a site is actually producing wheat cents (non clad), that is your first indicator of a good site for potential silver. If I average at least a couple wheats per hour, I keep going back until old coins no longer keep coming. That's how you find silver. If you only find clad at a site, maybe there's no detectable silver there, or possibly your technique or equipment are not cutting it to find it. I don't think that's the case with you from what you've said.
One last thing - going over the same ground and finding lots of coins you missed the first time is par for the course in detecting. Even with the same detector, same coil, same settings, same sweep speed, same angle of approach, etc., sometimes a target hits and sometimes it doesn't. When you do find a good old coins site, you will find yourself going over the same ground over and over again with coins hitting hard when you swear you've hit that spot repeatedly before. I have found Mercs next to trees that I know I have worked around that tree thoroughly repeatedly then one day the Merc decides to hit. I have never completely cleaned out a spot yet, with the possible exception of part of my back yard!
HH
CSR