Menu
What's new
Find's Treasure Forums

Welcome to Find's Treasure Forums, Guests!

You are viewing this forums as a guest which limits you to read only status.

Only registered members may post stories, questions, classifieds, reply to other posts, contact other members using built in messaging and use many other features found on these forums.

Why not register and join us today? It's free! (We don't share your email addresses with anyone.) We keep email addresses of our users to protect them and others from bad people posting things they shouldn't.

Click here to register!

Need Support Help?

Cannot log in?, click here to have new password emailed to you

ACE 250 and highly mineralized soil

C

cammobunker

New member
OK....I have a minor issue, and I want to see if anyone else experiences this.
I live in NW Arkansas, which is a very heavy mineralized area of the country, being an eroded plain. I found my Ace 250 to be very sensitive to certain rocks in the soil. Even with the sensitivity turned down to three bars, my machine still goes absolutely bonkers when it gets to one of these rocks. If in all metal mode, it will chime all different sounds and the indicator will run all over the spectrum. It takes a few seconds for the detector to settle down.
It makes no difference what mode I'm in, once I hit one of these rocks-which are plentiful-the machine flips out.

The odd part is my other machine, a Bounty Hunter Pioneer 101/Tracker IV, has no problem with this mineralization but still picks up targets.

Is my ground balance out of whack or something? Shouldn't it ignore this kind of mineralization? I thought that was what ground balance was for!
 
i would save those rocks might be a meteoright , or send them to me whatever u like:rofl:

u might be on a highly trashy area . if ur using stock coil i would run the SNIPER it would help u with
the trash , but it all depends. if u dont want ur ace send it to me if ur not using it ..
 
treasurehound said:
i would save those rocks might be a meteoright , or send them to me whatever u like:rofl:

u might be on a highly trashy area . if ur using stock coil i would run the SNIPER it would help u with
the trash , but it all depends. if u dont want ur ace send it to me if ur not using it ..
Click to expand...

Uh, no, unless this area is 80% meteorite.
And the areas didn't matter. Especially since I dug the first few rocks.....and found them to act the same way in air tests. They look like rusty rocks. I'll send you all want of them, so long as you don't mind postage due packages. :biggrin:
 
HOT rocks as they are called are a problem for all VLF detectors. Even if you had a detector that ground balanced, it would still go off on those. PI detectors seem to not react to most hot rocks, and the Garrett Scorpion Gold Stinger has a means of checking if they are hot rocks or not. And perhaps one of those hot rocks are a meteorite. :)
 
I use to live in fayettville and most of the rusty looking rocks are sandstone. the ozarks are mainly composed of those. Not sure why that would make the detector go off. When I lived there i detected and never had a problem.
 
oldrivers said:
I use to live in fayettville and most of the rusty looking rocks are sandstone. the ozarks are mainly composed of those. Not sure why that would make the detector go off. When I lived there i detected and never had a problem.
Click to expand...

That rusty stuff in the sandstone is iron. We have iron furnaces all over WV. We have that rusty sandstone, coke, and cinders. They all will show up on the Ace. Try hunting in an area that is less mineralized.
 
That's what manual ground balance, fast track ground balance, and automatic ground tracking are for, none of which the 250 has. Your BH may have their ground tracking system. I have a BH Prospector that is equipped with it.

Bill
 
The only area where I found a problem with the Ace was at the beach. Not the same as where you are, but in order to calm it down, I knocked out the first 3 notches and reduced the sens down to 5 bars. It ran fairly smoothly after that. I imagine that ironstone would read low on the discrimination, so by knocking out the lower notches, it might just work.
Mick Evans.
 
We really need some kind of reference material, a map of some kind that shows us
where or what regions have the lowest to the higest percentages of mineralized ground.
Not some scientific chart that you need a masters degree to understand. Just something
that would show what metal detectors would be best for regions across the United States.

The way it is now, some new guy buys a metal detector, maybe an Ace 250, and can't use it in his
area. He ends up thinking its the detector and swears by a month of Sundays that it's just
a piece of junk.

I would guess after all these years Garrett and Fishers, perhaps even Whites has enough
information that they could put together somekind of general guide pointing out these areas.

Just a thought.

RR
 
Nice idea, but the ground changes quickly in some areas. I use the geological survey maps a lot and it can change in a few feet.

http://nationalmap.gov/
 
Where do you go on this site to find mineralized ground. We need something that is user friendly.
A few feet doesn't seem like much. I'm talking about large areas of land that are known to be mineralized.
RR:detecting:
 
I have a hot-rock at home that it so full of magnetite that it will hold a refrigerator magnet.

Many of my machines will hit on this rock even with high discrimination and masking is rough too. A coin right next to it will be invisible with many machines. My GTAs will belltone on rocks like these, but the signal will be intermittent/broken.

Best thing is to try different machines around a sample rock and see which ones do the best. Unfortunately, my Garretts (I've got 5 right now) aren't the best at getting around this particular hot-rock.

Mine looks like granite with black specks in it, yours may act differently. I'd bring a chunk of it home to play with if I were you...

Skillet
 
robert roy said:
Where do you go on this site to find mineralized ground. We need something that is user friendly.
A few feet doesn't seem like much. I'm talking about large areas of land that are known to be mineralized.
RR:detecting:
Click to expand...

That was my point, there isn't any way to make it user friendly. WV. has highly mineralized soil. If I find a place that is old and has a lot of rich deep top soil,
I don't have much trouble MD'ing it. Except a few places it is like the consistency of sponge cake. I should find old coins, but I know they sank beyond the reach of the Ace. I find zincs at 6" to 8" and no wheat's. The next lot over is a newer home site and has little top soil. I have to readjust the sensitivity. Anywhere I MD and I find coal or it's by products it dives my MD'er crazy. If it is not hot rocks than the mineralized soil reduces my depth or my ID goes crazy. That is the main scenario. I have just learned to deal with it till I can afford an other MD'er with GB.
 
Where I have been hunting is just south of the Missouri border. There is LOTS of chert/flint and that reddish/pink colored rock as pictured in oldrivers' post. That's Manganese huh? Interesting. I don't need to bring it home; it's there already. My yard and property are *full* of it.

Thanks for all the replies, folks. I'll go dig a chunk out of the yard tonight and post a picture of what these particular rocks look like.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top