Any help for me?

[timp]

Problem: Cleaning the gutters this year resulted in a 3/4 oz. gold wedding ring slipping off at some point into a heavily gardened strip about 15' wide and 60' long. I now have access to a Whites Eagle Spectrum that's been in a closet for several years and I am getting the model number tomorrow to download the manual. This is my first experience with detection.

My goal is to find the ring without cutting the dense garden vegetation to the ground, as doing that would likely make the wedding ring obsolete. Will sweeping over about foot of vegetation, instead of a foot of dirt be likely to produce a signature?

I've fooled with it a bit this evening and it seems to me that the most reliable indicator is going to be the upper end of the VDI scale. That and successfully replacing the C-cells is the sum total of everything I know about metal detection.

I'm leaning to sweeping the area a half dozen times, marking the possible signals, and then hand searching around the markers.

Any pity for the foolish out there? Any practical advice would be appreciated.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Your post/question leaves a lot of un-answered questions. I'm assuming the "gutters" you were working on was rain gutters on the roof of a house? If so, you think the ring fell into a garden (15' x 60') below? A foot of vegetation is too much. There's no way you can reliably detect a ring at a foot deep. You might get it to do that in an air test at a foot deep, but not in the area, the size you have, with any reliability. What kind of vegetation are you talking about? If it's something where you can wriggle the coil around the base of the plants, you can get closer that way. But if it's too densely packed, then you'll need a small coil (I'm assuming you have the stock 9.5" coil), or even a pinpointer probe to wriggle under/through the vegetation. There's just no way to answer this question (of the type garden) in print, without actually seeing it. I can't imagine a type of vegetation so dense that there isn't a coil size or probe that can't fit underneath the canopy, or push your coil through it, or whatever. But if you are forced to hover a foot in above the ground, then no, a ring is not going to be found at that depth. If it's some type of vegetation that prohibits you from getting closer to the ground, then you may just have to rip all that out if you want to find the ring.

If you end up having to remove the vegetation to get a search going, be careful to detect the spoil you remove, as the ring could get removed in surface soil, or if it was tangled in the surface debri, etc.... (since it was so recently lost, it may not be in the sub-surface yet).

Next you say: "the most reliable indicator is going to be the upper end of the VDI scale." What? How big is/was the gold ring? Unless it was a BIG chunky man's ring, most gold rings read mid conductor or lower. If so, it would read at the low end of the conductivity scale. But in any case, I wouldn't rely on the "scale" anyhow. Just dig all conductive targets (anything above iron).

 

[timp]

Yes, rain gutters, and the ring came off someplace as I dropped gutter debris into the garden area. The ring is almost certainly still above the surface of the soil underneath the plant folige. Right now most of the folige is dense gardinias, paint brush, etc. 8 to 10 inches deep. I'm about a month away from being able to remove any appreciable amount of it. The matching (somewhat smaller) ring of the set reads around 30 on the scale with the ring about several inches above it when I tested on bare ground but the signal was not reliable in that it did not register on every pass of the coil over it.

I thought I might put in some practice by putting that one on the ground under newspaper and seeing if I could learn to recognize the tonal or scale signals passing the ring over it at about 8". I'm curious as to why 8" of air and leaves would provide more difficulty than 8" of beach sand? Is the soil surrounding the object searched for necessary to establish the field? As I said, I know next to nothing about this.

Your advice on the tactics makes sense and I appreciate it.

 

[thebeatmachine]

If it fell where you think it is the detector should find it easily. It will ring out loud, Start with a discrimination level that rejects nails, or no discrimination at all.
I bet you will find it within ten minutes.

Go over all the other places it could be too real wild stuff like in the pair of gardening gloves, or in the gutters themselves.
Good luck!

 

[Tom_in_CA]

30 is on the "low" end of the VDI scale, not the high end. The 40s or 50s would be mid scale, and 70s & up would be going towards the higher end of the scale. Only super big (ala 10k college or superbowl type men's rings) would read up into the 60s or 70s. But those are very unusual and large. Rarely does a gold ring, even men's gold rings, read above the 40s. But anyhow, forget how your ring might read. IGNORE you VDI/TID/tonal scale entirely and just dig all conductors in your search area, if you hope to find the ring. Just pass iron only. If you had more experience on metal detecting and VDI/TIDs, then you could probably buck some odds with it, but at this point, you're better off, since you have a confined search area, just to dig all. To save time you can ignore targets that ..... once you pinpoint them, they are obviously below ground/buried, since it's safe to assume that your ring should be very close to the surface.

Remember, your machine is a motion discriminator, so for it to work properly (in disc. mode anyhow), you have to keep motion on the coil. Or you can hunt in all-metal, which can be set to non-motion, but then you won't be able to pass iron. A garden next to a house can have a lot of iron (nails from when the house was built, etc...)

I notice you say you were "dropping gutter debri". Bear in mind that that debri probably had nails, tin snips, and whatever other metal too. That's going to be junk that will sound off, and some of it may mimick a ring (depending on what material the gutters were made out of, size of shards, etc...)

To answer your last question, air test vs ground test can go either way. Neither one provides more depth or accuracy. Actually, an air test (or leaves and/or newspaper as you put it), would provide the most accurate VDI readings, as opposed to ground where the detector has to read through potential ground minerals. But 1) you're not going to worry about VDI anyhow, and 2) 8 to 12" is just pushing the limit on depth for a gold ring to begin with through either soil OR air. The mere fact that a certain size target (coin or ring) that conceivably be made to register in an air test at 8 or 10 or 12", does not mean that PRESTO, you will automatically and certainly find a target like that while trying to scan an area the size you describe. To get a known target in a test is one thing (since you knew exactly where you were swinging the target or coil), but to enter into a large area with other junk present (some of which could skew or mask your desired target) is a totally different picture. Generally speaking, you will go deeper in air tests. But in the "field", things can be different than an air test, both for VDIs and depth. I mean, heck, the ring could be on edge or tilted (leaning against leaves, or sideways between dirt clods, etc...) thus lowering your depth and throwing off depth and and VDI anyhow. That's why I say to ignore VDI and don't assume you're going to get up to a foot deep, simply because you can do it in an air test with a known target.

 

[timp]

Thanks, and to you too Tom. I'll post my success when it happens.

Gloves? Yes indeed, smart people would wear gloves.

 

[mickfin]

Very well put Tom , MickFin

 

[GoGoGopher]

Sweep your coil over the very top of the vegitation first...you never know...it could have got caught in the foilage and never even dropped to the ground.....then search the ground...



HH,

 

[Tin Nugget]

If all else fails you could try this site and get some help from some experienced users.
http://www.metaldetectivesusa.com/

Also dig each target as you go as one target can hide another. I did not read all the replies but I assume they told you gold does not ring up high on the VDI scale, more like in the trash range so dig it all.

 

[MikeK]

The Vibraprobe folks make a handheld 3" Search coil probe type detector (about the size of a phone receiver) which would be perfect here. Although it doesn't discriminate, you'll find your ring if you are methodical and diligent. It's called the Vibra-Tector 730:

http://www.treasureproducts.com/

 

[goodmore]

Use the relic hunting preset. Keep the coil about 6 inches above the ground. Keep the coil moving & inspect loud shallow targets only. If you don't find the target really close to the surface move on. Remember what you are hunting for. You can come back and dig holes for the other targets later. People new to the hobby have no idea how much metal is in the ground. The typical response is " the darn thing never stopped beeping".

 

[mickfin]

Hi Timp , Hows it going any Luck???? Why dont you Let us know what area you Live N someone can go Help you out, Just my 2 cents, MickFin

 

[timp]

I'm taking it slow and steady. I've swept all the tall shrubbery and have about half of the site flaggged for about a dozen "hits". It really is a jungle of plants. I hope to finish the sweeping tomorrow of Monday.

It's an interesting process. I dug in a couple of places where the machine toned on apparently bare ground and dug up a quarter, a dime and an old sprinkler head . There's a "lift" built into this I didn't really understood before. Whether I find the ring or not, the machine may not go back into my son-in-law's closet.

Thanks.

 

[mickfin]

timp I Like your Spirt!!!! Yes its a funnn Hobby its Like fishing with Batteries?? KEEP at it I know you`ll find it,
Like Tom sead dig all But rusty Iron stuff, MickFin,

 

[mickfin]

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????MickFin

 

[timp]

Nope. Been raining cats and dogs here. At least my rain gutters are clear though.

 

[timp]

Nope. Been raining cats and dogs here. At least my rain gutter are clear though.

 

[mickfin]

Nottin better then clean Gutters????? Gatta Love those Gutters, MickFin

 

[Joel-Winnipeg]

Nottin better then clean Gutters????? Gatta Love those Gutters, MickFin

Talking about clean gutters a person I know passes a magnet through his house gutters and picks up meteorite debris..

 

[mickfin]

Meteorite stuff in Gutters???? Keep those Gutters, Mic