any tips for upping gold finds?

[teviotlad]

hi. been hitting tot lots this week and done well on cash but no gold. they are turf/grass based areas and i am tending to use tid for higher cash values ie tid 32. some of these tot lots have hundreds of targets in the nickel range mostly small value nickels, so i havent dug them as its grass and therefore trying to avoid hard work of diggin hundreds of plugs. so i guess thats why no gold. any tips on how to optimise diggin for gold v nickels appreciated. i was thinkin of only diggin say tid 8 through 20 to be in the gold zone. machine is 305. i have to say one of the disadvatages of the 305 is that it only has 12 tid sections. now there are only 3 or 4 nickel denominations so if i had more tid than 12 sections, i could be more sure of small nickels and leave them, but dig rest in that zone. you cant do this with 305 as you only have 3 tid bands in the nickel range ie 8-12, 12-16, 16-20. so you cant narrow nickels down as much as say the 705 with smaller bands.

 

[Furious T]

It doesn't really matter which detector you use, and how it indicates what targets might be, digging gold means digging most stuff in the gold range. The gold rings I have found with my X Terra 70 have be scattered right through the range between 8 and 28. If I had stuck to just one small target area on the number display, then I would have missed rings in other areas. One suggestion I can make is to become as familiar with your machine as you can and listen very very carefully to the audio signal..at times the audio signal can tell you much much more than the visual readout, e.g. the size of the target. If you want to dig gold, you just have to bite the bullet and dig, dig, dig. Being selective in the targets you dig can lead to missing the targets you are seeking. HH

 

[Mtnmn]

If you have a 6" HF coil, use it on the tot lots in case you are not already doing so. They are more sensitive to small gold than the stock 9" MF coil is and will allow you to get in closer to any swings, slides or fences. "Most" gold jewelry and rings will be found from just above iron to the low penny range, as a result you are going to have to start digging targets in that range and especially anything in the nickel range to find the gold you are seeking. I have a friend who digs everything in the nickel range and you would be amazed at how many gold rings he has found over the years by doing so. Another thing that might be of help is to set up an above ground test site containing both trash (foil, pulltabs, etc.) and what gold jewelry you can come up with and then listen to the subtle differences between the two. If you run into a tot lot with huge amounts of either tabs, foil or can slaw, then you will probably have to notch them out, but at the expense of also notching out any gold items in that range too.

 

[Nock]

Make a little game per say and go to your location where there would be a chance to find some rings and search for 15 pulltabs if you're blessed maybe you find a nice gold ring. I did this last summer just to get out and relax and i found a gold ring on my fourth dig.