Can you....?????

[DanRoss]

I guess this question is timely, in that Andy just posted pictures of piles of trash...

I came home from the park today wondering how I could differentiate between a clad dime and a silver dime with my Explorer SE Pro.

The park is old and I am told it used to produce a lot of silver dimes. Given the newer capabilitie of machines, and greater depth, I decided to go find some Merc's and Rosies, and maybe a Barber or two. I did pretty well (I think) differentiating cents from dimes, but I dug clad dimes that I really would rather pass up.

I thought I used to be able to tell clad dimes from silver dimes with my old XLT. The silver dimes had just slightly higher numbers....

So is there a way to tell the clad dimes apart from the silver with the Minelab??? Or is the way to tell by examining the date with a magnifying glass (after digging it up)?

The parks are so hard to dig in compared to those areas where you can swing a magna-pick, but the lure of silver is hard to ignore. It would be nice to be able to be selective though. Anybody have a method?

 

[treasurefiend]

You could just dig targets 6 inches or deeper - But YOU WILL miss shallow old coins!!! Last year I found a V-Nickel about an inch down and today I found a Barber quarter that was at the very max 4 inches deep. Just my opinion, just speedup your recovery time (get a pin-pointer to speed the process up) and just toss the clad aside for spending on new coils and such and move on to the next target.

 

[Hotcz70]

for the most part...for me anyway. They do not get as close to the top right corner as silver dimes do.
Now if they are in the 6" depth range or more....you have to dig those anyway
Clad dimes also do not usually have that warbley sound. They have a much more hollow sound to them.
For me...silver usually has the high pitched "tinkling" mixed in with the high tone...while clad dimes don't. They just have a holow high pitched hit for me.

That isn't every time.. because there a zillion things that can change the tones and sounds.

It is a good starter base to begin learning clad dime hits though.

 

[DanRoss]

Thanks for the replies.

Bryce, you say that "...if they are in the 6" depth range or more....you have to dig those anyway..." And that generally sounds good, but I am finding the depth indicator at abouit halfway (6 inches, if I understand it right)) when the dime is in the plug. Am I the only one who gets the deep indication when the target is shallow, or does the depth represented by the depth bar change with the sensitivity or gain settings?

 

[Hotcz70]

Dan...are you saying you are digging a 6" hole but the coin is in the plug at about 4" or so?

 

[Chris/MA]

While I haven't really tried to differentiate silver dimes from clad dime hits on the explorer, I do know what you mean about being able to tell the difference on the whites machines. On the DFX I could tell them apart by the VDI number being 1 or 2 higher. (think it was a 78 or 79 as opposed to a 76, though those numbers wouldn't make any sense to somebody using an XLT since its VDI scale was different. I never owned an XLT but hunted a few times with a guy who did about 15 years ago)

I would imagine they're going to hit a little farther to the right, or higher, or both. Not really sure whether VDI corresponds more with ferrous-ness or conductivity. (according to the whites patent VDI is basically the phase angle difference between the transmit coil and receive coil signals.)

That being said, that's what would probably happen on a target laying flat in clean ground. The real world is rather different much of the time, with junk and iron nearby or the target on edge or at an angle. I don't think depth is enough of an indicator to reliably tell them apart. I found a barber last fall that wasn't more than 3 inches down, and I found a clad the other day that was at least 5 or so. Combine that with rosies and older clad dimes likely being at similar depths due to similar age, and you're best bet is just digging anything that doesn't sound really shallow.

 

[DanRoss]

Well, sometimes I believe the depth indicator and dig a little deeper than necessary before rechecking the hole to see if the target is in the hole or out of it, but mostly I am seeing readings of about 6" (halfway on the indicator, and then finding the target much shallower (1- 3 inches). When I recheck to see if there is anything else, there are no more targets, so I am wondering why the indication is so far off. On the old XLT (that wasn't new when I bought it 10 years ago - so the technology isn't new) It gave me a readout in inches and tenths of inches that I could stake my life on it was so accurate. I am trying to understand what I can expect from the SE Pro, and so far it seems that as far as depth accuracy - not much, unless of course I am doing something wrong, and that is why I asked.

 

[Magicman]

What I did was changed my TH tone and ran it up and I got a higher tone with silver versus the clad. It worled for me... (Now I have no SE, sold it last week... Running with the E-Trac now)

 

[Andy Sabisch]

I was hunting with some friends two weeks ago and they complained about the depth indication being off . . . till I watched them and they had the coil an inch or two off the ground . . . the indication indicates the distance from the coil to the target - if you are 2 inches off the ground, you will be two inches off on target depth. When you check the depth, make sure the coil is ON the ground . . . that may help in determining of a signal is worth going for or not.

Andy

 

[amc rulz]

It's hard to dig in the old parks to begin with! Compacted soil, roots, etc...i have dug more silver dimes this spring (20), than I have clad ones. A shallow 5-6 inch clad dime will peg the cursor into the upper right of the screen. Silver dimes at 7-9" deep, may travel back and forth in the upper right towards mid-screen. At least in Michigan soil using my Exp II.

 

[bazooka]

If you are are running SmartFind (of which I am a big proponent), MOST silver dimes will have the cursor box overlap the top of the screen by one pixel and the corresponding tone will be one notch higher. MOST clad dimes will be flush with the top line and will not overlap. If there is any overlap, even if it just bounces up occassionally, I dig regardless of depth. This is just like a silver dime on the DFX bouncing from +78 to +79, possibly +80, but rarely from +77 to +78 in which case it's almost always clad. My clad dime count has gone way down since I got the SE. However, I still have to dig several memorials because they are more prone to overlapping the top than dimes.

Of course, it goes without saying that doing this is playing the numbers and you will most likely walk over a few good coins, but once you become familiar with a site and feel certain about what types of targets can be found at what depths, it will keep you from having to dig as much clad. And of course, there can always be an old coin hiding under a new coin, but I don't think this has every happened to me and is statistically unlikely, although definitely possible. You really have to play the numbers if you have a finite amount of time and/or energy to hunt.

Now, to address your depth issue. Coming from the DFX, you may be making the same mistake that I was when I started with the SE. With the DFX, you get your depth when you pinpoint. Not so with the SE. The depth gauge is basically useless in pinpoint mode, at least it is on my machine. Always get the depth in search mode. Half way down the meter (for me), is five inches, regardless of gain or sensitivity or what coil I'm using. (I use 6" Excellerator & 10x12 SEF.

Hope this helps.

 

[DanRoss]

Great response, Bazooka, thanks!