Excalibur and Gold Chains

[tippyhound]

Just found out my E-Trac will not pick up on Gold Cains, and I mean no matter their size or gold content. I have tried it with a wide open screen (no discrimination of any kind) and nothing. Now Gold rings are a completely different story.all the way from the very smallest and finest rings up to the jumbos it will pick them up just fine. I'm not so concerned about the E-Trac in this area as I purchased the machine to coin hunt with mainly, and it does a excellent job there.

I'm bringing this up on your forum because I plan next spring to purchase a Excalibur 1000 for beach and water hunting, and I would like to know what kind of results you are getting with the Excalibur for picking up Gold Chains. I have hunted in the water for the past 30 years and have used Two different Fisher machines, Two different Whites machines and a Tesoro Sting Ray ll., and to date I have as yet to find a gold chain hunting in the water or on the beach, and I hunt with no discrimination and dig all targets. I have found hundreds of gold rings and even some very small gold ear rings, but no chains. Since both these machine operate on the BBS program I thought I would ask this question before I spend a lot of money just to find out I can't find gold chains with the Excalibur 1000 either..

Your help in this matter would very much appreciated. Thanks Rick (IL)

 

[erikk]

The excal will read a gold chain-not very well and not very deep but it will read them Last one I got was 23.4 grams and was down about 8- 10 inches. A lot of times the sound will be like aluminum foil (scratchy) Both PI machines I have (Infinium & Sea Hunter MK2) will not read any chain I have tried them on.Usually when you get a good signal on a chain you are reading a big lobster claw clasp or a pendant still connected to the chain. If you are hunting in clear water you are better off using your eyes

 

[synthnut]

Which brings me to this question .... From what I have seen , there are certain machines that excel on smaller gold , and they run at certain frequencies to obtain said gold .....If the Minelab is a MULTI freqency machine , why does it not hit on small gold chains all that well ? ..... I know a lot of the "small gold " machines will run smaller coils when searching for gold but wonder if there's more to the smaller coil than the actual frequency ? ...... or is it more a combination of both ? ..... I've never found any small gold with my Excal or my Soveriegn , but I have with my E Trac, so maybe it just hasn't presented itself ? .....Will the Soveriegn hit small gold chains with a smaller coil on it ? ....Someone please check for me .....Thanks, Jim

PS....Maybe there's something to hunting the surf with a smaller coil rather than us going the other way around and going BIGGER ? ....The smaller coils have no problem hittiing BIG gold !!.....Jim

 

[erikk]

Which brings me to this question .... From what I have seen , there are certain machines that excel on smaller gold , and they run at certain frequencies to obtain said gold .....If the Minelab is a MULTI freqency machine , why does it not hit on small gold chains all that well ? ..... I know a lot of the "small gold " machines will run smaller coils when searching for gold but wonder if there's more to the smaller coil than the actual frequency ? ...... or is it more a combination of both ? ..... I've never found any small gold with my Excal or my Soveriegn , but I have with my E Trac, so maybe it just hasn't presented itself ? .....Will the Soveriegn hit small gold chains with a smaller coil on it ? ....Someone please check for me .....Thanks, Jim

PS....Maybe there's something to hunting the surf with a smaller coil rather than us going the other way around and going BIGGER ? ....The smaller coils have no problem hittiing BIG gold !!.....Jim

Since I only hunt with my Excal/WOT I guess the gold chains I have found with it were a mirage ? What make it difficult is that the detector only sees one link at a time and reads what it sees. Take 2 gold ring of equal size, split one so that there is a gap. Now scan both of the rings with your detector and compare the results

 

[Neil]

Rick my guess is that somehow you dont have your etrac set properly to hit chains because it will and will respond to them as well or better than the Sov or Excal. If your talking those string thin chains, the really thin ones then your not going to be able to do it, but as erik states if its got a big enough clasp it will hit on that. But theres quite a variation of chain sizes, have a look over on the beach forum and you should be able to pull up some pics of chains people have found with their excals. I should be able to get around to shooting some pics of some Ive found myself this weekend.

Jim a smaller coil may help some but Ive found if its a gold finding machine than thats what it is. Take a Tejon, whether you use the smallest 5.75" coil or the 10X12 widescan its gonna hit small gold well. Same thing with the Shadow detectors or say an MXT. The Xterras you can change coils and freq at the same time so it most likely is more the freq.
Meaning I dont think your gonna find a detector that will not hit small gold with a larger coil but hit it well with a smaller one. at least on the ones Ive used. I think Minelab still makes a detector that is a gold detector that you can select 3 seperarate freqs depending on the size gold your after.
Maybe the gold machines your referring to might use the small coils to help with the ground? Ive never hunted for raw gold but Ive read it is found in some pretty extreme ground?

Neil

 

[Willee - Texas]

Jim a smaller coil may help some but Ive found if its a gold finding machine than thats what it is. Take a Tejon, whether you use the smallest 5.75" coil or the 10X12 widescan its gonna hit small gold well. Same thing with the Shadow detectors or say an MXT. The Xterras you can change coils and freq at the same time so it most likely is more the freq

Neil

The new AT PRO does fairly well with small gold and would do better with a smaller coil.

As for the E-Trac I would use a small DD coil and set it up for the best air test results.

 

[Critterhunter]

Most of us know that frequencies around 14khz or higher hit harder on low conductive items such as gold rings or chains. Since the Sovereign has a frequency range of somewhere around 1.5 to 25khz (forget the exact #), it's got plenty high enough and even higher than needed frequencies for gold ring/chain hunting. I think there are two issues in just how hard any machine will hit on a gold chain. First would be discrimination, as very thin gold chains can read down into the iron range because of the nature of the links and low conductivity of gold. So, that might pose a problem for the Sovereign in some ways. First thing I'd do is keep Iron Mask ON, as that's causing the unit to try to sound off to more very low/iron like targets whenever it can. It would also be interesting to test some thin chains in discrimination mode and then in All Metal or PP. My money is on either of those hitting just fine on a thin gold chain where discriminate might have some real issues with it.

On the other hand, IMO good gold chain ability relies more on the coil than anything else. I've said this before, somebody who I talked to who owned the S-12 and the 12x10 said the 12x10 was able to hit on small thin items much better for them in their tests, and that they even found a gold chain with it that they said (I think, if I remember right) they didn't think the S-12 would have hit. We've heard of the Pro Coil providing better small target sensitivity than the FBS 10" coils, and while the 10" Tornado on the GT is better at that (any so many other aspects IMO) than the 10" FBS Explorer coils, I also feel that the 12x10 and even 15x12 are more sensitive to tiny targets like earing backings at depth than the 10" Tornado. With that in mind if logic follows then these coils should also hit on gold chains better. I know I've dug tiny little bits of aluminum, shoe lace holes, and such with the SEF coils that made me sit back and go "Hmmmm...Never expected it to hit that hard on that." Maybe I'll get a thin gold chain and do some comparisons of the 10" Tornado to my 12x10 and my S-5 and see what gives and post a report, unless somebody on here beats me to it.

I can say that I've always found smaller coils on other machines to hit harder for me on smaller targets, such as the Bullseye coil on the Whites versus the stock 9.5" coil. Also remember that the general rule of thumb is that DD coils have greater sensitivity to smaller items than concentrics, and in particular retain that ability better with bigger coils 10 to 12" in size versus a concentric of the same diameter. So one would think that the Sovereign and Excal have many things going for them (many higher frequencies, DD coils), but also have one strike against them (Iron Mask). So, it comes down to two things to do something about it- An SEF or a smaller standard DD coil such as an S-5 or an 8" one, or hunting in PP or All Metal.

Me, I never worry too much about gold chains. The way I figure it more gold rings are probably lost than chains, and with the tiny little things I've dug at depth with these SEF coils I would expect to get some kind of discrimination break through while beach hunting on even a small thin chain, or at least if it has any kind of clasp to it.

 

[Critterhunter]

Also, there is a bright side to machines that are not as hard hitting on gold chains. For instance, my Tesoros have a good reputation on gold chains but that's also what doesn't make them (IMO) good land detectors for old coin hunting or in trashy areas. You want to talk about a machine being noisy and also making total junk tiny bits of garbage sound like a good solid target. Then when you are deep coin hunting you end up getting fooled more by pieces of tiny junk at depth. Is it a very deep coin, one on edge or masked in some way, or is it just another small bit of trash. More often than not it was trash and as a result I dug way more tiny bits of humanity that other machines would never bother me with. I like a machine that gives me audio and VDI instability to indicate the item is small and oddly shaped as one of my tools in deciding what to dig or not on land. If it sounds solid and ID's without any drift (or 1 or 2 digits, perhaps 3 at the most) then most of the time I can bet on my GT that it's a uniformly shaped item. Drifts around in VDI or the audio changes depending on which way I sweep over it? Then I can more than likely put my money on it being a piece of junk that is not uniform in shape.

 

[synthnut]

Thanks guys....I see all of your points ...... I had to remember back when I found very tiny bits of aluminum and also very small childrens gold jewelry and I found it loud and proud with a Pro Coil on the E Trac .... and erikk is getting small chains ( no mirage erikk ) with a WOT , and Critter is getting smalll stuff with his 10 x 12 and found small things with his 12 x 15
so that shoots the small coil idea in the a$$ ..... and Neil , I have to agree that it may be bad ground conditions where raw gold is found , that would create a niche for a smaller coil ...... The AT Pro is also hitting small gold and I would have t atribute that to a DD coil and the higher 15.3 k frequency that it runs at .... So perhaps it's a frequency , and the design of the coil that helps us read the chains better .......I dont really care if I find them or not ...I'm more into rings than chains , but it's been something I have wondered about for a while ....Thanks for the responses .....Jim

 

[erikk]

Excal/WOT will find these 2 Finally got back in the water Air 79 degrees, water 66

 

[Buried Crap NJ]

I found this tiny 10k gold toe ring this summer. It's shown next to a normal size man's ring. This is a tiny ring, it was not very deep.Excalibur II
I always thought that detectors only see at one link in a chain. So if the chain has bigger links you stand a better chance.
Test I have run over the years seem to prove this true. Even when bunched up the detector still has trouble seeing more than one link at more than a few inches,electrically speaking. The best detector I have seen with chains has been the Compass Detectors.

 

[rarysgaard]

Hi! I have only found one gold chain with my excaliber, but it was a very thin 22KT. one. It did not have a great big clasp so I do believe you can find gold chains with it. I have recently been reading Clive Clynick's books on water hunting with excalibers and he seems to find plenty of gold chains hunting in all metal. That might be worth trying. Good luck!