Experiment

[machineman]

I propose an experiment. Go to a place you think good stuff should be. Mark of an area (not too big) and detect it at your normal settings. then turn the detector to all metal mode and dig everything that beeps. Hit it from multiple directions, do your best to find every target in the area. Different coils, slower sweeps, different detectors, ect. If you can rake or scrape off the top layer of soil and start again. I am curious how many good targets we are missing because of disc and other reasons. I plan to do this at the local lake. If nothing else this will give us a good idea how well we are covering an area. Put your finds into 2 piles one that you found under your normal settings and search mode and one for everything else you found. Post your results. Should be intersting

 

[kaolinwasher]

I like that Idea ,

 

[machineman]

I think I will use more than 2 piles. I will go over the area first with my outlaw and then my Gold bug pro. Then do the same in all metal. The GB pro is really hot in all metal. Then rake down the sand and try all metal again. I have a few reasons why this occurred to me. First was an article I read in one of the treasure magazines. In the article they were detecting a drained lake in Denver and eventually started digging and detecting, deeper and deeper, finding more rings as they went down. The next was an old town site that I detected. I have found a few coins there but nothing deeper than a few inches. When I took a silver dime there and tested I put it down 4" and got a signal that I wouldent normally dig. I had the same results with all my detectors (3 that day GBP, Outlaw and Compadre). I am going to do this at a local lake beach. I have found lots of jewelry there and after digging up a modern can over 18" down I know the stuff there could be deep. I have dug silver rings over 10" using the Outlaw and 10x12. Others detect there so most of the shallow finds are picked off. Good luck and dont do this in a park.

 

[WV62]

My brother MarkCZ and I did just about what you are talking about. We spent several days in a 10x10 box, we used string and small sticks to mark off the 10x10sq. I actually started this myself and my brother joined in a day or so later. This box was in a local park at the top of a sled run, and we had to keep things looking pretty good as we worked the box.

So we spent over 20 hours in the box and with 2 of us and we used just about every detector and coil we could get our hands on. So I don't remember all the stuff we dug up, but as for good stuff, I remember we did get one silver dime, one nickel, and less than 10 pennies.

So all in all working an area like that just didn't seem to be the way to go for us.

Ron in WV

 

[cladcanada]

This would make an interesting video, great idea .

I think sometimes were in a rush swinging too fast and too high a disc

 

[Johnp3]

It looks like something close to you're experiment has been done - in case the link below isn't allowed, Google "Thomas Dankowski metal detecting" for the article "the Painful Truth". It is very enlightening.

http://www.dankowskidetectors.com/painful_truth.htm

 

[machineman]

I think this will work best in areas where there is a high likely hood of deep items, like beaches. Those are good articles, and basically what I was talking about. I will try to make a video when I get out to the lake.

 

[Mega]

A very interesting thread,i currently have access to a over night animal enclosure over here in the UK that goes back to about a 1000 years maybe more,i guess the size of the 5 enlosure would be about 2 acres,the cattle drover would use this site as a stop over with the animal on the way down to london to market.

The trouble is with this site although it has produced some stunning silver hammered coins it also has alot of old iron in it as well,so basically what i have been doing over the last 2 years while i have access to this site is clear it with a very small coil 1st then gradually as i have cleared the top few inches of finds and trash then use a slightly larger coil and start the routine all over again.I guess the best way to describe it is like peeling the layers of a onion.This site will kewep me going for another few years yet but while it still produces some very nice and old finds going back a 1000+ years i will keep detecting it methodically.

This year i plan on using my Pulse with a small coil to get in between the stubble this is in one sector of this site as i feel that i have cleared most of the iron out in a 50ftx50ft area with my Silver Sabre which is well suited for this site.Its alot of work but well worth it in the end.

Should have access to this site again in about a months time when the crops come off,then a 5 month window till its ploughed again for next years crop,trouble is i feel that this field could go for housing within 5 years so i hope to try and be able to detect it before its lost for ever.

 

[MarkCZ]

My brother MarkCZ and I did just about what you are talking about. We spent several days in a 10x10 box, we used string and small sticks to mark off the 10x10sq. I actually started this myself and my brother joined in a day or so later. This box was in a local park at the top of a sled run, and we had to keep things looking pretty good as we worked the box.

So we spent over 20 hours in the box and with 2 of us and we used just about every detector and coil we could get our hands on. So I don't remember all the stuff we dug up, but as for good stuff, I remember we did get one silver dime, one nickel, and less than 10 pennies.

So all in all working an area like that just didn't seem to be the way to go for us.

Ron in WV

My brother left out a couple of tit-bits in our 10' X 10'
This spot had turned up a few good items already!
The spot had a LOT of pretty closely laced trash, Nails, Still rods, wire, tabs, screw caps, washers.
Ron's idea was at first to work this box in high discrimination. Then back the disc setting down to maybe 3/4 and rework the WHOLE box, back the disc down some more and rework it again, so on and so on until he reached cleaning it out in all metal!
So, he started this on his own and as I got these reports from a few of the steps I suggested that I jump in and up him clean it out, forget working it down step by step, lets just clean it out and see how much stuff was being mask by all the trash. I took my Coinstrike, my Omega, and my Tejon, Ron at the time a 1270 and maybe even an F75.

Now I told him that I wasn't claim jumping, it was his spot so whatever came out of it was his! But we wanted to know if the concept would prove to be a good tactic. He would have been WEEKS getting to final results on his own.
If I remember right the ONE silver dime we got I found with the Coinstrike, the few pennies was a mix of the other machines. What we did was to use colored poker chips, one running a detector and using the chips to mark the targets, when the box was littered with chips then both of us would go to work digging (we both had pinpointers)
In this spot the effort to reward ratio was the PITS!
Two people,
20 hours,
and thousands of dollars in equipment.

So, we concluded that for this park and it having over 110 acres the concept wasn't going to recover much, plus spending a week In a 10' X 10' we wasn't going to live long enough to even get 10 acres of the 110.

Him working the area before he started cleaning it got almost everything out of it.

Mark

 

[machineman]

I hit the beach today for a few hours. I took a rake and my GBP and Outlaw 10x12. IN about a 10 x 10 patch I found nothing interesting with the outlaw. switched to the GBP and found a few small split shot and foil pieces. then in all metal I found a few small iron and a few pull tabs, the OUtlaw came up with an old poptop can and about 16". Then I scraped back the loose sand (about 3") and started again. Only a few small scraps. I hit a layer of harder sand at that point and had to stop. I will be going back with a shovel. It was about 100 deg out and too hot for heavy work. I think I will try again on Sunday morning. I dont think this will be a productive method in most places. It will probably work out best in old building sites where there is a mask of small iron nails and junk.

 

[jld66]

when i started detecting this year. i cleaned out the junk at an old site. i ended up with a 1857 half dime in an area i previously went over. yes, cleaning out the trash may have helped or i just could of missed it too. it was a good 7 inches down. big items of iron or other stuff could mask out good ones if on top of them. im finding nails dont mask much so far. i can hit clad coins and find nails in the same hole. sometimes i run a low disc and if i loose the signal at about 10 o'clock, i usually dont bother with it unless it has a decent sound. it is mostly junk though. guess im just not that hardcore about it. three times at a site is good for me. i move on.