need some help with my latest explorer hangup,i had the machine working good untill i went to a old foundation site and after searching several old foundations 7 hours and finding nothing but large metal junk i was scraching my head so as a test like i usally do i dug two 7inch deep holes and drop a dime in one and a nickle in the other,to my surprise the explorer could not detect the dime,i actually lost it,the nickle i could here but it was so distorted that i would not have even thought about diggin it if i didnt know it was there.this really got me mad with this machine so i was wondering what your input is on the problem. i have the explorer set up as follows sens 24 to 28, ferrous sounds,vol 5,gain 6to7,iron mask at -16 and 00/31 edited out becuse it picks up every rock in the ground not matter the setting,and normal audio.the site like most i go to must be heavy in the iron because on -16 the explorer doesnt stop with the low tones,sometimes when i get tired i edit out the very top left with the smallest curser or run -15.14. but i still cannot believe i lost my dime,makes me wonder how much more stuff i missing and if other people have this type of problems.
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explorer heavy in iron
- Thread starter todd9146
- Start date
Todd,
Iron can be a strange thing. Iron is surely limiting your depth. I have detected sites that 5 inches seemed to be the maximum. The only things I can really recommend is overlap ALOT. I mean advance the coil forward by 1/4 of the coil's size and go slow in your sweep so the Explorer has a chance to analyze everything. You might even want to try IM-15 or IM-14. The sounds can be overwhelming and it can be very easy to miss a good hit mixed in. Dig one way hits. Don't overdo the sensitivity. Detecting the area from multiple directions. It's amazing how some coins only hit from a specific direction. When I first started learning the Explorer I was TRYING to hunt a heavy iron site like the one you are talking about. The first three times there I didn't get a signal coin. I was starting to become convinced that the site had been pounded. I came home and messed around with coins laying on the ground close to rusty nails. It was an eye opener as to how the Explorer acted around iron. Next time out I dug a Barber Quarter hiding at that site. When I stopped detecting that site I had dug 15 or so silver and alot of IHs plus and 1786 Conneticut Colonial Copper...
The Explorer is definitely capable with a little persistance and patience. Good Luck!!!
-Bill
Iron can be a strange thing. Iron is surely limiting your depth. I have detected sites that 5 inches seemed to be the maximum. The only things I can really recommend is overlap ALOT. I mean advance the coil forward by 1/4 of the coil's size and go slow in your sweep so the Explorer has a chance to analyze everything. You might even want to try IM-15 or IM-14. The sounds can be overwhelming and it can be very easy to miss a good hit mixed in. Dig one way hits. Don't overdo the sensitivity. Detecting the area from multiple directions. It's amazing how some coins only hit from a specific direction. When I first started learning the Explorer I was TRYING to hunt a heavy iron site like the one you are talking about. The first three times there I didn't get a signal coin. I was starting to become convinced that the site had been pounded. I came home and messed around with coins laying on the ground close to rusty nails. It was an eye opener as to how the Explorer acted around iron. Next time out I dug a Barber Quarter hiding at that site. When I stopped detecting that site I had dug 15 or so silver and alot of IHs plus and 1786 Conneticut Colonial Copper...
The Explorer is definitely capable with a little persistance and patience. Good Luck!!!-Bill
Chris(SoCenWI)
Well-known member
and so is everybody else.
I've said this a million times but.... Once again. Set a silver dime on the ground and put a nail on top of it. Start swinging and circling around it. You can only get the dime from a very narrow angle.
Now think of a trashy ground site that probably has a dozen chunks of iron under the coil at any one given time. Almost seems a miracle that we find anything at all.
There is no easy solution to this, no magic settings. As Bill mentioned overlap your strokes hugely and go real slow. Also hit it from many different angles, and with different sized coils. Try wearing a red shirt one day and a blue the next. There is something to be said for less discrimination because some coins in iron can hit way over to the left side of the screen and sound only slightly better than iron.
I'm pretty amazed you could get the nickel at 7 inches, must not be that trashy. I've seen sites where you can't pick up a coin laying right on top of the ground.
If it wasn't for trash most of the sites would have been picked clean long ago. So trash is really the thing that keeps our hobby going.
Chris
I've said this a million times but.... Once again. Set a silver dime on the ground and put a nail on top of it. Start swinging and circling around it. You can only get the dime from a very narrow angle.
Now think of a trashy ground site that probably has a dozen chunks of iron under the coil at any one given time. Almost seems a miracle that we find anything at all.
There is no easy solution to this, no magic settings. As Bill mentioned overlap your strokes hugely and go real slow. Also hit it from many different angles, and with different sized coils. Try wearing a red shirt one day and a blue the next. There is something to be said for less discrimination because some coins in iron can hit way over to the left side of the screen and sound only slightly better than iron.
I'm pretty amazed you could get the nickel at 7 inches, must not be that trashy. I've seen sites where you can't pick up a coin laying right on top of the ground.
If it wasn't for trash most of the sites would have been picked clean long ago. So trash is really the thing that keeps our hobby going.
Chris
Ace
Member
You could do what I always do at a trashy site... I clean it, by that I mean that I carefully remove each and every piece of metal in the all metal mode that I can pick up with my machine, you'll be amazed at how much stuff lays hidden beneath or next to trash.
Here's what you need:
*One or two 5 gallon buckets (those that say 'we recycle', it will make you chuckle, trust me. Along with some heavy duty trash bags.
*A big enough puch to put small-medium pieces of iron, trash, etc.
*A medium sized shovel for those really big pieces of iron (they are rare, but they are there).
*A magnet for those small pieces of iron.
*A pinpointer (an X-1 would be nice).
Good luck, tell me how it goes if you plan on cleaning the site. Just remember to inspect every uncommon find, set them appart.
Here's what you need:
*One or two 5 gallon buckets (those that say 'we recycle', it will make you chuckle, trust me. Along with some heavy duty trash bags.
*A big enough puch to put small-medium pieces of iron, trash, etc.
*A medium sized shovel for those really big pieces of iron (they are rare, but they are there).
*A magnet for those small pieces of iron.
*A pinpointer (an X-1 would be nice).
Good luck, tell me how it goes if you plan on cleaning the site. Just remember to inspect every uncommon find, set them appart.
Jim upstate NY
New member
Todd, what coil were you using?, if the stock try a smaller one.... also 24-28 is way too high in high iron... iron mask -15, fast response manual senstivity no higher than 20 is the way to go at cellar holes.. dig anything that gives a positive tone even if it sounds warbly... and yup a dime at 8 inches in cellar hole iron is gonna be tough to get with any machine
Unfourtunately, there's nothing you can do unless it's a field and you can dig every signal including iron and move trash out of the way. Actually, I think ANY sort of 'program' that is used in iron DECREASES your finds. The main reason being is that some coins close to iron will 'pull to the left' and into the iron range BUT will still have the proper coin tone. I would recommend going thru as I said before. Then change some settings and go thru again. The settings I would adjust would be iron mask, fast on/off, deep on/off, manual/auto sensitivity and change to different coil sizes. No detector can see thru the iron as advertised. I would call it peeking if anything. Iron is detecting's biggest pain in the rearend...
-Bill
-Bill