I did some research on my local town and found some information on one of the original lumber mills. The lumber mill was constructed at the turn of the century and burned down in 1916. The location of the mill has been undeveloped and is currently a county park / wetlands. This was my first historic md adventure, as previously I was doing only the community park, so I was rather excited.
Before I actually started detecting, I hiked around the area and identifed three sets of foundation type material as well as some brick piles. I figured I would hit these places the hardest and hope for the best.
As soon as I turned my detector on, it was going crazy with iron hits, no matter where I went. My guess is since it was a typical wood and brick building of that era, the place was littered with rotted sheet metal, nails, and screws.
I spent a little over 5 hours there of straight MDing but ending up not finding any valuable relics of coins. I did find:
- large iron I-Beam dated 1890 from an Illinois Steel Mill
- two smaller thick iron objects that were shaped like boomerangs (but larger)
- lots of sheetmetal
- lots of nails and screws
In the end, though it was fun to explore the old mill, I have to say I was a bit frustrated and disappointed with the experience for two main reasons.
1. The only things that rung up consistent tones on my detector were large iron objects and they weren't being detected as iron.
2. The place was littered with inconsistent (ring once every 5 sweeps) and variable tones (ring high sweeping left, right low sweeping right). Also lots of feint scratching.
3. Many of the times when i attempted to dig said inconsistent / variable tones, I ended up losing the tone completely. It was almost as if the tone existed in the dirt formation, but once I disturbed the formation, the tone was gone.
4. The entire area was covered with flattened long grass and leaves, meaning prior to cleaning an area of said plant carcasses, my sweeps were already 3-4 inches off the ground.
I was using my Fisher F2 w/ the 8" coil at full sensitivity and iron discriminated (as mentioned before).
Questions for the experts:
1. In an area like this where you are forced to sweep 3-4 inches off the ground, is it pretty much futile to attempt it with a entry level model like the Fisher F2 due to its limited depth?
2. When you find your valuable silver and coins in amongst iron junk like this area, what kind of VDI numbers and tone does it give? How much does it vary depending on depth?
3. What causes the inconsistent and variable responses. Is that an object that is too deep for the detector to handle or is it soil formation creating a false signal of some sort.
Before I actually started detecting, I hiked around the area and identifed three sets of foundation type material as well as some brick piles. I figured I would hit these places the hardest and hope for the best.
As soon as I turned my detector on, it was going crazy with iron hits, no matter where I went. My guess is since it was a typical wood and brick building of that era, the place was littered with rotted sheet metal, nails, and screws.
I spent a little over 5 hours there of straight MDing but ending up not finding any valuable relics of coins. I did find:
- large iron I-Beam dated 1890 from an Illinois Steel Mill
- two smaller thick iron objects that were shaped like boomerangs (but larger)
- lots of sheetmetal
- lots of nails and screws
In the end, though it was fun to explore the old mill, I have to say I was a bit frustrated and disappointed with the experience for two main reasons.
1. The only things that rung up consistent tones on my detector were large iron objects and they weren't being detected as iron.
2. The place was littered with inconsistent (ring once every 5 sweeps) and variable tones (ring high sweeping left, right low sweeping right). Also lots of feint scratching.
3. Many of the times when i attempted to dig said inconsistent / variable tones, I ended up losing the tone completely. It was almost as if the tone existed in the dirt formation, but once I disturbed the formation, the tone was gone.
4. The entire area was covered with flattened long grass and leaves, meaning prior to cleaning an area of said plant carcasses, my sweeps were already 3-4 inches off the ground.
I was using my Fisher F2 w/ the 8" coil at full sensitivity and iron discriminated (as mentioned before).
Questions for the experts:
1. In an area like this where you are forced to sweep 3-4 inches off the ground, is it pretty much futile to attempt it with a entry level model like the Fisher F2 due to its limited depth?
2. When you find your valuable silver and coins in amongst iron junk like this area, what kind of VDI numbers and tone does it give? How much does it vary depending on depth?
3. What causes the inconsistent and variable responses. Is that an object that is too deep for the detector to handle or is it soil formation creating a false signal of some sort.
