Fors CoRe off to a promising start

[dfmike]

First time out with my brand new Fors CoRe and the results are interesting. I'm still learning the lingo on this machine. It's a very different animal than my F19 yet in some ways, they are not that far apart. More on that later.

This is the result of a three hour hunt to a place that I have been going to very often in the last 2 months. A century old school yard that is still in use today. It used to be agricultural land once upon a time. It's full of recent clad (the Canadian nasty steel core kind), nails, iron and foil to name a few. That makes up most of the top layer. The good stuff lays underneath and it's kind of hard to decipher the constant barrage of noise. Masking is the main problem here followed by moderately high mineralized ground (ground balance 80-82). Thankfully there is absolutely no clay here, super easy to dig dirt which is very uncommon around here.

I didn't expect to hit 2 silvers on my first try with this machine. The first to pop out was a good looking 1952 King George VI quarter and then a not so good looking 1910 King Edward VII quarter. I also found my second old belt buckle with the center pin broken off by rust. The main piece seems to be made of brass. Everything else was clad, a few square nails and an old flat button that has seen better days. The silver coins were the only items I have found that were above 90 on the visual ID. If you are looking for silver and the ID is stable in the 90's, dig it for sure !

To my surprise, finding steel core clad was not too difficult. The machine will give out a high tone both ways occasionally giving a mid tone. The visual ID will vary from high iron to mid tone to high conductor but the sound is generally a high tone both ways.

Pin pointing is relatively easy. The machine is very comfortable to swing for hours. It's too early to give a more detailed review. It will come later on along with comparisons to my F19 which I know a lot better than the CoRe.

My main gripe is with the inaccuracy of the target depth readout. More on that in another post.

Settings for this hunt: DI3, sensitivity 90, ID masking 20. I have not tried DI2 yet but I will soon enough.

Thanks again to Monte for all his help. I hope he sees this post.

 

[Monte]

First time out with my brand new Fors CoRe and the results are interesting. I'm still learning the lingo on this machine. It's a very different animal than my F19 yet in some ways, they are not that far apart. More on that later.

I believe that the more time you put in with your new Nokta FORS CoRe, the more comfortable you will become with it, and 'comfortable' includes knowing what a detector can do, and trusting it to perform well in a wide range of applications and site challenges. Yes, there are a few comparisons to be made, but the FORS CoRe and Fisher F19 are definitely "different animals" in many ways. For one, there is a little difference in performance attributed to the different operating frequencies, which is 15 kHz with the CoRe and 19 kHz with the F-19. I prefer my two 15 kHz CoRe devices for general, all-purpose detecting.

This is the result of a three hour hunt to a place that I have been going to very often in the last 2 months. A century old school yard that is still in use today. It used to be agricultural land once upon a time. It's full of recent clad (the Canadian nasty steel core kind), nails, iron and foil to name a few. That makes up most of the top layer.

Sadly a lot of that Canadian coinage they are pumping out up there is made of magnetic-based metals, like nickel and steel, and except for the round-shaped physical design which enhances the coin's general Target ID, the effect on the EMF is different from the effect of a non-ferrous metal.

The good stuff lays underneath and it's kind of hard to decipher the constant barrage of noise. Masking is the main problem here followed by moderately high mineralized ground (ground balance 80-82). Thankfully there is absolutely no clay here, super easy to dig dirt which is very uncommon around here.

Much of the ground I hunt, especially for older era coinage and small artifacts, has a GB phase in the '81' to '86' range, and sometimes even from '86.[size=small]20[/size]' to '87.[size=small]80[/size]' and although challenging ferrous debris is mostly scattered with about 95% in the upper 3" range and 5% of the iron below about 3", the majority of the lost coinage, easily 98% of it that I have found at those sites since 1969, is still from surface to the 3" - 4" depth range.

Location and 'ground texture' can have a lot to do with Coin Depth, and since most of the older sites I have hunted, and continue to search, for over 47 years of Relic Hunting have been relatively flat, very sparse in the way of trees that can deposit leafage buildup, and other than sage brush and annual/periodic weed growth that is a dry type that usually dries up and blows away, there isn't much to get in the way or cause buildup or radical ground disturbance.

Winds can blow sand or loose dirt onto or off-of targets, just as periodic rains or thunderstorms can wash a little contamination on things, or rinse an area enough to cause exposure or partial exposure. The biggest cause of ground disturbance and coin/target displacement was caused by bottle diggers from '55 to about '59, some more recent digging disturbance, and from open range cattle grazing through or when they drive a couple thousand sheep across some of the sites every few years.

No reasons for coins to be displaced to a deeper depth at most locations, so a real need to learn how to work slowly and methodically to find the keepers in and amongst the ferrous junk, but this also calls for using some of the best performing detectors and coils ... emphasis on both. A good detector might not perform well with out the best coil suited for the task at hand, and having a very good working coil on a detector that comes up lacking doesn't get you anywhere, either.

I didn't expect to hit 2 silvers on my first try with this machine. The first to pop out was a good looking 1952 King George VI quarter and then a not so good looking 1910 King Edward VII quarter. I also found my second old belt buckle with the center pin broken off by rust. The main piece seems to be made of brass. Everything else was clad, a few square nails and an old flat button that has seen better days. The silver coins were the only items I have found that were above 90 on the visual ID. If you are looking for silver and the ID is stable in the 90's, dig it for sure !

Hitting silver coins isn't a surprise to me. The FORS CoRe is a very capable detector.

To my surprise, finding steel core clad was not too difficult. The machine will give out a high tone both ways occasionally giving a mid tone. The visual ID will vary from high iron to mid tone to high conductor but the sound is generally a high tone both ways.

Yes, the CoRe can do OK when it comes to hitting on your Canadian metal make-up coinage which can be quite a challenge due to so much of it being magnetic-metal composition. The fact that man shaped the coinage into a circular configuration does help the conductivity a bit, and you can get reasonable workable visual TID's, but to achieve the best results the target must be laying very flat-to-the-coil, and it should be swept with the center axis of the search coil.

If the target is canted very much, that can degrade the effectiveness of the numeric VDI response, and if you have the coil advanced too far forward or pulled too far to the rear, you will definitely not get a workable read-out, and instead be using more of what I termed 'EPR' or 'Edge-Pass Rejection' several decades ago. I was using those 'rejection' techniques even before I had a detector with Discrimination, and fortunately I live down "south of the border" here in the USA where it has worked quite well for me.

'EPR' is the technique I have used a long time [size=small](since '71)[/size] to 'classify' problem trash targets like bottle caps, and when I lived and detected in and around the greater Portland, Oregon metro area, I used to encounter Canadian coinage quite a bit, especially during the '80s and '90s. I had to learn to try and distinguish the tell-tale audio personality between your coins and the lowly bottle caps, and that's not always very easy. The FORS CoRe does work better for me at finding them, but off-center sweeps can pose more challenges.

Pin pointing is relatively easy. The machine is very comfortable to swing for hours. It's too early to give a more detailed review. It will come later on along with comparisons to my F19 which I know a lot better than the CoRe.

I don't have any problems Pinpointing with my CoRe units, regardless of which coil I am using, but I do work the smaller 'OOR' coil the majority of the time because I am hunting more littered sites, and that smaller coil is a dandy for isolating a target.

My main gripe is with the inaccuracy of the target depth readout. More on that in another post.**and here it is:**

I just tried my CoRe for the first time today. General impressions are favorable but one thing does not seem to be working and that is the depth readout when pin pointing. I dug several pennies which were in the 3-4 inch range and the CoRe constantly gave me 20-29 cm of depth on the display. Is this a known issue ? The only time I could rely on depth readouts is when the detector showed depths of below 20cm. Then I knew that the target was either on the surface or at 1-2 inches. This doesn't happen once in a while, target depth readout is never even close.

I don't want to get into extensive detector comparisons here but I can confidently say that my F19 is super accurate on depth of coin sized targets whether they are on the surface or up to 8-9 inches deep.

Coin Depth is not all that great with most makes and models I have used since there are so many variables to be considered. For one thing, most detectors are designed to 'calibrate' Coin Depths based on about a 1" diameter coin. But there can also be a difference in Coin Depth based upon the coin's metal make-up, and I am working on a response for someone today using an assortment of your Canadian coins and our US coins.

Settings for this hunt: DI3, sensitivity 90, ID masking 20. I have not tried DI2 yet but I will soon enough.

My main-use CoRe has the 'OOR' coil mounted, and in trashier sites I also use Di3 along with the smaller coil.. My Sensitivity is saved at '99' at turn-on in that mode, then I reduce it if I have much EMI or other noise issues. My Disc. [size=small](ID Masking)[/size] is set at '10' because I like to hear nails and most iron, at least most of the time, and a setting of '20' or '21' will generally reject most iron nails. I only increase to that setting on a rare occasion when I just get tired of too many nails at some locations.

I like to use Di2 when I am working the 7X11 DD standard coil, and that is the saved 'turn-on' mode for my other CoRe that keeps the standard coil mounted. Gain is '95' and Disc. is '10' in Di2 mode on that device.

Thanks again to Monte for all his help. I hope he sees this post.

I did, I did!! Any questions, you're welcome to shoot me an e-mail.

Monte

 

[Sven]

Excellent hunt and finds. Like the Impact I like Di3 for Canadian clad coins. Once you get the hang of it, maybe like the Impact you'll start to find those edge, slanted coins that I find a lot of. target audio is always as good as if the coin was flat for the most part. ID might go bouncy, lower to higher, just keep sweeping over the target, The Impact seems like it will analogize the questionable target with more sweeps, then give a good quick higher tone and a quick high number, watch and listen. Dig. The dimes will be a bit harder to distinguish. Right now I find its starting to become second nature with the Impact. Near surface to 4" Loons and Toons are getting pretty easy to tell, sort of a blend of med/high tone, when pinpointing with the DD pull back method, the target will be narrow but seems to span the length of the coil, as if it were wire. If you instead pinpoint with the toggle, the coin will be short and narrow as a coin normally would be using a concentric, dead center just ahead of the coil ears. If you dig straight down and its not there, those targets can be coins on edge or slanted off to the side of the hole. My pinpointer comes in handy for these targets.

I will post about last nights hunt later.

Oh yeah, coin ID depth I don't rely on much, was watching it last night.

 

[dfmike]

Thanks for the responses.

Monte, I had the feeling when I was hunting there that a smaller coil would have been better. The amount of trash is just overwhelming. It's one of the reasons I set masking at 20. I could have pushed it higher but did not want to lose depth. For now, I'll practice with the coil I have (the 7 X 11).

Regarding depth readout: It's not a deal killer but I enjoy having a general idea of the depth of a target. If the CoRe was 1-2 inches off, I wouldn't mind but on my first hunt it was never right, never close. On copper pennies for example, it was giving me around 3 times the actual depth... 25cm (10 inch) on a 3 inch target was typical. Like I said, I can live without it but if Nokta chose to include the function, it should be more accurate than that. I'm spoiled with the Fisher machines in that regard.

Sven, no loonies and toonies on this hunt. I got home, buried one of each kind and checked the ID to give me an idea what to look for next time. On the CoRe the toonies vary only slightly from about 82-84 much like the copper pennies. The loonies are slightly higher and will sometimes peak at 87 or 88 depending on angle. I haven't checked the newest loonies which appear to be more cheaply made. With care I should be able to get some on the next hunt.