Gold chains:veryangry:

[Gunnar of bradford MN]

I had heard gold chains where hard to find so yesterday i took a 14 k gold chain put it at 3" and went over it whith the golden no sound whatever ,, went over it whith the compadre no sound had to get down to 1.5 inches befor a crapy sound why is this ? and is thear a detector that is better at finding gold chains ? the chain is less than 1/16th thick and just under 1/4th" inch wide you know when i balled it up i got a good sound now if this was 6 months ago i would have figured i had a crapy detector but i know better now im shure most VLF detectors probly have trouble detecting gold chains frozenly yours 22 below today Gunnar no hunting in this cold i think it would snap somthing off the detector for sure have to wait till springtime

 

[larzam]

GUNNER,i tested a few vlf detectors many years ago.few could detect thin gold chains,especialy if not connected end to end.a p.i. detector would do better.if you try a hoop earring, you would better see how it works.if the earring is connected-better depth. if earring is not locked-no depth,or very little.same with chains.however,you cannot use any disc if going for thin chains.i did hear and read that the tiger shark is good,it is the only detector of tesoro i have not owned beside the cortez and the sand shark{p.i.}. if i find a pendant,then i look for a broken chain,using no disc,OR DREDGE in surrounding area{or etc}hope i relieved your dismay,i have explorerxs,sov,all detectorpro most tesoro,idx pro,excalibur,and experimented with others for over 30 years.sam in ms

 

[tvr]

Gunnar,
Yup. You got it. They are hard to find. You don't get good sounds but you do get sounds with the Compadre. My Cibola and Tejon give me sound on small chains that are shallow too, and they are not good sounds either.

My other brand detector (the one I actually prefer for salt water beaches) does not see the small chains at all. It takes a good sized clasp on the chain or a bigger chain for that other detector to see it at all.

The Tesoro's do better than most on the small chains.
tvr

 

[Mike Hillis]

The Golden is not so hot on small gold chains.

This issue is the detector is looking at single links when the chain is laid out straight. Thats why its so hard to pick up. Sometimes you get lucky and get a good hit on the clasp.

If you really want to hunt gold chains something like a Fisher F5 is needed. The F5 hits small gold chains really well in both disc and all metal modes even at low gain settings. I found a small 14kt gold herringbone chain (pics are on the Fisher board) and the F5 will hit it at medium settings (gain at 50, threshold at +5) at 5" away in the air in Disc mode with the stock coil. It even picks it up with the Gain at the lowest setting (05). Thats the chain laid out straight and the chain itself, not the clasp.

but the Golden is nice too.

Happy

Mike

 

[Gunnar of bradford MN]

thats intresting , fisher f-5 thanks for the info i wonder now what is it abput the f-5 that inables it to do that

 

[slingshot]

I know you're not gonna believe this, but if you can get a Garrett bfo, or probably ANY bfo, try the chain test. And you will STILL NOT pick up paper clips, small nails, hairpins. I'm considering one for tot lots after making the test. It will still pick up large nails, nuts, bolts, tin however.

 

[Bill in Texas]

My wife's Compadre picks up this small real gold chain at 2 to 2/1/2 inches in a air test (all metal). The Vaquero picks it up at about 3 inches (all metal) and about 2 inches super-tuned (lowest discrimination). Sweep speed in critical on small objects like this. Not too slow and not too fast! Good headphones are a must for weak signals! We have found very small gold in the ground also with the Compadre and the Vaquero. The ground must be clean of all trash before you have a chance of finding this type of target. I find my best targets under trash (after cleaned out) not between trash Items, so the size of coil is not as important as a cleaned area. Bill in Texas

 

[R-n-R Magnolia SpringsAla]

I think it's got something to do with the freq. the machine uses, my BHID (5 and 15khz i think?) barely makes a buzz in AM mode on one I found a thin anklet(prob less than 1g) by pure luck at the beach hunting with Dukeobass in the warm,warm summer! Made me really wonder just how many small thin chains I was walking over. Kinda messed with my head for awhile. Luckly most machines will hit the clasps. I tried it against my Fisher goldbug (19khz) and it hit better but it was less than i would think it would. For dry sand I'd reccomend using the goldbug but it's a AM machine so everything hits. Like a PI for drysand. I wonder how the goldbug 2 would do, I think it's 91khz?? makes ya wonder. I need to try it against my Stingray 2 in TR mode.....

 

[tab-nabit]

"The Golden is not so hot on small gold chains. "

Of course I haven't read em all, I think this is the first negative I heard on the Golden - if ya call it a negative

 

[Adrian SS]

Yah Hoo,
Glad to see somebody has re-discovered the BFO
I keep one for ore testing and yep! Gold Chains in freshwater sand and streams.
Adrian SS

 

[JB(MS)]

Of the too many detectors I've had the two best at detecting small gold chains are the Discovery Treasure Baron Goldtrax and a Newforce/C-Scope CS- 1220-XD. The Goldtrax is only 12.5 khz, but was designed by George Payne for nugget hunting and in all metal mode it hits even tiny chains well. It has an iron ID feature in all metal mode that lights an LED and gives a staccato audio response, and has audio variations that allow skipping a lot of low conductive trash once you use the AM mode enough to hear and understand them. Example, a pencil erasor band, except those that have been flattened, that normally falls in the foil/nickel range gives a smoother, longer response than jewelry, or coins, and small foil will give some rather strange audio responses if you swing over it three or four times. Gold jewelry normally gives a hard, fast on/fast off signal. Really small gold chains give the iron staccato audio, but it's a weaker, fluttery sound compared to the normal iron audio. Jbird calls it a flatulent sound, but whatever it's called it's a distinctive sound. I still use the Goldtrax almost exclusively for jewelry hunting.

The 1220-XD runs at 17 khz and has a mode C-Scope calls the Meter/Audio mode. The meter swings left on ferrous targets, right on nonferrous targets and the audio in that mode is pretty awesome. The tone goes from a deep, low growl on iron, and some really tiny or deep targets, up through what I can best describe as a high pitched scream on larger, high conductive or shallow targets. I found a couple of tiny chains with one that gave a flat audio response and the meter basically didn't move. The small chain in the photo was found with the 1220-XD, three inches down in sand at a school playground. It's the deepest small chain I've found, but it still has both connectors on it so that helped. The 1220 is a nonmotion detector that has two TR disc modes and a preset ground balanced all metal mode in addition to the Meter/Audio mode. It works well in mild ground, not so good in tougher ground and requires a lot of attention to keeping the coil level and the same distance from the ground.

 

[slingshot]

Yah Hoo,
Glad to see somebody has re-discovered the BFO
I keep one for ore testing and yep! Gold Chains in freshwater sand and streams.
Adrian SS

Yeah, I have the 1960's Hunter and put batteries in the thing and it still works. Got to playing around with it, then took it out and noticed I was passing right over those:veryangry:hairpins, paperclips and only got a hardly noticeable decrease in the beat but the larger nails and bolts would give the signal to dig-so it seemed like the natural discrimination capabilities for tot lots! Sure enough, I came upon a fine chain(which I eyeballed first) and it picked it up. Only trouble is I'm so spoiled by the weight of these Tesoro's it's hard to get enough energy to swing one of these backachers very long.

 

[Adrian SS]

HI Slingshot,
Another brand manufacturer made a mini BFO back in the sixties called a Spartan; Very nifty machine, the control box was around 5ins by 3ins x 2ins and it did not drift in tune. and was very functional. Rare as hens teeth. I had one for a while that I picked up on Ebay, 12 months later the seller regretted selling it and asked if I would sell it back ro him. Well I didn't want him fretting over the loss so he is now reunited with his loved one.
Cheers
Adrian SS

 

[slingshot]

Yeah, Adrian. That Spartan was a favorite of Karl Von Mueller, if you remember him and the books he wrote-I tried to read everyone of them. I had the TinyTex by Dtex which was a teeny box on a walking stick-my very first detector. Plugging in the headphones turned the unit on. I have a dealer who has one on display but won't sell it to me. Oh well, we're taking up space on this forum and telling how old we are-since I'm a Tesoro fan, maybe all will forgive a slip into time. Just took my Silver umax out today into "screwcap hell"- an old park in the bad side of town where winos loiter and throw their wine bottle caps just anywhere. I had the disc set at Zn cents and pulled some "real" copper cents and dimes out as if the caps weren't there. Couldn't do that with the bfo's!

 

[tabdog]

Hay Gunnar,

Gold chains don't sink worth a darn.

Happy Huntin,

Tabdog

 

[Adrian SS]

Yeah the BFO has gone the way of the dinosaurs. I like Tesoro's and I will not be parting with my Lobo ST any time soon. I have a favourite detector which I won't mention here and I also have a detector that is 33 years old that has located way more deep (better than 10 ins) coins than any other detector I have ever owned and I have had a few, I am down to 26 at the moment. I could go on for ages about why that one detector has rewarded me so well but I won't, other than to say it is manual GB, has a beautiful silky smooth threshold tone, has rock solid stability and a reverse disc feature that discriminates to the detectable target depth, it weighs a ton, has a million knobs to fiddle with and all of this forces a person to go low and slow Whereas modern automatic machines tend to have people going low and TOO FAST.
Cheers,
Adrian SS

 

[pulltab]

what is a BFO?

 

[Southwind]

Maybe we're getting a bit to nostalgic here, but my memory of the BFO is that you were lucky to detect a Volkswagen at 3'. The TR's were a vast improvement over the BFO's, but even the best struggled to get 5-6". The technology just didn't handle ground conditions like todays technology. The TR's did have very fast response and a crisp natural sound and excellent sensitivity to small targets, but even the entry level detectors of today can get better depth.

While I'd love to have my old Inca or Mayan back again, I would never expect them to compete with modern detectors.

 

[jabbo]

We know that the really fine gold chains like the ones that Tabdog is showing here are almost impossible to detect. They are not valuable like the heavier chains, but digging one is satisfying because they let us how good we are. My hunting partner gets a big thrill finding them because others before him passed them up.

 

[tabdog]

Hay Pull Tab,

I don't know a lot about it.

Someone else may tell you better.

But,

BFO stands for "beat frequency oscillator".

It's a simple metal detector like they used

for mine sweepers in WW II.

It transmits a frequency.

It responds as a tone through the loud speaker.

If sufficient amount of conductive material comes

into the transmitted field, the tone will change in

tha loudspeaker.

That's about all I know.

Tabdog