Guess what happened when I spent all day hunting a National Landmark Historical 1830 Church

[Anonymous]

Guess what happened when I spent all day hunting a National Landmark Historical 1830 Church where Pres. Theodore Roosevelt & his family went all their life:
(Equipment: Explorer XS, Vibra-probe 460,
Misc. digging tools)
Answer:
A 2 LB PILE OF MODERN CLAD COINS, AND MISC. JUNK!!!
sorry, wish i could report otherwise... BUT...
WHAT AM I DOING WRONG? could it be possible that there are no old coins there? To my knowledge, the place has never seen a metal detector.
I used the clear plastic overlay, and marked where various old coins would register... silver,
barbers, walking liberties, IH's, buffalo nics, etc. etc.
whats really confusing is that most of the junk & clad coins registered exactly or close to the markings on the overlay! I used auto sens. at 25-32.
Is this the answer:
- dig only signals that register over approx. 6" on the depth meter?
- try ferrous sounds running in iron mask?
- plant a test garden and practice blindfolded
and learn all tones by heart?
any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance.
Peter

 

[Anonymous]

Peter,
I pass over clad coinage all the time, and don't bother to reach down to retrieve it. It depends on my mood. I am mainly looking for signals that register 6 inches or deeper on my depth meter, and have a decent sound to them. Sometimes the best looking site does not produce the coins you think it should. HH, Doug

 

[Anonymous]

Sound like you got a great spot, you just need to make a few adjustments...
1. Forget that screen overlay, toss it. Only a perfectly flat coin thats shallow in good soil without any other trash or iron around is going to hit exactly on your screen overlay mark. And the deeper they get the larger margin of error you need to allow. At 6 plus inches I'll dig if its just in the top right 1/4 of the screen and sounds good. Mostly though I dig on sound. You need to learn what a round target sounds like and what a deep target sounds like. The best way to learn that is to dig every signal that repeats from two directions that is 6 inches or deeper, except for obvious iron hitting in the upper left corner. Dig 100 and DFX users will grow to hate you. <IMG SRC="/forums/images/biggrin.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="">
2. Turn your ferrous sounds on and leave them on.
3. Turn auto-sens off and leave it off, you lose WAY too much depth. Adjust your sens so you get a fair threshold, not a perfectly stable threshold, nudge it up till it starts to complain and back it off a notch. I like the 26-28 range, 32 if she'll take it. Sometimes I'll hunt with it somewhat unstable then back it off to pinpoint.
4. Iron mask -16 is the ideal setting. The ferrous tones will make the iron give off low tones which you can just ignore but most importantly since there is ZERO nulling, you can really see exactly where every target is. I had to ease into this, starting with iron mask -8 until I got used to all the noise. Now I don't even hear it, I wander along until the high/deep tones get my attention. At least try it for a while at -16, go slow. When you think you got a good target, check a 20 inch circle around it to see if anything else is nearby. I have picked targets out that were only 2-3 inches away from trash or other coins, go slow. About the only thing that bugs me is if you are in an area where there are a lot of rusted screwcaps, edit a smartfind screen to be wide open like iron mask -16 and notch out the screwcaps only to shut them up since they will sound high like silver in ferrous tones.
5. Dig all the deep ones for an hour and see what you discover. I just nabbed a half dime today at 7 inches, it bounced all over the top right corner of the screen but it sounded round and it sounded like silver. Give more weight to how it sounds and the shape of the sound, round versus short choppy pull tab like targets, instead of where it hits on the smartfind screen.

 

[Anonymous]

Where you at Peter? Sounds like your near here.. Problem with old building sites that are still standing is there has been fill put in to most of them in the last 50 years.. and the old stuff is real deep.. try getting away from the buildings and under bushes or treed areas if there are any..

 

[Anonymous]

Great post charles. Couple of questions for ya. When you refer to screw caps I assume you mean the newer aluminum ones. Won't this also knock out the indians as they hit about the same. Are you saying to use an open screen in the disc. mode to imitate -16 iron mask and just notch the caps? Just wanted to be sure before trying your suggestions.
HH BiLL IL

 

[Anonymous]

crowncaps. Those rusty slugs that hit in the lower right hand corner. Yes, imitation iron mask -16 with just the crowncaps notched out. I think thats an Upstate Jim trick.

 

[Anonymous]

The reason to do this is...using ferrous tones those crowncaps will sound high like silver, if you get into an area where there are lots of crowncaps this trick will keep you from going batty. I found a nice half dollar using this a couple months ago.
But understand that some tokens hit in the same area as crowncaps so don't notch them out unless you really half to.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the Clarification Charles <IMG SRC="/forums/images/smile.gif" BORDER=0 ALT=""> I was pretty sure that is what you ment, but I would rather be positive. I have followed your sucess story all thru the fall of this year. The Saga of Charles and Dave Z. Makes for some pretty funny reading. <IMG SRC="/forums/images/smile.gif" BORDER=0 ALT=""> Being from the midwest, the finds are not as old as the ones from your area of the country. Bust silver and LC, and flying eagles are pretty rare here. But we manage pretty well with the Barbers and Seated. Always willing to try something different to improve my odds for the better finds. Thanks for your posts.
<IMG SRC="/forums/images/ml.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="m~"> HH BiLL IL <IMG SRC="/forums/images/ml.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="m~">