HELP! scanning around wooden structures, finding only nails.

[scooper77515]

Our lake is down 8' so boat docks are all above ground, as well as the bulkheads along the shore.

Now, I KNOW I have lost keys, knives, etc. while fishing from these things. So I took the bounty hunter out and it is going NUTZ!!! Nails everywhere, and bolts, from the construction of the bulkheads and piers and docks.

Is there any way to figure out if it is a nail or a diamond ring before digging?

New to the hobby, and it was a real let-down and gave up after an hour or so of nothing but nails and screws.

Still doing well in the playgrounds and parks, so not giving up.

 

[abnackimac]

Try the 4" coil for trashy areas.

 

[Dave J.]

1. Dial in just enough discrimination to knock out a nail lying on the surface when sweeping from any direction. Don't dial in too much or you'll lose jewelry. If you're losing nickels, you're losing most of the jewelry that has stone settings. Expect to did a lot of aluminum trash. ......Of course you can make things easier by cranking disc to the max and just going for the high conductivity coins, but that tactic which sometimes works well in parks is usually a bad one in a water environment where people tend to lose jewelry.

2. Where there nails and screws everywhere, the machine will get confused by the irregular signal patterns and a lot of iron signals will break through.

NOTE: I'm guessing you've already gotten this far.

3. When you hear a signal, try sweeping over it from different directions. Iron "breakthrough" will be erratic and will seem to move around randomly. Can't tell if something is really there, and can't even tell where "there" is.

4. Dig only those signals which you hear regardless of sweep direction, and which beep in the same place regardless of direction. This is usually phrased "dig only repeatable signals". With experience you'll learn to dig considerably less-than-perfect signals which are "mostly repeatable", without digging very much more iron.

In these situations, any metal detector no matter how you use it, will exhibit "iron masking"-- that is, good targets will be "hidden" by iron. The steps listed above won't enable you to clean out a trashy site, but at least the machine will be usable and you'll find some of the good stuff. Iron masking will be greatly reduced by using the 4 inch coil, as suggested by 'mac's post.

--Dave J.

 

[Karl]

Dig it all and then haul out the trash , this way u clean up ur enviroment and collect all the good stuff also.

 

[scooper77515]

Hmmm. I sorta got you on the multi-directional sweep. I have never noticed a difference between iron and others. Maybe I need to experiment with various sample targets and see what gives.

I have been getting pretty good at figuring out what is foil, bobby pins, and other trash, as opposed to coins. Coins put off a nice solid steady tone, the rest either chirp or chirp-chirp. So I was able to just ignore much of the stuff I was "finding" today.

But the nails and bolts threw me off. First time in this sort of environment. And all those hard tones got me digging a lot, and it was always either a nail or a bolt.

 

[toothy]

someone said to hold the nail to the top of the round part and cancel that signal out --- no more nails it works with the
2200