How do you check how mineralized your soil is?

[Canewrap]

All this talk of heavily mineralized soil in the detecting forums got me to wondering. How do you check to see just how mineralized your soil is? Are there any on-line sources that can give you an idea of how mineralized different areas are? Seems to me it would be useful if you're travelling somewhere to do some detecting and don't know what you're in for.

 

[Mike Hillis]

Two things going on, soil type and soil mineralization. At one end of the range you have conductive soil. Example being a wet salt water beach. On the other end of the range you have magnetic soil like black sand.

Conductive______________________________________________Magnetic

In the middle you can have progression from one to another. You can also have a mixture of both that is controlled by soil moisture. When it's dry, the magnetic can dominate and when it's wet the conductive can dominate.

You can get some idea of soil type with your ground balance control. By setting the gb control to a neutral state to start with and then ground balancing to the ground you can get some idea of which end of the spectrum your soil is by which direction you have to turn your gb knob in order to balance to the ground.

Mineralization is a bit harder to judge. It is possible to have highly magnetic ground and mild mineralization. It is also possible to have highly conductive ground and high mineralization. Many folks will equate soil type with soil strength which will be incorrect. There are a few machines that can tell you mineralization strength. You might try and see if anyone in your area is using one of those machines and see what they read for mineralization. First Texas Products make two that can read the mineralization and soil type. The T2 and the F-75. Whites DFX can do both with a bit of work.

HH

 

[Uncle Willy]

Crank your sensitivity up to the max. If your detector goes nuts then you have mineralization. THen start adjusting the sensitivity back down until your machine stabalizes then you will have some idea how much mineralization there is and at what level of sensitivity your detector will perform.

Bill