How I use 18KHz for jewelry

[Ism]

My preference hunting style is turf jewelry (Don't have beaches near me else I would capitalize on them). For me it's the greatest return for time spent swinging.
However I have been rewarded with the occasional silver dime, wheat, and IH penny, not to mention the LC's, standing liberty, V nickels and Buffalo nickels I have found in sports fields.
That's because most of them have fill dirt brought in or are constructed on old farm fields.

So over time I developed an 18KHz jewelry program based on the trash in the fields and depth of targets. Jewelry often gets tangled in the roots of the grass and doesn't sink very deep.
Most of my finds are under 4 inches. Only a few times have I found anything beyond 4 inches. Those targets were old gold rings and one gold St. Christopher medallion with chain.
Zinc pennies are the bane of jewelry hunting as they come in where a class ring will fall and sometimes a heavy silver chain. I found that giving the range of 80-86 a tone of 325 works well in IDing most zinc pennies.
Zinc pennies will jump around in number because of the corrosion. A solid target like an IH penny, class ring, or silver chain will stay within the ID range and not give garbled tones, but just give the 200hz tone in that range.
So I dig some zinc pennies but not very many. In addition, I notch from my disc setting of 8 to 42. That eliminates all aluminum foil and drink seals that blanket most sports fields.
If the field is very clean, I drop the notch to 20 just to grab the thin gold chains and smaller gold earrings. My TX power is low and will net quarters up to 6 inches deep and nickels up to 8 inches with a good ID and target signal.
So here's my program if you wish to try it.

Disc-8.0 -- 4-tones (0-8 202), (8-80 616), (80-86 325), (86-99 800)
Sens 85 -- TX power -1
Freq 17.6
Iron volume 00
Reactivity -3 -- Silencer -1
Audio Response 5 -- Overload -1
Notch 8-42

I haven't tried changing the Silencer setting any higher, crown caps haven't been that much of an issue and I can usually distinguish them from clad/silver rings. However I dig them anyhow because of the potential for them to be an earring on the surface.
Crown caps (usually 95-9 give a very small target footprint in relation to the overload signal. So it's easy to tell it's not a quarter (95). The screw caps from Faygo bottles and wine are generally (8 but I have found some silver pendants in that range.
They have a tendency to give multiple tone 325/800 if they are flattened from the side into a football shape.

Beavertail and modern Pull tabs are a pain. There are tell tale signs but not enough to distinguish them from the misshapen ring or gold cross.
Iron is generally not a problem unless it is large, deep, and rusted. Then it gives a sweet tone but once again it will register deep.
Digging deep in a sports field is not recommended. It's the surest way to get kicked out and/or the hobby banned in them.

Hope this helps for those that want to try 18KHz for jewelry. Your program doesn't have to be just like mine.
I am constantly tweaking it for the environment and by no means is it perfected, it's just a general starting point.
Ran

 

[Sleepyjim]

Excellent post! I live a block from soccer fields and will give your program a try...

Thanks so much!

Jim

 

[vancemetaldetecting.com]

My preference hunting style is turf jewelry (Don't have beaches near me else I would capitalize on them). For me it's the greatest return for time spent swinging.
However I have been rewarded with the occasional silver dime, wheat, and IH penny, not to mention the LC's, standing liberty, V nickels and Buffalo nickels I have found in sports fields.
That's because most of them have fill dirt brought in or are constructed on old farm fields.

So over time I developed an 18KHz jewelry program based on the trash in the fields and depth of targets. Jewelry often gets tangled in the roots of the grass and doesn't sink very deep.
Most of my finds are under 4 inches. Only a few times have I found anything beyond 4 inches. Those targets were old gold rings and one gold St. Christopher medallion with chain.
Zinc pennies are the bane of jewelry hunting as they come in where a class ring will fall and sometimes a heavy silver chain. I found that giving the range of 80-86 a tone of 325 works well in IDing most zinc pennies.
Zinc pennies will jump around in number because of the corrosion. A solid target like an IH penny, class ring, or silver chain will stay within the ID range and not give garbled tones, but just give the 200hz tone in that range.
So I dig some zinc pennies but not very many. In addition, I notch from my disc setting of 8 to 42. That eliminates all aluminum foil and drink seals that blanket most sports fields.
If the field is very clean, I drop the notch to 20 just to grab the thin gold chains and smaller gold earrings. My TX power is low and will net quarters up to 6 inches deep and nickels up to 8 inches with a good ID and target signal.
So here's my program if you wish to try it.

Disc-8.0 -- 4-tones (0-8 202), (8-80 616), (80-86 325), (86-99 800)
Sens 85 -- TX power -1
Freq 17.6
Iron volume 00
Reactivity -3 -- Silencer -1
Audio Response 5 -- Overload -1
Notch 8-42

I haven't tried changing the Silencer setting any higher, crown caps haven't been that much of an issue and I can usually distinguish them from clad/silver rings. However I dig them anyhow because of the potential for them to be an earring on the surface.
Crown caps (usually 95-9 give a very small target footprint in relation to the overload signal. So it's easy to tell it's not a quarter (95). The screw caps from Faygo bottles and wine are generally (8 but I have found some silver pendants in that range.
They have a tendency to give multiple tone 325/800 if they are flattened from the side into a football shape.

Beavertail and modern Pull tabs are a pain. There are tell tale signs but not enough to distinguish them from the misshapen ring or gold cross.
Iron is generally not a problem unless it is large, deep, and rusted. Then it gives a sweet tone but once again it will register deep.
Digging deep in a sports field is not recommended. It's the surest way to get kicked out and/or the hobby banned in them.

Hope this helps for those that want to try 18KHz for jewelry. Your program doesn't have to be just like mine.
I am constantly tweaking it for the environment and by no means is it perfected, it's just a general starting point.
Ran

Ran this is very very similar to my jewelry program, so I'm pretty sure the info I'm about to give ya will help you as much as it did me, when you get those iffy's you thing maybe pull tabs, swap to your x y screen! It will tell you every time, just try it and see what you think... Let me know!

 

[Ism]

Thanks Jeremy,
I can tell by ID change as I move around a beavertail tab, even when the tail is folded inward.
But I had a gold ring on a 45deg angle in the earth do the same thing so I don't chance the numbers.
I will try the X/Y screen to see the info you are sharing. However I don't even know what a ring looks like on X/Y (will have to do some testing).
I played with it once and it has a lot of valuable info., I just wish targets at depth would display like shallow ones.
Ran

 

[samandnoah]

Hey Ran --

Thanks for posting your settings and notes on 18 kHz. I was really interested by your 18 kHz comments in another thread, so I really appreciate it.

Do you not have issues with can slaw out on athletic fields? I don't recall the exact details, but my recollection is that I spent a lot of time chasing small shreds of aluminum cans (so not foil or drink seals) that rang in higher than your notch, more like a coin. I definitely could be misremembering. But I'll give this a try within the next week or two and let you know how it goes. Should be fun!

Hey, I just saw your post from another thread about owning a Sov (GT?). Do you ever use it for dirt hunting? Your comments about the Deus being much better on silver, I get. At this point I have found the Sov to be more sensitive to small gold than the Deus. Given the description of your typical jewelry hunting (targets 4" or less, etc), have you tried the Sov with a smaller coil? That 10"x12" rules on the beach, but is not my friend on land. However, having used some smaller coils on land, it would be an interesting comparison.

Thanks again,
Rich

 

[beepsilver]

If the goal is jewelry at any depth with trash known to be present, I think it'd be a big mistake to use the XY screen to make a dig/no-dig decision...just my opinion.

 

[Ism]

Rich,
Can slaw can be a problem but most cases the debris is large or concentrated in a 6-10ft area. So similar ID numbers are a dead giveaway. If I'm not in a hurry, I'll dig all the pieces just to make sure.
Smaller can slaw ID's in the low to high 80's, larger pieces ID above 90 (coin range), but you can usually tell by the size, audio overload, and signal shape.
Some dimes and pennies can fall in the mid to high 80's area (especially if drug down by a nickel or zinc), as well as large silver chains.
In addition, slaw tends to bounce the ID numbers as you go around it. I search areas with low to moderate trash where there is seldom more than one target under the coil.

I have a difficulty in super trashy areas searching jewelry and tend to hunt them for only a short time.
Those areas I fall back to coins and silver mode fairly quick. If I found silver jewelry, then I will concentrate on lower numbers and removing junk.
Its hard to get repeatable numbers in trashy areas because there are many targets under the coil at the same time.
I don't dig deep in sports fields so my time on a target is not very long. It's easier for me to retrieve a target than spend time evaluating it.

As with any frequency and program on the Deus, working with it becomes more comfortable and better at judging a target.
I can pretty much tell you when I'm over trash but I'm occasionally surprised with a wrong guess.
Hope this helps.
Ran

 

[CZconnoisseur]

Ran,

I tried your program last night in my front yard of the house I just moved into...I must say though, that hunting in 18 kHz is a much different experience than 4 kHz which I tend to use almost exclusively at the older sites I frequent .

This house was built in 1977 so the chances of finding even some 1950s Wheats is pretty low compared to the old neighborhood. I set up my Deus exactly the way you posted - except I added a 5th tone for 91-96 for larger silver jewelry, dimes, quarters, etc. This enabled me to further discern targets by audio before I dug. Every target I dug was less than 4" deep, and it was a welcome change digging into soft ground for shallow targets vs trying to pick through some rocks and concrete at the fairgrounds for targets 6-8" deep!

Memorial pennies, the copper type, rang in pretty solidly at "90-91", and the tone break set where it was at "91" further IDed those coins, dimes tend to register a tad higher at "91-92" and these sounded different than the copper memorials, giving me more audio info before I dug the target.

Dug a few zincolns just to see, and every one that I detected, turned out to be just that...the lower-tone audio is perfect for screeing the zinc cents - I love it so far! Also dug a few pulltabs that registered in the high 60s and low 70s, and the VDI was pretty steady on these targets. Found a couple nickels which really sounded off well - very confident and unmistakeable - even mixed in with several zincolns in a 12" X 12" area I was able to separate the nickel from other coins - Reactivity of 3 AND 18 kHz made it no trouble at all!

When I get home tonight I will post results of last night's hunt - Thank you for the wonderful program and now that I'm a resident of a newer suburban area I'm sure to put this program to use in the more modern parks around.

The fairgrounds site is now a 30-mile round trip for me, so the weeknight jaunts out there are no more...

 

[Ism]

Thanks CZ,

Its nice to hear the program worked for you as intended.
Ran

 

[n3umw]

Good post, thanks! I too prefer tot lots and other areas likely to have jewelry.

I would suggest dropping your notch down to 30. I found a 9.8 gram (heavy) 14k gold bracelet that only reads 31 at 18kHz.
4k 8k 12k 18k
26 28 31 31 14k Gold Bracelet 9.8g

Bracelets and chains appear to the detector the same as a single link and so will read much lower than expected.

I bought the thinnest 14k gold band I could find (.55g) and it reads higher than the bracelet!
4k 8k 12k 18k
29 32 35 40 14k Gold Ring, 1.5 mm band .55g

While the bracelet weighs 20 times as much as the ring, the bracelet is a chain mail style with close to 80 links, so each link only weighs .12g or about a quarter of the ring.

 

[CZconnoisseur]

Good post, thanks! I too prefer tot lots and other areas likely to have jewelry.

I would suggest dropping your notch down to 30. I found a 9.8 gram (heavy) 14k gold bracelet that only reads 31 at 18kHz.
4k 8k 12k 18k
26 28 31 31 14k Gold Bracelet 9.8g

Bracelets and chains appear to the detector the same as a single link and so will read much lower than expected.

I bought the thinnest 14k gold band I could find (.55g) and it reads higher than the bracelet!
4k 8k 12k 18k
29 32 35 40 14k Gold Ring, 1.5 mm band .55g

While the bracelet weighs 20 times as much as the ring, the bracelet is a chain mail style with close to 80 links, so each link only weighs .12g or about a quarter of the ring.

Excellent find! Thank you for posting the VDI spead on your gold items - may have to adjust my 4K programs now!

I was goofing around one day playing with the Deus and found out that the shape and also the continuity of an object will determine its VDI. I found a small sterling ring and noticed it was cracked. There was a big difference in VDI after I spread the crack a little bit versus holding the ring closed - seems like there's a considerable amount of total conductivity lost when the circle is broken and it seems that bracelets and chains follow this rule too, hence the low VDI of the bracelet. Round objects whether they be coins or rings must "accentuate" conductivity and make it easier for the detector to "see"

 

[NiagracountyNY]

Thats gotta be why coins will sound almost round.a smooth signal.You almost know its a coin before u dig it sometimes due to that sound.Very good observation CZ. HH

 

[Ism]

N3, you are spot on about gold chains. I have my notch down to 20 in the cleaner parks, just up to 42-43 in the high trash areas. The thin gold chains I have ID'd in air at a jumpy 18-30.
I recently dug a medium 18" sterling chain that ID'd in the low 50's, so yes, the notch should come way down from the low 40's when you can tolerate it.