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Iron question for Rick (ND) or anyone else... :help:

J

jbow

Active member
I have a hard time with the SovereignGT in iron, in particular in cut or short square nails. These nails are corroded and usually slightly over an inch long. I was reading another post and I read where you said you can always tell iron because it will move when you check it from the side. I must be doing something wrong and I think I know what it is but let me know. Sometimes I use pinpoint but usually I just pinpoint in disc by marking the spot where the lines intersect when swinging from front and from side of the target, however I have been using the middle of the coil and, as I said, visually marking where the target is. Sometimes I use AM/pinpoint in iron but I don't trust it because an iron masked target could seem to move because AM might actually pinpoint the iron instead of the masked target... so I assume you are talking about pinpointing in disc and I am thinking that you must be using the front or rear edge of the coil to pinpoint... that is the only way I can think of where you could tell if a good TID tar I get moves... is that correct? If so, that is what I have been missing. I've just been using imaginary planes and where they intersect rather that an actual spot using the edge of the coil.

Is that right? Will that ID rusted nuts, corroded bolts, cut square nails, and other old corroded small iron for me? If so... I have a new detector to use... the SovGT... :clapping:

Sorry, if I have seem to be slow grasping this... I am totally a visual learner. Poster child for ADD...

J
 
Julien ,
When you are hitting a nail here or there, leave your Soveriegn in Disc mode, and just turn 90 degrees to the target ....In other words ( since you are a visual learner ) ...Your target is in front of you ...You are standing a 6 o clock and sweeping said target .....Leaving the Sovereign in Disc mode that you are already in , stand your body at 3 o clock and sweep back and forth ....In most cases you will either loose the signal , or the signal will move from the spot that you thought it would be ...... The signal is not really repeatable from the 2 sweeping directions , or the target moved ...... This could very well indicate that it's a nail or a junk target ...... Using your pinpoint in AM mode will simply pinpoint the target in the ground ....Jim
 
I notice they move in AM going from disc, reason being when the signal is picked up in disc and tends to come in clear with the wiggle, sometimes even while checking the target from different angles you are actually deecting the edge of the iron Hal and it reads this as a false positive signal. Switch to AM and you will notice it shifts it signal position byband inch or sometimes more... Switch back to disc while over the AM spot and you'll get that iron null strong and it won't change from different angles. I've tested this many times and dug many of the signals thinking it may be a coin next to iron but it never is... Once your shovel breaks that halo, that false positive will dissapear leaving u with the iron null.

If the sovereign sees a nonferrous target mixed with iron it will report it as nnferrous from all angles and will pinpoint the same in disc or AM... Even deep deep coins like 10-13"... Audio will be very quiet but solidly repeatable. Whereas that false positive will often be choppy
 
As you see this is something you see more with the GT over the other Sovereigns and why I feel the GT is a bit more sensitive over the others.
What I have found out on these signals that sound so good is try to bring that target to the tip of the coil while in disc and like synthnuts say come at it from a different angle as you know where the target should be, if it nulls or real broken up chance are it is iron. Sometimes I will even turn a little again if real questionable and even go to pinpoint to see if that target will move from where it pinpointed in disc.
Now there are some that when going to pinpoint do seem to move and act like iron, but in disc they just sound too good to be iron, so I have to pinpoint in disc and dig and most cases i will find a coin and a piece of iron of something off to one side of the coin.
Now what I do on most of my signals with the GT is before I dig I just turn a little bit with the coil, maybe 20-30 Degrees and if it seems to move or break up I will check it further, but if it lock right back on I will pinpoint and dig. There will always be like any of the Sovereigns that you will dig some nails, but seems to be less than any detector i have used in my 37 Year of detecting.
I never tried it but wonder if by turning the iron mask off you wouldn't pick up the nails as much, but than you may not get the deeper iffy good targets either we all seem to want.


Good Luck.
 
I used to follow the advice to check the target in PP and see if it moves, and that if it does then it's iron. After digging numerous deep coins (more often wheats since they are more common) that PP mode moved off to the side I no longer use PP as my main tool in determining if the target is dig worthy. I go by sound, and even if I can only muster a good ID from one direction I can usually tell if it's a coin or iron. The coin audio will be much more perfect, while the iron will be somewhat ghostly and washed out. There are other clues but my main point is I no longer use PP to see if the target moves on me. I don't care if it does or doesn't, because I've dug deeper coins that did that. Whether that's due to the coin being somewhat on edge or iron/hot rocks/minerals causing PP to drift is beyond me.

My other tool in determining if it's iron or not is to note how often the ID goes negative. Iron will do that much more. While deep fringe coins will also go into negative numbers, there is much more of a pattern to the way they do it. Normally the coin will climb the VDI scale, get to 180 or very near there, and then drop all the way to the basement (negative number) before beginning it's climb to 180 again. Yes, this climb can be a little random but it's less random then how a false coin hit progresses towards 180. There is far less rhyme or reason to say an iron spike doing this climb most of the time.

My strongest advice to school yourself in iron versus a real coin is to bury a coin at fringe depth and see how it behaves, sounds, climbs, etc. There are many clues, some of which can't really be verbalized to people. Practice makes perfect. Since I often stick a silver dime in the ground at fringe depth *for that site* and then calibrate sensitivity for best audio/ID response, this gives me constant practice and seeing how deep fringe coins act and sound. Much like playing an instrument, much of this unique behaviour can't be told to other people. You have to hear and see it, and then you'll know most of the time what is iron trying to pretend to be a coin and what is the real thing.

Another important aspect to not being fooled by iron is not to ride the very edge of sensitivity in terms of stability. Translation- The higher I ride sensitivity to the very edge of stability the more good iron becomes at fooling me. If you are digging more iron then you think you should then I bet you are riding sensitivity too high for that site. Besides, at least in my soil, riding the edge of sensitivity does not give best depth or as good of ID/audio on targets.
 
Rick and Jim are both right.You can also use reverse iron discrimination on those type of targets. If your afraid to turn iron mask off then yes the high false positive signal will still move when you change the direction or angle using a short sweep with the tip of your coil even in discrimination mode. The logging camp/ghost town sites I hunt are so loaded with iron it's almost impossible to hunt in the iron mask mode. There is just to many false positive signals in that mode to deal with. When I was using the Original Sovereign years back in these sites and didn't know any better, I was afraid was going to miss good targets if I turned iron mask off so when I got one of those signals instead of playing around with it I just used reversed iron discrimination and switched to iron mask off and came over the target again. If the target nulled and the false positive disappeared I moved on. If I got a target tone or even a null with a returning threshold change higher than iron I would dig.
 
One more thing- This is slightly off topic (about iron false hits) but once a coin gets beyond fringe depth (where it can still produce a 180 ID) they also have a unique pattern to them. They will wander in the 120's 130's but mostly in the 140's and 150's. They never lock onto one number and just kind of drift in that mid zone back and fourth. Some times the audio will go "COIN" on you but some times they never even produce a coin pitch. The behaviour of coins this fringe is also very distinct. Junk like say can slaw that is oddly shaped and can randomly move around in that number range (140's to 150's) will have a much more "robust" sound to it, meaning you can tell the machine is hitting it hard but the target just won't make up it's mind where it wants to go. Very fringe coins, on the other hand, will not give as good of audio indicating that the machine is reaching for the target and just can't grab hold of it well enough to get the ID proper, while junk will tell you the machine can see it well enough...it just isn't shaped uniformly to lock into one ID number. Practice this too and you'll see what I mean.

One last thought- People also need to understand that what is fringe at one site can be much more shallow at another due to ground minerals/moisture/etc. What I mean is that *in my soil* I have sites where 6 or 7" is about max depth you can achieve on a coin even though it's loud enough to hear fine. That's why I also like the buried dime test...It tells me exactly what depth target ID/audio is going to suffer at. I'll then key in on targets that sound that deep yet are doing what I described above (wavering in the 140's or 150's but not locking into a number). Beyond fringe coins will do this, and when I say "fringe" I don't always mean 12 or 13" deep. It can be 6 or 7" deep at some of my sites. The audio will be loud like it should for a shallower target like this but the ID & audio quality can act very much like a piece of junk. If I know coins at that depth can do this then I'll dig anything that deep or deeper than is acting this way.

You might be thinking that 6 or 7" deep is the depth most machines on the market can handle. NOT in my soil. Sure, we've got sites where your average VLF machine can manage about 7.5" deep (max for most of the better machines on the market), but I've also got sites where that depth is the exception to the rule even for the best of machines. My Explorers could not achieve any better depth on silver or copper (but they did for nickles and other lower conductive targets) than my QXT Pro. The Explorer also had major fits with getting stable and not being erratic in some of my sites, despite any possible change you can think of including Auto or a much lower sensitivity. My GT gets deeper at these sites than any of my Explorers would. It runs smoother, handles ground minerals better, and for sure provides much more stable IDs on good targets. It's also less finicky about sensitivity once set, where as the Explorer always seemed to be changing it's mind on what it wanted at a site.

All the above being said, the GT has got me coins beyond 8" (a feat no other machine I've owned, seen, or used has been able to do in my soil), and even as deep as 11" on a few coins with loud/perfect audio and ID. That's impressive. The only machine I've seen otherwise beat the 8" barrier in my soil has been an Etrac a buddy owned for a while before selling it. I saw two silver dimes dug at about 9.5" deep with it. I didn't have a GT at the time but my QXT Pro couldn't hear one of these coins and would give me a coin ID that was very fringe on the other. A 6000 Pro XL I think couldn't get either one of them to ID as coin from memory. The QXT Pro and 6000 Pro XL seem to max out at about 7.5" on a silver dime in my soil.
 
I will check again tomorrow. I am pretty sure a lot of them repeat from both 6 and 3 but since i'd dig something that only repeats from either 6 or 3 because of possible masking... it doesn't matter... I know it does not move, not a cut square nail, not a rusted bolt. It may move in AM pinpoint but that, to me, is not reliable... it could be masking iron that the AM PP is hitting instead of the "possible" goodie...

I will recheck... to be really sure of what I am saying. Obviously I am doing something wrong if I am digging 180 cut sq nails and others aren't... but that would not surprise me.

J
 
I'm going to try both hunting with IM off and switching it off when I find one of these questionables that is just too iffy to pass by. Going to try pinpointing in disc with the tip too. It just bothers me to rely on AM pinpoint because I feel like a colocated piece of iron would cause the target to move in AM... however when I thinnk about it... at a place where I and others have hunted hard how many good 180s am I going to get all of a sudden?

I'll try some more things because I feel like I am not "getting it"... like i've assumed too much over the time i've had my GT.

Thanks, J
 
Thanks... I have been rnning my sens lower but these small iron targets are rising to 180 with the wiggle and pretty much acting like a coin. I know how a deepie will struggle to get to its correct number then drop way down and begin to climb again. Most of these targets are not very deep, just bad ground and well... a 1" cut square nail soundsand looks too good to me... maybe I need to make a video.

J
 
n/t
 
Julien ,
Being in the field is probably the BEST experience you can have ......Most of what i have learned has been what I witnessed and not something that someone else told me .....I talk of my experiences , and those with more experience than I have will explain it later ..... This Iron Mask on the Sovereign has been an ongoing discussuion .... It's not just a simple switch to turn IM on and off ....There's more than what meets the eye here .....I was simply using it as a filter to calm down some added noise .... Now from the Silent Mask thread I realize that if the notch were wider on the Sovereign , or if the Iron Mask covered more territory , I wuold have hit that coin that my buddy found with his E Trac .... I've said all along that there are features in the E Trac that make it the next step past the Sovereign, and this is really showing it in spades .... It also surpases the older Explorers in that it has a much better VID numbering system ....... This basically now confirms that I am better off keeping my Soveriegn for a Beach machine where I am not dealing wtih as much trash as I deal with in the Parks ....I'll keep my E Trac for that ...... Good lessons I learned from all of this ...... You NEVER stop learning !!.....Just when you think the Sovereign is so simple huh ? ......LOL !!!......Jim
 
Thanks...

7 maybe 8 inches is fringe at a lot of places around here. Some go deeper but at a lot that is deep! This one site I am thinking of, the ground is so hard that on the south side of the "yard" it is really rocky and hard... I found eagle buttons laying on the ground when I began to hunt the place, nonoe in that area over 2" deep, minnies about the same. As you move up the incline, it isn't steep, the ground gets a little better and on the other side where it is more the "top" the soil is better and things are a little deeper. Deepest thing I have dug there was a US box plate at about 11" under a big tree root down the front slope. It is sort of between how the ground is on the south and top... but it was deep. I have hunted the place for several years and with a lot of machines but things still pop up. I started it when I only had one machine... the GT and have used everything else there. This winter I am going into the bushes and really trashy areas (modern trash)... i'll pull some more CW stuff I am sure. I just don't want to spend so much time on pieces of square nail but this place is loaded with them and with canslaw and all sorts of other junk... about 180 years of it, so it is hard to pass on an "iffy" target.

J
 
Thanks... the ET is my #1 too but I always want to be sure that i'm not glossing over something or not getting the full potential out of something especially when I read so much intriguing stuff on here... but as they say, what works there may not work here...

I am going back to two particular places this week with the GT, E-TRAC, F75LTD, andmy buddy will be using a V3... to compare some... usually what sounds to good to pass on with the GT reads as iron or junk on most of the others... that is on "iffy" targets and falses... If I can figure them out by turning IM off and pinpointing with the tip on the GT... I will be really happy.

I'll let you know.

J
 
Julien,
Knock out the #50 line on your E Trac and you will not hear a lot of your falses if you are in a lot of iron ......Your Silver will come in mostly at the high 40's .....Jim
 
Julien,
Knock out the #50 line on your E Trac and you will not hear a lot of your falses if you are in a lot of iron ......Your Silver will come in mostly at the high 40's .....Jim
 
I don't hear falses on my E-TRAC in FTT using just the relic pattern.

J
 
JBow you are right that some of these iron targets are very tricky... I see Critters point of not trusting the movement in AM mode, I guess I just haven't hit that instance of a moving coin on edge yet. I did however dig a 187? IH and a nickel sized flat button at about 7" in some rough soil this weekend. They were both very weak but clean sounding and repeated 360 degrees and "climbed" as he described it, falling off to the negative again at their peak of ID. Whereas the iron at that same site at close to the same depth some even deeper gave a 179-180 on the meter but did not climb, it was either reading negative or just hitting the 180 no climbing... It also sounded weak (like a deep coin) but sounded sick and as Critter said ghostly and wouldn't clearly repeat 360.

These are just observations from my end based on what I experience in the field. I'd also be relying on just the tip of the coil as your pinpoint procedure. As with almost all machines and the Sovereign is the same, that tip of the coil pinpoint will not give an accurate ID or tone for that target and if it is in fact a strong iron halo it will fool you into thinking a coin is next to iron. It will ID well and tone well because you aren't centered over the true target. I dig these funny signals all the time just to play it safe (What's an extra minute to dig a hole? Plus that's more scrap for the bucket lol) but you may find yourself digging holes only to find iron in the sidewall due to a missed pinpoint. If something is that close to iron it would have to be above the iron or far enough to the side of the iron to come through in audio or something non ferrous that is much larger then the iron that is with it.

The cut nails and small square nails are killing me as well... I've been detecting a field site that has spit out numerous relics and coins from the civil war period. Now I've cleaned the field pretty well and I'm going back with different machines to dig the iffy signals in hopes of grabbing a few more keepers. 50% of what I'm digging now is false reading iron, 40% is very small bits of lead, brass, and copper, 10% is what I consider keepers. I had one target yesterday that was hitting hard on a 170-174, choppy but repeatable, turned out to be a 1.5" diameter square iron nut... Well just 3 inches to the left of it and masked all this time due to the size of the nut and the good target being deeper then it was a beautiful coat sized Eagle "D". I have been over it 30 times with various detectors and coils and only by diggin that false with the Sovereign did I now uncover that beauty... So I guess a false iron isn't always a bad thing lol.
 
n/t
 
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