Iron Signals

[Anonymous]

Over the weekend, I was hunting an 1856 house site. Explorer was set in discrim to reject nails and screwcaps and iron mask at -6. Dug a several iron nails and big pieces of iron. Got good signals and crosshair was in right top of display. Shouldn't these targets null out? Very confusing.

 

[Anonymous]

It happens to me fairly frequently. Most detectors will do this because they are getting overloaded by the return on the big chunks.
The Explorer also seems to do this when it has two or more pieces of iron to contend with. The most common situation for me is a piece directly under the center of the coil and another piece under the edge of the coil.
I isolate and examine each target. And if I am not sure or just want to validate my reasoning, I dig. If I suspect that a large junk target could be drowning out the potential for finding a good target, I recover the junk.
Finally, you may have noticed that the Explorer tends to lock it's target id until it gets a threshold. I trust the audio more than the display - try setting your audio to FERROUS and see if this helps.
Tim

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Tim. I have another site that has really deep iron and just wanted to find out what my options were before bringing in the backhoe. I just can not resist digging these targets because they sound pretty good and being deep they do not appear too large in pinpoint.

 

[Anonymous]

Double iron targets are about the only thing that fools me these days. When I first got the detector I dug a lot of that iron. Having dug over 100 silvers at this point and 3x that in wheats and IH's I can say hang in there, after a while you learn the difference. I still dig an iron signal once in a while, typically they are the double iron targets in one plug which fool the "sweep from two directions" rule i.e. it sounds good from both directions.
Definately use the ferrous tones and try iron mask -16, its a lot of noise BUT without all that darn nulling you can really tell where things are. I can't tell you how many coins I have found mixed with iron or near iron since going to iron mask -16. The coin can and has been right next to the iron, and the Explorer will mix the tones, using ferrous you will hear the high pitch mixed with the low iron tone, cursor will be fighting back and forth on the screen trying to figure out where to sit, you know you got something besides iron in the hole when you encounter that.

 

[Anonymous]

Try running in Ferrous. Ferrous is an Inductive measurement, which is the resistance to change in direction of an AC current. Small pieces of iron will still sound good, but the Icon will be in the lower right hand corner. Crisscross target at right angles to see that is sounds the same. Pinpoint and note the location and back to detect to see if it moved. if so move on. Large iron targets will still fool the machine sometimes. If in doubt, repinpoint once you open the hole, the target will move if Iron. I think what happens when the electromgnetic pulse hits a new nail is that the nail becomes magnetic. When the nail is very rusty, it does not become magnetic and returns a signal like silver. So if you are in conductive mode, the signal sounds and looks good on the cursor screen position.