long hard hunt w/ the Outlaw

[mojotrout]

There are three early 1900's houses that are going to be torn down next month. They sit near where the old railroad tracks used to run through town. The land is for sale and the realtor said she had no problem with me detecting so I hit the front yards for three hours one day and the back yards for three hours the next day. It was damn hot (98 by afternoon) and the ground was rock hard so I got quite the workout.

[attachment 273182 3houses.JPG]

These homes have been low income rentals for some time now and Im sure the detectorists around here have hit them several times over the past few decades. however, there is trash galore here and I was hoping to find some hidden silver in between the nails, screws, tin, and scrap iron. I wanted to give my Tesoro Outlaw a good workout and see how it would do in an area like this. I had the 5.75 coil on, the Sens a little into the red, thresh at about 1:00, and the Disc just below Zinc. Remember that Disc setting when looking at the photos below...

[attachment 273183 outlaw.JPG]

The end result can be seen below. I extracted close to 300 items from the ground. I figured I averaged about one dig every 2-3 minutes, having some holes with multiple items. I got 115 zinc pennies ( I now hate zinc pennies more than pulltabs), 11 wheat pennies (1920-1944), 3$ or so in clad, 45 nails/screws, 17 pulltabs a junk pocket watch missing its face, and a bunch of misc. crap.

[attachment 273184 3house082413.JPG]

Oh, and a shiny 1936 merc dime.

[attachment 273185 1936dime082413.JPG]

Its the hardest Ive ever worked for a dime before. I will now go back and hunt the same area with my Disc set at Foil and see how the Outlaw does at that setting. I believe I had some masking issues (in spite of my iron haul) with my disc set so high so now I'll see what I missed.

Anyway, thanks for looking. I hope this informs you other Outlaw users and those thinking about getting one. Its a strange machine but Im starting to like it more and more.

 

[John (Ma)]

That is a good way to learn the detector. Overall, nice digs

 

[Digger 45]

I can't believe you dug all the nails with the disc that high, my Outlaw will disc out most of the trash that you dug with that high of setting. Pull tabs will usually go the full range like a quarter.

 

[tabman]

I can't believe you dug all the nails with the disc that high, my Outlaw will disc out most of the trash that you dug with that high of setting. Pull tabs will usually go the full range like a quarter.

I don't dig rusty nails even with a much lower discrimination setting on my Outlaw. He must be finding them in holes with other targets. That happens at really trashy sites.

tabman

 

[tabman]

Nice digging. I like your Merc. It just goes to show that a high discrimination setting is not a bad choice at times.

tabman

 

[mojotrout]

I can't believe you dug all the nails with the disc that high, my Outlaw will disc out most of the trash that you dug with that high of setting. Pull tabs will usually go the full range like a quarter.

Im a little confused about that too Digger. Ive heard a few folks raving about the iron disc in the Outlaw and in uMax detectors in general. I dont think its because the disc isnt good on my machine, I think it has to do with how high I run the Sensitivity. I am reading in places that running the Sens really high negates a good amount of the Disc. Maybe someone who knows more than me can chime in on that theory.

With my Disc at Zn, those pennies sound a little scratchy, and those nails sounded the same way--at least to my ear they did. I think maybe it had to do with just how dry the ground was as copper pennies sounded the same as well. To be honest, most of the pull tabs were borderline signals but I wanted to dig anything that could be a good target in ground as messy as this was. Most of the time my Outlaw cant distinguish a beaver tail tab from a coin when its in the ground. It ignores them once they're dug (air test) though.

 

[mojotrout]

I can't believe you dug all the nails with the disc that high, my Outlaw will disc out most of the trash that you dug with that high of setting. Pull tabs will usually go the full range like a quarter.

I don't dig rusty nails even with a much lower discrimination setting on my Outlaw. He must be finding them in holes with other targets. That happens at really trashy sites.

tabman

Not so much finding them with other (non-nail) targets, but often two or more nails in one hole. Also, I dont know if the photo shows this well enough, but these nails are really rusty, with clumps of rust sticking to the sides on many of them. Not sure if that affects the Outlaw's reponse to them or not.

 

[Digger 45]

I wasn't thinking that the nails were in with other targets, that makes sense, it's always surprising how different conditions can alter our training of how targets sound. I have come to the conclusion that you just have to dig a lot of targets even though you know they may be bad. I always get a lot of pull tabs because i just can't let that ring go by, and sometimes it proves out.

 

[BarberBill]

I totally agree about the zincs. HOWEVER, I have now dug several small gold rings that I thought were likely zincs because that's where the disc crackled out. I"m glad I dug them anyway.
BB

 

[Mike Hillis]

And people wonder why I hate zinc's ringing up as high tone on tone id units

That looks like quite the hunt. But you got one, so it was a good one. I bet there are still more out there, just need to get your coil over it.

HH
Mike

 

[TabMagnet]

Mojotrout, I'm interested to know what was the deepest hole you dug that day.

 

[BarberBill]

As an aftethought to my post above, a while back I had quit digging zincs (as much as possible) due to how often they are crud. Read a thread about the gold jewelry that comes in at that disc. so went back to digging them and have picked up several rings, Wonder how many I walked away from.
BB

 

[hunter12]

Looks like you had a great time with the machine an dig. I'm likeing the outlaw the more i hear of it.

 

[oneguy]

wow....that's a LOT of work right there! Nice Merc.....!!!!

 

[mojotrout]

Mojotrout, I'm interested to know what was the deepest hole you dug that day.

The deepest targets I recovered were around 7-8" and they were the nails and the wheat pennies.The dime was only about 3". I dug a few 12-14 " holes and hit pretty big iron and didnt bring it up.

 

[mojotrout]

As an aftethought to my post above, a while back I had quit digging zincs (as much as possible) due to how often they are crud. Read a thread about the gold jewelry that comes in at that disc. so went back to digging them and have picked up several rings, Wonder how many I walked away from.
BB

Ive been told the same thing Bill. I have another detector Im learning for land jewelry, but even when cherry picking for coins with the Outlaw I dont want to disc out a big men's ring. Ive also been told that Indian heads will disc out, or at least start to chop, with disc above zinc.

 

[DewGuru]

The age old addage rings true ... He who digs the most trash, finds the most treasure.

Doesn't matter what detector you use. They all share the exact same task, which is finding metal.
No guess work in that. All the chips, blips, bulbs, and tubes in the world, still make a guessing game
and will never out detect a dug hole.

Happy Hunting!

 

[kaolinwasher]

way to go on that merc, nails can make the ground signal go off but like you say it is scratchy well keep turning back the DD and lets see what happens, I had two old houses to hunt and was expecting to find silver and not a single silver came out , somtimes the spots you think are good just dont pan out

 

[Pap]

Been there done that as most of us have. I guess sometimes we allow our imagination to take over.
Pap

 

[shaunem]

I had the same experience digging that old yard in the US.

I found the rusty "bent" nails sounded really good. In most holes I was pulling out several nails.

I was running my disc a little lower than you did. I am not experienced with old US coins, so I was pretty conservative. I had mine just below 5c most of the time.

Some of those nails would vanish when hit from another angle.. the bent U shaped ones sounded like something to dig from all directions.

Looks like you made out pretty well. Isn't it nice digging a location where you aren't as concerned about the holes you dig?

Were you running your ground balance slightly negative or perfectly balanced? I am now wondering in hindsight if that might have caused these nails to stand out so much for me.

Shaun