Looking for some insight

[WThesing]

I was recently in a situation where there was a debris field of thousands of nails left from replacement of wood fencing with stone walls surrounding a historic house about 90 years ago. The carpet of nails was so heavy that I was in a state of constant nulling (no threshold)if I had nails rejected. If I had a clear checkbox on the nail icon, I heard so much iron, it drove me nuts. I had never hunted in iron mask, but used it for anylizing iffy targets. I decided to hunt in iron mask -12 as a starting point, and was able to find a few old coins.
I have been able to hear good targets pop through nulling before. My question, is my Exp. II in a less effective state for good targets when this nulling occurs, or am I better off accepting the nails even though they are overwhelming. Hunting in iron mask seemed to be the logical choice at the time, and I have been in heavy trash before, but nothing like this. Do any of you have any tips/ settings that may help.
I was using Ferrous, Deep-ON, Fast-ON, Gain 7, Man Sens. 24, Thresh 3,tried reject nails only as well as accept all icons. My thinking was that a learn & reject would not help due to the fact that the nails were in infinite bent shapes.
I also am awaiting arrival of a Sunray X-5 which may help to some degree.
I have only scratched the surface in hunting this large historical property, and want to be as effective as possible.

Thanks!!!!

 

[Chris(SoCenWI)]

WThesing,

Not much you can do in that situation. Nails hit upper left hand corner. Whether you are hunting with nails discriminated out(upper left) or iron mask 10-12(approx. same amount of upper left disc' ed out along with the rest of the left side) makes no difference. Iron mask is just another discrimination pattern, it has no magical properties for "seeing through iron".

The main problem is that in trash sometimes good targets will hit much farther to the left side of the screen than they would without the presence of trash. If you have lots of discrimination you may not hear these signals.

You have a choice: you either run open screen and listen to all the nail hits or use discrimination and hunt in a constant null. Some of us feel that the explorer recovers from a hit faster than a null but the difference is probably minimal. Best advice is to hit the area from many angles with different coils.

There is nothing magical you can do and lots of patience is the only answer.

Chris

 

[Steve(MS)]

The 5" coil will help a lot in this as that is what I have been using in iron laden areas. I personally would turn off deep, leave fast on but that's just my preference. Some of those trashy areas it's hard to reduce the iron mask below -13(if you can get it down to -14 or -15 that will be better) especially if there are bent nails and moisture in the ground. The key here is to decide how many iffy targets to dig. Here is my approach, if I get a repeatable signal at a old site and/or on the meter if the reading hits at or to the right of the point of the v in the word
advance at the top of the screen then I dig, come to think of it I dig if the signal is repeatable without a reading on the screen, I scan one way then turn 90 deg. and rescan and if it repeats I dig.

 

[WThesing]

Thanks for the input guys! Fortunatly the nail field is only present within 8 feet of the walls that border the house on two sides. There are 103 acres to this VERY historic property with another house 2 outbuildings and three barns. Lots to keep me busy for quite some time.

 

[Steve(MS)]

Wish I could go with you there, sounds interesting, good luck.
Steve(MS)