Zero iron mask is my personal favorite when relic hunting with the Explorer ... but I am accustomed to hearing everything and don't mind it.
Large iron like cannon balls, their fragments, sword blades, gun barrels etc. will still come thru with enough IM left in to knock out small iron like nails but isn't fool proof.
Brass and bronze sabots, fuses, sword hilts, buttons, hat pins, belt plates and multitudes of desirable non ferrous relics can come in all over the screen so I let the shovel tell the story if the target sounds good and you're in a known area to hold such targets.
There is NO magic wand when it comes down to detecting relics, it involves a lot of dug targets and you cannot TRUST the ID of any detector unless you hunt in very neutral ground and the relics are found at less than 10" in depth.... just a FACT of life !
When we hunt really hot ground like that in Culpeper, Va. most of us have went to PI machines because the ground is so hot that not much else will punch thru it with desirable depth to find the targets missed by VLF detectors. We dig just about every peep of a sound and don't leave much behind, it's amazing what comes up in regards to good relics that sounded like crap in ground.
Zero iron mask
Ferrous sounds
Variability 10
Volume 10
Sensitivity on manual set as high as possible, even to the point of instability and then back down a notch or two
Threshold bumped up just a little past faint for relics
Pro coil if available or 10X12 SEF or when targets are known to be deep, few and far between .. go with a WOT coil or big SEF if you can stand the weight
Mike
