moses collins
New member
hi I am new to metal detecting and i jumped into it and got the 800 may the swartz be with us lol reading here a lot of tips thank you 
Find's Treasure Forums
Welcome to Find's Treasure Forums, Guests!
You are viewing this forums as a guest which limits you to read only status.
Only registered members may post stories, questions, classifieds, reply to other posts, contact other members using built in messaging and use many other features found on these forums.
Why not register and join us today? It's free! (We don't share your email addresses with anyone.) We keep email addresses of our users to protect them and others from bad people posting things they shouldn't.
Click here to register!
Need Support Help?
Cannot log in?, click here to have new password emailed to you
Changed email? Forgot to update your account with new email address? Need assistance with something else?, click here to go to Find's Support Form and fill out the form.
new to metal detecting
- Thread starter moses collins
- Start date
RandyNorthridgeca
New member
Welcome to a great hobby that can be very addicting and you'll meet some great people too! Learn your machine tones well, keep that coil low, dig a ton of targets, be patient, and above all have fun! HH
JimmyCT
Well-known member
Welcome to Findmall and to the wonderful hobby of metal detecting. Tip for the day: don't be afraid to use Iron Bias. I wasn't using any at first and was digging nails deeper then my pro pointer. I then turned it up to 1, then 2 and I was still digging deep nails. Finally at iron Bias setting of 3 it great minimized the nail digging. Now I only dig a couple of nails if at all.
Tony in kc
New member
thanks for the tip, really appreciate it, hate nails....
Charles (Upstate NY)
Well-known member
Welcome to the club! Practice your pinpointing so that you accurately pinpoint your target. After rusty nails pinpointing is probably the 2nd most frustrating thing to master for people new to detecting. Pinpoint a target sweeping east/west, when you think you have it centered turn 90 degrees and pin point it north/south. Is it still where you thought it was? Don't be afraid to do this a couple times, or even circle the target. Nothing is as heartbreaking as digging and old valuable coin or target only to discover you gouged a chunk out of it with our digger ruining it because you were off center with your pinpointing. I doubt there is anyone on the forum who hasn't carved up a good find. When I was new to detecting I dug a late 1800's silver quarter with my relic shovel, I stomped the shovel tip right dead center of the coin pushing a dent out the other side, then leaned back on my shovel and gouged a big trench across the poor coin. I think the forum guys called me the mutilator back in those days lol.
Rusty nail giving a false high coin tone tip - if you pinpoint a coin accurately you can circle the coin while sweeping it and it will stay put right where you pinpointed it. A rusty nail giving a false signal won't, they are long and thin and tend to shoot a signal off sideways out past the end of the nail. So as you circle them sweeping the nail from different directions it will appear to be moving around and more difficult to pinpoint, that's a clue that its a nail. Exceptions to this rule, a bent nail pretty tough to avoid those. A coin tipped on edge maybe 45 degrees which can also appear to be moving around but not as much as a nail.
Another rusty nail tip - The wetter the soil the BIGGER rusty nails get, if the soil is sopping wet I won't even bother hunting an area that has a lot of rusty nails, their signals are so wide they tend to mask everything with an umbrella of strong iron signal. Instead come back when the soil dries out a bit. Moist soil is ideal, but at the peak of summer when the soil is bone dry a foot deep that's also a good time to hunt heavy rusty nail areas, the dry soil shuts iron up and you will be able to get very close to rusty nails, even find coins fused to rusty nails. The downside to bone dry soil is you lose some depth.
DEPTH - When I was new to detecting I had been hunting for about 6 weeks and not finding much other than modern clad coins. This forum's owner gave me a tip, he said go out and hunt by depth only. Start with targets 6 inches deep, if you are still digging modern coins and trash increase to 8 inches deep, once you find the old target depth dig everything at that depth or deeper that's not iron. So I went back to a city park I had hunted maybe 5-6 times without finding anything old and WHAMMO there were Indian Head cents by the hundreds starting about 7 inches down and deeper. I must have dug 15 of them the first day. Then silver coins started popping up everywhere, Mercury dimes, Barbers, Seated, I think my 4th hunt after hunting just by depth I dug my first BUST dime. I dug hundreds of old coins at this site over the next couple of years. That one tip and that one day changed everything. BUT...important...the depth meters on detectors are only accurate if your coil is centered on the target. Pinpointing accuracy is important if you are going to hunt by depth. If you are off center 3-4 inches from where the target really is, the depth meter will tell you its actually much deeper than it really is. So the depth method does rely on accurate pin pointing.
MORE...depth meters are calibrated to about a US cent sized target. On the depth meter larger targets like quarters, half dollars will read shallower than they really are, they are actually deeper. Smaller targets, dimes, half dimes will read deeper than they really are.
Rusty nail giving a false high coin tone tip - if you pinpoint a coin accurately you can circle the coin while sweeping it and it will stay put right where you pinpointed it. A rusty nail giving a false signal won't, they are long and thin and tend to shoot a signal off sideways out past the end of the nail. So as you circle them sweeping the nail from different directions it will appear to be moving around and more difficult to pinpoint, that's a clue that its a nail. Exceptions to this rule, a bent nail pretty tough to avoid those. A coin tipped on edge maybe 45 degrees which can also appear to be moving around but not as much as a nail.
Another rusty nail tip - The wetter the soil the BIGGER rusty nails get, if the soil is sopping wet I won't even bother hunting an area that has a lot of rusty nails, their signals are so wide they tend to mask everything with an umbrella of strong iron signal. Instead come back when the soil dries out a bit. Moist soil is ideal, but at the peak of summer when the soil is bone dry a foot deep that's also a good time to hunt heavy rusty nail areas, the dry soil shuts iron up and you will be able to get very close to rusty nails, even find coins fused to rusty nails. The downside to bone dry soil is you lose some depth.
DEPTH - When I was new to detecting I had been hunting for about 6 weeks and not finding much other than modern clad coins. This forum's owner gave me a tip, he said go out and hunt by depth only. Start with targets 6 inches deep, if you are still digging modern coins and trash increase to 8 inches deep, once you find the old target depth dig everything at that depth or deeper that's not iron. So I went back to a city park I had hunted maybe 5-6 times without finding anything old and WHAMMO there were Indian Head cents by the hundreds starting about 7 inches down and deeper. I must have dug 15 of them the first day. Then silver coins started popping up everywhere, Mercury dimes, Barbers, Seated, I think my 4th hunt after hunting just by depth I dug my first BUST dime. I dug hundreds of old coins at this site over the next couple of years. That one tip and that one day changed everything. BUT...important...the depth meters on detectors are only accurate if your coil is centered on the target. Pinpointing accuracy is important if you are going to hunt by depth. If you are off center 3-4 inches from where the target really is, the depth meter will tell you its actually much deeper than it really is. So the depth method does rely on accurate pin pointing.
MORE...depth meters are calibrated to about a US cent sized target. On the depth meter larger targets like quarters, half dollars will read shallower than they really are, they are actually deeper. Smaller targets, dimes, half dimes will read deeper than they really are.
Charles (Upstate NY)
Well-known member
LIFT YOUR COIL OFF THE GROUND - Another early tip someone gave me I still use to this day decades later. There's a couple of ways to use this technique. First small bits of shallow metal will try to head fake you, the machine may tell you its a deep old target when really its a shallow small bit of metal. If the target is truly a deep coin lifting your coil off the ground a couple three inches while sweeping a true deep coin will vanish. This has the effect of further increasing the distance between the coil and target e.g. depth plus Minelabs HATE air space between the coil and the ground, depth falls off fast on a deep target with just a bit of air gap between the coil and the ground. So lift your coil and sweep the target, did it vanish then odds are good its truly a deep target. But if you can still hear it with the coil lifted off the ground that's a smaller bit of metal that's shallow trying to head fake you.
Another reason to lift the coil is to confirm BIG deep iron giving a false high tone. BIG as in big old chunks of iron, an iron file, a horseshoe, BIG. These tend to be pretty deep and because they are so deep they can appear to be more the size of a coin than big iron. Also because they are larger than a cent the machine tends to incorrectly tell you the depth is more shallow than it really is (see above tips). If you lift your coil a few inches and you can still get a hit on the target, and lift the coil some more and its still there, lift the coil off the ground a foot and its still there, yeah big iron or trash target. Again a small coin size target 6 inches or deeper will quickly vanish when lifting your coil a few inches.
Shallow near/on surface coins and trash can head fake you. Your coil can detect these before you even get the coil over them, a few inches beyond the outer edge of the coil. The most common that I find are surface clad dimes tipped partially on edge in the grass and shooting a signal off sideways which throws off pinpointing, hence my bitter hatred of clad dimes LOL. For this reason and others I ALWAYS check a coil size area around where I think a target is. I want to be aware of any nearby targets, shallow or deep that may be interfering with my target. Nearby rusty nails for example, or near surface trash. If I find a particularly annoying near surface trash target, aluminum bottle cap for example and I think my target may be a deeper older coin I'll dig that trash target out of my way first then rescan.
For nearby rusty nails not only is it good to be aware of nearby rusty nails, they can shoot a false signal several inches off the end of the nail. If you get digging targets only to find there's nothing in the hole, just the end point of a rusty nail sticking out the side of the hole, there you go classic nail head fake. So its good to check a coil size area around a target of interest before you dig it. This also is educational, over time you will begin to notice a pattern of how nearby nails are oriented and their effects on a good target. That sometimes you will only be able to get a solid signal on a silver coin from just one particular angle, say north to south. East to west and all the angles inbetween SE, SW, etc. no target. Checking a coil size area around the target for nearby rusty nails you will find those nails are masking the target from other directions. This can get extreme, I remember one silver coin spill, two barber dimes and a barber quarter in the same hole, I could only get a signal on it with just the front 3-4 inches of my coil from just one angle. Any further forward nothing but iron, any other angle nothing but iron.
Why is this important? Because many sites have been well hunted for decades. The easy simple targets most of them are long gone. What remains are targets so deep the previous detectors could not get a signal on them, or difficult masked targets hiding in/under rusty nails and trash.
Another reason to lift the coil is to confirm BIG deep iron giving a false high tone. BIG as in big old chunks of iron, an iron file, a horseshoe, BIG. These tend to be pretty deep and because they are so deep they can appear to be more the size of a coin than big iron. Also because they are larger than a cent the machine tends to incorrectly tell you the depth is more shallow than it really is (see above tips). If you lift your coil a few inches and you can still get a hit on the target, and lift the coil some more and its still there, lift the coil off the ground a foot and its still there, yeah big iron or trash target. Again a small coin size target 6 inches or deeper will quickly vanish when lifting your coil a few inches.
Shallow near/on surface coins and trash can head fake you. Your coil can detect these before you even get the coil over them, a few inches beyond the outer edge of the coil. The most common that I find are surface clad dimes tipped partially on edge in the grass and shooting a signal off sideways which throws off pinpointing, hence my bitter hatred of clad dimes LOL. For this reason and others I ALWAYS check a coil size area around where I think a target is. I want to be aware of any nearby targets, shallow or deep that may be interfering with my target. Nearby rusty nails for example, or near surface trash. If I find a particularly annoying near surface trash target, aluminum bottle cap for example and I think my target may be a deeper older coin I'll dig that trash target out of my way first then rescan.
For nearby rusty nails not only is it good to be aware of nearby rusty nails, they can shoot a false signal several inches off the end of the nail. If you get digging targets only to find there's nothing in the hole, just the end point of a rusty nail sticking out the side of the hole, there you go classic nail head fake. So its good to check a coil size area around a target of interest before you dig it. This also is educational, over time you will begin to notice a pattern of how nearby nails are oriented and their effects on a good target. That sometimes you will only be able to get a solid signal on a silver coin from just one particular angle, say north to south. East to west and all the angles inbetween SE, SW, etc. no target. Checking a coil size area around the target for nearby rusty nails you will find those nails are masking the target from other directions. This can get extreme, I remember one silver coin spill, two barber dimes and a barber quarter in the same hole, I could only get a signal on it with just the front 3-4 inches of my coil from just one angle. Any further forward nothing but iron, any other angle nothing but iron.
Why is this important? Because many sites have been well hunted for decades. The easy simple targets most of them are long gone. What remains are targets so deep the previous detectors could not get a signal on them, or difficult masked targets hiding in/under rusty nails and trash.
TinCanBeach
Active member
Welcome aboard!