Harwood73 said:
Ok-I have been fooling with this detector. Golden saber II
What an interesting little devil.I have no pull tabs but did manage to get it to signal only on nickels and nothing else-not even a ring and that was in notch accept with discriminate.
There should be plenty of pull tabs to find, almost anywhere in an urban environment. You can also pluck a few off of any beverage cans you might have or found discarded, almost anywhere. There are going to be problems trying to use the Golden Sabre II, or any 'notch' style Discriminator like that, to deal with "pull tabs" the way they were intended. That's old-school Notch technology.
Harwood73 said:
I also got it to signal on just the good stuff in notch reject and not signal on screws,foil and a bottle cap but I have no tabs.
Notch Accept can help, if you know the specific target you are looking for in order to isolate it. As for bottle caps, referring to the crimp-on/pry-off crown type caps, they can be quite pesky with any detector, old or new. Early high-frequency TR's let me 'classify' them, and I use that same technique today in locations with a dense scattering of surface to shallow bottle caps, and the problem we face today is also because we are using motion-based Discrimination and quite often models with visual TID or VDI numeric read-outs. Bottle caps can often respond similar to a penny, dime, quarter range, but will often be jumpy due to their ferrous, magnetics make-up
Harwood73 said:
How many kinds of tabs are there and I imagine there are all kinds of bottle caps.
I am not positive how many types of conductivities there are for pull-tabs, but I'll share an example with you. First, when they expanded the Discrimination adjustment range of metal detectors to reject the early-style 'Pull-Tab' it was the original ring-pull style tab, thus a
Pull-Tab, and generally the
complete tab or ring portion had conductivity readings that spanned a range higher than the US 5¢ coin. Models with a visual TID sometimes were labeled "Pull Tab" but generally just the word 'TAB' was used and often with a marked or colored range where most read.
A complete 'PULL-Tab' had the attached 'Beaver Tail' that was removed from the can. Due to their different sizes, shapes and alloy content, as well as completeness or altered shape, a 'Tab' or 'Tab portion' could run anywhere in conductivity from below a US 5¢ on up into a good-size range more conductive than the coin. If the Beaver-Tail was broken apart from the 'Ring' portion of the Tab, they could read in a range from a little less conductive than the 5¢ coin to and trough a similar conductive range as the 5¢ nickel coin. The separated 'Ring' portion usually fell in a conductive range higher than the 5¢ coin. If the Beaver-Tail was folder over onto, or bent around and through, the 'Ring' portion, the altered Pull-Tab would range anywhere from the 5¢ conductivity on up the scale through the 'Tab' zone.
As a general rule, most 'Pull-Tab' encounters had them reading from the upper conductivity of a 5¢ coin on up into the 'Tab' range. For the early analog designed circuitry with a variable Notch Discriminate circuitry, such as your Golden Sabre II, you could eliminate iron and even smaller, low-conductive foil with the Primary Discriminate control, then fine-tune the Notch Disc. control to reject a small band of conductive targets just higher than the US 5¢ coin. For an average, Traditional Coin Hunter, that would allow them to reject the early-era PULL-Tabs and find most US coins including the common 5¢ piece. You had to use a little caution if hunting for gold jewelry, because the wedding band I had as well as the
slightly higher conductive 'War Nickel' that has a percentage of silver in it, both read a little higher than a common 5¢ coin, and just
barely into the 'TAB' range of many detectors.
But like I said earlier, that was Old School Notch Technology and most savvy detector makers learned to get away from 'Notch Disc.' as we knew it. Most 'Notch Disc.' models today I try to refer to as Segmented Discrimination rather than a variable Disc. control, and you can accept or reject any particular 'segments' [size=small](notches)[/size] that you want and they are not a specific to-it-all to zap all tabs.
Besides, look how long it has been since we have had the old tear-'em-off PULL-Tabs. Long ago most of our [size=small](USA)[/size] beverage containers went to the modern rectangular
PRY-Tab to open the can. It is supposed to stay on the can and we just bend that rectangular annoyance in order to pop the can open. But folks don't like them bumping into their nose when they take a drink, or they are bored, or they don't like metal detecting hobbyists, so they break them off and discard them. These Tabs, the Pry-Off type, are also made of slightly different shapes and alloy content, but sadly, the vast majority of them 'read' almost identically to the common 5¢ coin and can't be 'Notched' w/o also rejecting the desired coin.
Thus, 'Tabs', both the early-era PULL type w/Beaver-Tail and more current PRY types, can not be handily rejected with Notch Disc. like we could with early concept Notch Discrimination detectors.
Sorry for the ramble but it is a reminder or education for many newcomers who read the forums to better understand what 'TAB's are. Now, tom answer your questions about how many 'kinds' of tabs there are, I will clarify 'kinds' of tabs with 'conductivities' of tabs. The first week of June, '94 I was down in Tesoro country to teach a weeklong class on Recreational Metal Detecting at Yavapai College in Prescott, Arizona.
On Thursday we were going to be meeting outside the classroom in a park for more hands-on assistance so I went out very early, at the crack of light, to gather up all the Pull-Tabs and a few Pry-Tabs that were at that specific park. I wanted to demonstrate, by example, how varied some trash can be compared with the more consistent desired targets were search for. At the time I used my White's 5900 Di Pro SL to check out all the collection of tabs I made in about fifteen minutes of searching ... as it was a trashy park. The 5900 Di Pro SL has a TID display with a VDI scale of numbers below that I could use to check all of the tabs I gathered up.
I had separated Beaver-Tails, Ring portions, complete pull tabs that were 'straight' folded or with the Beaver-Tail wrapped around the Ring, and I had a few Pry-Tabs. Not as many as what we might find today, but that was twenty years ago and there were a lot of the earlier style out there still. I then use little white stick-on price labels to number the various Tabs and Tab parts based in order of conductivity. They ranged from just below where a 5¢ coin read on the display, to the same VDI reading, and on up the TID scale into the TAB zone. From my 15 minutes of gathering an assortment of TABS, I ended up with '27' different reading Pull Tabs, Pry-Tabs or parts of separated Tabs.
Harwood73 said:
Air testing it shows good depth but the coil is 12".
Could you describe which 12" coil you are referring to?
Harwood73 said:
I have been real busy lately but will try and get some time in around the yard.
I have some coins buried years ago but forgot what and how deep they were-I haven't had a detector in quite awhile so I would need a display to tell me how deep they are.
I have never been a big fan of burying test targets very deep, and when it comes to the use of visual Target ID or even Coin Depth read-out, it can usually be more accurate on targets to about 4", but accuracy diminishes as the coil-to-target distance increases, especially if ground mineral conditions inhibit performance.
Also, with some makes and models Coin Depth will be incorrect due to poor design, or can be off depending on which search coil is used, and can also be off based upon the settings used.
Harwood73 said:
I have an Idea of where they are. maybe I can use the disc to tell me what they are.
Possibly, but if targets are too deep, or the ground is too dry or too wet or disturbed, Target ID or Discrimination settings might not help much, especially if they are very deep. Sometimes detectors can even struggle to get a 4" coin properly identified.
Harwood73 said:
I have a Half dollar buried at 14" I think or maybe it is only 12" I forgot.
Still scratchin' my head, but why plant a 50¢ piece down 12" to 14"?
Harwood73 said:
OF all the detectors I have had only the Tejon picked it out faintly and I think the CZ-70 Pro did also-Not sure now.I should start keeping a log.
Having a planted test garden is kind of helpful just to get an idea of how a detector might respond or function, but I haven't found many test gardens that were planted in such a manner as to duplicate real world target encounters. Ground conditions can be quite different in other places than in a planted sample garden. My suggestion is to just go out detecting. Hunt a variety of sites and deal with real world conditions, work a detector to learn its strengths and weaknesses, then go from their based upon real-world environments.
Monte
