Sensitivity of Minelab Excalibur

[Waterdog]

I Took the Excalibur 800 out the other day and was finding coins and the usual. Then I seen this gal come by wearing a nice necklace not big but nice. A while later I seen her again without the necklace. Thinking to myself she had lost it I went back over to the area where I had seen her in about 5 to 5 and a half feet of water. Shortly after I got into the area I received a small tone.After Scooping 10 to 15 minutes I had a erring stud with a diamond in my hand but no necklace. A short time later I got another small target and on my third scoop found another stud erring again with a diamond on the end. In a little deeper water I had another small hit, but I was running out of light and getting tired. In the years of using the Excalibur I do not remember finding things this small. Maybe I am going slower at the end and depths I was hunting at.

HH

 

[element]

I have a sov xs-2a and have found loads of tiny pieces/lumps of alu can. These machines are so damn sensitive. I have no doubt in my mind that it will pick up small gold earrings upto about 4 -5 inches or so. going slow will help though!

 

[hershey1]

They are very sensitive and very deep. Congratulations on your finds. There will be many more. HH

 

[skinard]

It has been my experience that most of the time in the water if you are only using your scoop the smaller items will exit the scoop and not always drop straight down. That explains one of the reasons why sometimes a target that sounds deep will disappear after a scoop or two. The other reason they will disappear is that the ground around them(halo) is disrupted and are no longer big enough to detect at the depth they are at, I have taken an extra scoop or two several times and come up with a coin, tiny fishing weights, hooks, rivets, jewelry etc... this way. If you are in fresh water you can make a floating screen to dump your scoop into and you will be surprised at the small items that you have been missing and wasting your time chasing as they fall through the scoop.

To answer your question though the Excal is very sensitive to small items. The depth is varied depending on how long the item has been there. I've found the clasp of an earring in wet sand 3-4 inches.

 

[Critterhunter]

I've noticed that- Those tiny things that fall through the scoop drive me crazy, and on my next pass while gridding I'll play with that target all over again because I'm not positive if it's the same one I just gave up on. Besides sticking a magnet in the bottom of the scoop for stuff that will stick to it, I was thinking about carrying a cup that will just fit inside my scoop. I'd drill tiny holes in this cup so some water/sand can drain as I raise it, and then I can get those tiny targets out of the way. I figure I could find a plastic cup just large enough to fit snugly into the scoop for such items, and then just clip it on my hip when I don't need it. I spend more time on those tiny "chasers" than I do anything else.

 

[hershey1]

I have had problems losing small targets myself and I got some aluminum gutter screen at the hardware store. The openings are about 1/4 inch I cut apiece and put in the bottom of one of my scoops letting about 1 inch come up the sides and that solved my problems. HH

 

[Critterhunter]

Will the sand still come out good? We have a lot of zebra muscles on the great lakes which sometimes the shells of are harder to get out of the scoop than the sand. One good thing is these non-native buggers have cleaned the water up. You can see 20 to 30 feet deep on a good day once in a while, or at least somewhere close to that. Also, I noticed the beaches are started to get a white color to them in places where these broken down shells are. I bet in the future our beaches might be much more white like some of those exotic beaches in the tropics. They also said a lot of water plants we haven't seen in over 100 years are coming back, and as a result some fish species. At first they thought these things were going to destroy the ecosystem but now it looks like an overall positive thing.