Jay- oldcoins
New member
By now the nasty squabbling over posts from a few weeks ago concerning just how deep the X2 can ID and find coins has simmered down, so let me poke the hornet's nest again.
Yesterday I hunted a beach/swim area on a small northern Indiana lake. It was part of a well planned and maintained park. The beach and water had been hit frequently by other detectorists; I didn't expect much. To my surprise, up at the top of the beach near the sidewalk separating sand from grass, I got deep signals. These truly were near the limits of the detector. The first two signals dug were both Merc dimes, and both were down 12". Yes, an honest 12". These, and the following coins, were easy to measure and all ran between 10 and 12" deep. There may well have been deeper ones, but out of range totally. The coins were embedded in a compacted layer of black organic-rich fine sand that was rather consistently a measured 10" beneath the "beach" sand, which had been artificially added. This was a coarser clean sand, "sand" colored. It appears that sometime back the park system enlarged or improved the existing beach by covering it with new trucked-in sand. It isn't real clear whether this layer of black sand represents land- grass- which they covered to deepen the beach, or whether it may have been shallow water deposits, filled with the new sand also to enlarge the beach. I took 16 Wheaties, 2 Mercs (1923, 1942), and a silver Roosie (1946) out of this area in about 1 1/2 hours. All were in a band from the sidewalk out 12 or so feet in a strip maybe 100 feet long. Beyond that area, heading toward the water which was maybe 50 feet away, there were few coins and the black layer thinned out and became much shallower and less distinct. I did find a few 1940's coins there but they were sparse, and shallower. This area probably had been "hunted out" as coins were in depths reachable by most detectors. The band I was finding coins in was probably out of range for most detectors.
Since this was such a distinct layer, with a firm surface, it was easy to scoop out the "new" sand and measure the depth to the black layer, which I frequently did. The coins were from near the surface of the black layer to 2" down into it. All the Wheaties had dates in the 1940s; a few were older worn ones that were probably lost in the 40s. Most had a heavy adhering crust of sand glued there with copper carbonates (these pennies do not clean up real well). It seemed apparent that the "new" beach sand was added in the late 1940s or early 50s, was evenly spread out, and is about 10" deep over the area I was hunting. And all these coins were 10 to at least 12" down from the surface. The sand was wet from recent rains.
This gave me a chance to check out different settings to see what worked best with really deep coins. There was moderate electrical interference from somewhere which forced me to drop sensitivity down to manual 20 or so. Above that, readings were jumping all over. I had the WOT large 15" coil on (my favorite). I was hunting in ferrous with a 1/4" wide band up and down the left side of screen and across the bottom blacked out, to get rid of nails and steel bottle caps. Deep and fast off, gain at 6, audio 1, digital readout (Thanks, Cody!!). There weren't too many junk signals around so that helped. Signals on these deep coins had rather faint sounds, but most repeated in several different directions. The coil had to be close to the ground to hear anything. The digital numbers bounced around, with maybe 1/3 of them in acceptable coin ranges (like 00-28, or 00-22, 0r 04-23 and so on. Some dropped lower. Sound was pretty good, some fluty sounds, and enough of the nice high pitch to catch your attention. They were quite hard to pinpoint- often giving nothing unless you raised the coil up a foot or so off ground when changing from detect to pinpoint, which seems to give a stronger signal to pinpoint. Then you could get enough of a "tick" in several directions to get an "x" mark out of it. Pinpoint is certainly one of the weakest features on the Explorer. I tried several other settings over some deep coins to see what worked best, and found that sensitivity didn't make much difference, dropping down to 16 or up into higher 20s (which caused a lot of interference and was actually worse. I was swinging slowly and carefully (maybe 3 seconds per sweep). Deep on didn't help much, nor did fast. The best aid was switching to Audio 2 which gave a much wider and stronger signal than audio 1, and allowed raising the coil another inch off the ground without losing signal. Audio 2 would take some getting used to, as there are some odd parts of the signal compared to audio 1, but I used 2 for the rest of the hunt with great results. For the most part, the sounds and warbling (flutiness??) was similar to audio 1. I didn't try switching to conductive; wish I had now.
There were some nails at the 12" level that gave off some coin-number signals and sounds. For the most part, they had far more off-signals, and sounded good usually in one direction only. Often the pinpoint spot did not match the same spot located by "x"ing in discrimination, it would be off a few inches. I dug a number of these marginal signals hoping for the best, but as I recall all of them were bad, nails or other iron. There were also decent sounds coming from signals that ran around 00-12. I dug several of these and couldn't find anything. Maybe rusted away disintegrated bottle caps??
So, I hope this helps in the how-deep-does-it-go controversy, and may help a bit in finding those real deep coins.
Yesterday I hunted a beach/swim area on a small northern Indiana lake. It was part of a well planned and maintained park. The beach and water had been hit frequently by other detectorists; I didn't expect much. To my surprise, up at the top of the beach near the sidewalk separating sand from grass, I got deep signals. These truly were near the limits of the detector. The first two signals dug were both Merc dimes, and both were down 12". Yes, an honest 12". These, and the following coins, were easy to measure and all ran between 10 and 12" deep. There may well have been deeper ones, but out of range totally. The coins were embedded in a compacted layer of black organic-rich fine sand that was rather consistently a measured 10" beneath the "beach" sand, which had been artificially added. This was a coarser clean sand, "sand" colored. It appears that sometime back the park system enlarged or improved the existing beach by covering it with new trucked-in sand. It isn't real clear whether this layer of black sand represents land- grass- which they covered to deepen the beach, or whether it may have been shallow water deposits, filled with the new sand also to enlarge the beach. I took 16 Wheaties, 2 Mercs (1923, 1942), and a silver Roosie (1946) out of this area in about 1 1/2 hours. All were in a band from the sidewalk out 12 or so feet in a strip maybe 100 feet long. Beyond that area, heading toward the water which was maybe 50 feet away, there were few coins and the black layer thinned out and became much shallower and less distinct. I did find a few 1940's coins there but they were sparse, and shallower. This area probably had been "hunted out" as coins were in depths reachable by most detectors. The band I was finding coins in was probably out of range for most detectors.
Since this was such a distinct layer, with a firm surface, it was easy to scoop out the "new" sand and measure the depth to the black layer, which I frequently did. The coins were from near the surface of the black layer to 2" down into it. All the Wheaties had dates in the 1940s; a few were older worn ones that were probably lost in the 40s. Most had a heavy adhering crust of sand glued there with copper carbonates (these pennies do not clean up real well). It seemed apparent that the "new" beach sand was added in the late 1940s or early 50s, was evenly spread out, and is about 10" deep over the area I was hunting. And all these coins were 10 to at least 12" down from the surface. The sand was wet from recent rains.
This gave me a chance to check out different settings to see what worked best with really deep coins. There was moderate electrical interference from somewhere which forced me to drop sensitivity down to manual 20 or so. Above that, readings were jumping all over. I had the WOT large 15" coil on (my favorite). I was hunting in ferrous with a 1/4" wide band up and down the left side of screen and across the bottom blacked out, to get rid of nails and steel bottle caps. Deep and fast off, gain at 6, audio 1, digital readout (Thanks, Cody!!). There weren't too many junk signals around so that helped. Signals on these deep coins had rather faint sounds, but most repeated in several different directions. The coil had to be close to the ground to hear anything. The digital numbers bounced around, with maybe 1/3 of them in acceptable coin ranges (like 00-28, or 00-22, 0r 04-23 and so on. Some dropped lower. Sound was pretty good, some fluty sounds, and enough of the nice high pitch to catch your attention. They were quite hard to pinpoint- often giving nothing unless you raised the coil up a foot or so off ground when changing from detect to pinpoint, which seems to give a stronger signal to pinpoint. Then you could get enough of a "tick" in several directions to get an "x" mark out of it. Pinpoint is certainly one of the weakest features on the Explorer. I tried several other settings over some deep coins to see what worked best, and found that sensitivity didn't make much difference, dropping down to 16 or up into higher 20s (which caused a lot of interference and was actually worse. I was swinging slowly and carefully (maybe 3 seconds per sweep). Deep on didn't help much, nor did fast. The best aid was switching to Audio 2 which gave a much wider and stronger signal than audio 1, and allowed raising the coil another inch off the ground without losing signal. Audio 2 would take some getting used to, as there are some odd parts of the signal compared to audio 1, but I used 2 for the rest of the hunt with great results. For the most part, the sounds and warbling (flutiness??) was similar to audio 1. I didn't try switching to conductive; wish I had now.
There were some nails at the 12" level that gave off some coin-number signals and sounds. For the most part, they had far more off-signals, and sounded good usually in one direction only. Often the pinpoint spot did not match the same spot located by "x"ing in discrimination, it would be off a few inches. I dug a number of these marginal signals hoping for the best, but as I recall all of them were bad, nails or other iron. There were also decent sounds coming from signals that ran around 00-12. I dug several of these and couldn't find anything. Maybe rusted away disintegrated bottle caps??
So, I hope this helps in the how-deep-does-it-go controversy, and may help a bit in finding those real deep coins.
