What would you do? (1) - iron infestation

[BlackX]

My yard is a veritable graveyard for nails. For instance, recently I thought I found a repeatable good tone in the midst of all of it but after digging 6-7 nails and such out of a 6" sq. area, the tone was gone. Most places I go in the yard I just hear iron silence, no matter how slow I go. I'd try a concentric coil if I had one--I only have an 8" BBS--but since I don't, I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do w/o turning the yard into a moonscape. I've tried auto, I've tried extremely low sensitivity, I've tried going very slow but I'm not having much luck. What would you do?


[Note that I seem to have problems with iron in general (I get awful tired of hearing that 180 tone on the edges of iron in a lot of the areas I detect. I can recognize the unidirectional aspect of the sounds, the moving location in all-metal, lack of repeatability from different directions, etc., but it still tends to drive me a bit batty in areas where about all I seem to get is the iron tone. (Doesn't help that at times you can x from different directions and get a repeatable good tone, only to find the edge of the coil happens to be going over the iron object.) Then there's the concern of missing good objects near iron.]

_Rich_

 

[ejudasf]

Small coil, slower swing, swinging from different directions. . . .

I don't know what else you could change. Maybe, lower your threshold to act like it in 'silent search', so that the nulls won't bother you too much.

Iron Mask on/off would be another adjustment.

If all else fails, dig the iron out to be sure.

Laterz
ed

 

[UK Brian]

For less than the cost of a new smaller coil which might not help all that much you could consider the unthinkable and buy one of the old non motion induction balance machines such as the Compass 77b, Viking, Whites Beachcomber that only have a degree of inbuilt iron rejection but will find a coin in and under nails.

 

[adam in cal]

them type of places are unique and challenging to say the least. all the advice given so far will work, I like the advice of using a compass 77b that machine really gets it done in the iron, I have been having some sucess using the tesoro bandido in the thick stuff,you can hear the iron and it just slightly pops so you can hear it and it finds good targets under or on top of nails, I love the sovereign but some places its just too good, it nulls out over the smallest of iron crumbs and at some sites thats all I get , I have tried All metal but at those sites like you describe it pointless and just sounds like a machine gun......its a tough call I like to just go super slow and overlap every swing three or four times and pay close attention to any signal that has a positive sound to it........good luck it sounds like a frustrating yard to hunt .........