Muddyshoes
New member
I was only out a couple hours today. There's a small school in my neighborhood built in the 1920s. It's the kind of cool, art nouveau building that you look at and say, "I'm gonna pull over here and metal detect there." Because it's in downtown Orlando, it's well known and has been well searched...mostly.
I've had several used detectors to try out there recently. I found one silver dime there some years ago, but wanted to try out these different detectors, each with my having less than 10 hours experience, so I was trying to adjust and get used to the GTA and GTI settings of the different detectors and display graphics and various bleeps and bloops. But getting used to new detectors was only part of the fun.
Hunting at this school in itself, is a technical challenge.
First, there are fairly shallow-laid gas and water lines and some kind of power lines underground in this circa early 1910-ish neighborhood, and you can pick them up as they go all along the grassy curb area.. The grass, while level with the curb making it seems like it's not built up, is pretty built up, with 10 year old coins down as far as 4 inches... if you can find them. Over the years there has been lots of work done on the building as it's been upgraded, and so the yards and curbs are full of pieces of copper wire, copper tubes, copper nuts, bolts and other pieces of tubing and metal that show up as coin-sized pennies.
And what's worse, as it's a southern early 20th century school, it's covered on all sides by lots of windows, and about 20 years, ago, they replaced all the wood windows with some kind of aluminum...window panes that were built on-site, so that means that the yards and curbs are full of bits and piece of this thick aluminum, which the GTI and GTA identifies mostly as anything from low penny to $1 coins, in terms of conductivity. As the pieces are chopped all different sizes, they show on the GTI as being U.S. coin sized, almost all of them. And because it's been 20 years ago with soft ground, lots of tree cover and leaves, these pieces range in depth from surface level to about 6-8 inches in places. The stuff is everywhere.
The playground, is raised about 2 feet up with loads of wood chips being dumped on the lot regularly with no hope of getting at the old stuff way down below there.
While I always get at least something there, this time I went with my new/used GTI 2000. That thing is more sensitive than any detector I've ever had.. so far. I turned sensitivity down to about 6 and I was still finding the most minute pieces of copper wires.. Gah.. it was frustrating. I even tried using the "surface elimination" feature of the GTI 2000 which allowed me to ignore anything within the first few inches of the ground where most of the aluminum pieces were.
I think of the 5 recent trips there with 3 different detectors and a total of 10 hours, I probably found maybe about $3 in coins, some keys, no wheats and no silver, and enough copper and aluminum to build a small ship.
What's frustrating is that I know there is silver there... it's an elementary school from the 20s, there has to be SOME left...right?
I think the fact that there is so much crap there is a good sign. Because it means other searchers have probably been as frustrated as I've been. And it means there is probably silver there waiting for someone with enough patience.
On the upside, I did get a chance to try my new Lesche digging tool which arrived today. What a beautiful thing. It is so manly, so medieval looking, and does a quick job of digging, even in fairly compacted soil.
Anyway, if my wheeling and dealing goes right, I'm about 10 days to two weeks away from having my first new detector in many years... And come hell or high water, I'm gonna pull at least a Merc out of that school yard one of these days...
- Muddyshoes
I've had several used detectors to try out there recently. I found one silver dime there some years ago, but wanted to try out these different detectors, each with my having less than 10 hours experience, so I was trying to adjust and get used to the GTA and GTI settings of the different detectors and display graphics and various bleeps and bloops. But getting used to new detectors was only part of the fun.
Hunting at this school in itself, is a technical challenge.
First, there are fairly shallow-laid gas and water lines and some kind of power lines underground in this circa early 1910-ish neighborhood, and you can pick them up as they go all along the grassy curb area.. The grass, while level with the curb making it seems like it's not built up, is pretty built up, with 10 year old coins down as far as 4 inches... if you can find them. Over the years there has been lots of work done on the building as it's been upgraded, and so the yards and curbs are full of pieces of copper wire, copper tubes, copper nuts, bolts and other pieces of tubing and metal that show up as coin-sized pennies.
And what's worse, as it's a southern early 20th century school, it's covered on all sides by lots of windows, and about 20 years, ago, they replaced all the wood windows with some kind of aluminum...window panes that were built on-site, so that means that the yards and curbs are full of bits and piece of this thick aluminum, which the GTI and GTA identifies mostly as anything from low penny to $1 coins, in terms of conductivity. As the pieces are chopped all different sizes, they show on the GTI as being U.S. coin sized, almost all of them. And because it's been 20 years ago with soft ground, lots of tree cover and leaves, these pieces range in depth from surface level to about 6-8 inches in places. The stuff is everywhere.
The playground, is raised about 2 feet up with loads of wood chips being dumped on the lot regularly with no hope of getting at the old stuff way down below there.
While I always get at least something there, this time I went with my new/used GTI 2000. That thing is more sensitive than any detector I've ever had.. so far. I turned sensitivity down to about 6 and I was still finding the most minute pieces of copper wires.. Gah.. it was frustrating. I even tried using the "surface elimination" feature of the GTI 2000 which allowed me to ignore anything within the first few inches of the ground where most of the aluminum pieces were.
I think of the 5 recent trips there with 3 different detectors and a total of 10 hours, I probably found maybe about $3 in coins, some keys, no wheats and no silver, and enough copper and aluminum to build a small ship.
What's frustrating is that I know there is silver there... it's an elementary school from the 20s, there has to be SOME left...right?
I think the fact that there is so much crap there is a good sign. Because it means other searchers have probably been as frustrated as I've been. And it means there is probably silver there waiting for someone with enough patience.
On the upside, I did get a chance to try my new Lesche digging tool which arrived today. What a beautiful thing. It is so manly, so medieval looking, and does a quick job of digging, even in fairly compacted soil.
Anyway, if my wheeling and dealing goes right, I'm about 10 days to two weeks away from having my first new detector in many years... And come hell or high water, I'm gonna pull at least a Merc out of that school yard one of these days...
- Muddyshoes