Why so many nails?

[Wooden Nickel]

I finally was able yesterday to spend some quality time with my new Tejon. It was a trashy area, lots of this and that - wire, junk, a child's aluminum ring, a small lock, the usual trash. It was a noisy time.

But what I wonder about is why I latched on to so many nails? I can understand roofing nails. They are zinc coated, I believe. But I'm talking about the usual stuff like plain old 10 -12d nails. I got a great signal on a fence staple, and I've never seen one of them that was plated with anything.

I was running the disc just above foil, and the second disc at the low end of the nickel range. The only reason I dug them was because the second disc gave a good signal.

Sensitivity was set at 4 - 6 and was using the stock 8x9 coil, but never again. The 5.75 goes on the next time.

Why all the nails? I'm ready to learn.

mike....

 

[Darkflight]

Search "Tesoro shake" and that gives some tips on getting trash to identify itself. Some nails just sound right. I have a problem with square nails & rusted thin bottle caps to this day-I just dig 'em & hope for better. It ussually happens when I "hover" on a suspected target & coax a better signal from clinker-but that was my call & a known risk using the shake technique.

Also-the hotter you run the GB setting the better the depth to a certain point. But the discrimination on nails & iffy targets gets worse by a large margin.

The coated nails may be the issue-I have found copper brads/pins that were tiny but rang clean. Only after looking carefully did I realize they were not iron & my detector was just doing its job.


Hope that helps-I'm going off to test the theory so to speak...

 

[Wooden Nickel]

Darkflight - I have to ask about your ground balance comment - about running it "hotter." Do you mean more positive?

I try to ground balance just a hair negative. According to Monte, ground balancing at a "null" will result in a ground balance that is a bit positive in the disc mode. Therefore, you ground balance a bit negative, and when you go to disc, it is dead on. He says this is typical of Tesoros in general, and the Tejon specifically, if I remember correctly.

I can't imagine ground balancing on the positive side with a machine this hot.It's noisy enough.

Of course, I have yet to hunt in ground that isn't trashy. Like I said, I'm really green on this.

Thanks for the comments.

mike.....

 

[grouser]

the shake is a good tool,,,, then we need to know if the ground was wet,,,, cuz that makes iron seem bigger to the MD and you will get more hits,,,,,, were the nails really rusty, that would tell us you had a BIG halo effect going on. Also a nail will give you a good short signal across the nail but if you turn 90 degrees and run the MD along the nails length it gives a longer/different signal,,,,, some can tell the diff and it is a tale tale sign it' iron. those are pretty good sized pieces of iron and you may just have to live with digging them I you cannot hear the slight nuances of the tone,,,,HH

 

[Wooden Nickel]

HH,

The ground was pretty damp. It was a bit wet, not wet wet, but really damp, on the verge of being sticky. Mayne that is part of the explanation. One of the nails I dug, I believe, was a cut nail, and really rusty. Others that sounded good were plain ol' 8d nails with a black tarnish and virtually no rust. Now I really am confused.

Thanks for the ideas, and I'll have to listen a bit more closely. Hey, I'm new at this and really suckin' it up.

mike.....

 

[Ism]

If you set your GB slightly negative, you will get more falsing on bad targets (like nails). Its not advisable in a trashy area where you won't likely need the extreme sensitivity and extra depth that negative GB will give you.
If the GB is slightly positive, you lose a bit of depth but gain discrimination. A lot less double checking targets and the depth loss is around 1/2 inch from my tests with the Vaquero.

Also a vertical nail sounds great on most detectors. U shaped nails and wires are also troublesome. They often sound like a good target next to a piece of trash.
Don't worry, we all dig nails and pieces of iron wire that sound good. After a while you will learn to hear when an object is breaking disc or being disc'd out. That will cut your digging in half.
However...to be sure......well, you know the drill

 

[Wooden Nickel]

Thanks Ism. I think the best thing I can do is get out of this trashy area for now and hunt where a beep is much more likely to be a digger. I appreciate the info on the gb setting.

mike.....

 

[grouser]

Ism made a great point,,,,, digging nails, specially square ones, rusted ones or big ones is just part of what we do..... after many of them you will get a few good ones (targets) that make all the junk worth it,,,,, it's just not easy for ANYONE or any MD

 

[fowlercharles]

Hi Wooden Nickle, grouser hit the nail on the head, and nails are pretty much a problem for every Digger. If they tell you different, that tells you more about them than they would appreciate you knowing, if you know what I mean.We all need to do an indepth, or even a shallow study will do, on "Iron masking", but that is not exactly what we are disscussing here but the nails themselves that cause the masking.As of late, I have discovered that my supposedly "mild" dirt " ain't" mild in some places but has spotty clay deposits.Most places the clay will be under so many inches of topsoil. Mostly 6-8" in many places I hunt.So I am in the middle of a nail bed and sometimes dig half way to China chasing dirt with nothing in it,though sometimes finding a deep nail, and Im getting a 4 way hit regardless of disc. Ok, to sum it up, that heavy crust on the nails will be more pronounced/saturated (with clay) in the deeper nails than in those that have lain for years at shallower depths. That may prove opposite in plowed ground but the same theory would apply if the fields went unplowed a few years.These are just my thoughts and based entirely on my experiences.It is the only explanation I can come up with for my particular dirt, You just have to stay with a small coil and hope to have more finds than empty holes at the end of the day.I don't think our Miracle Machine has hit the dirt yet, though some are doing better than others. HH, Charlie