X-70 for rings, which coil, program is best?

[AlaskaAng]

[size=medium]Hi All,

I have a great area that has rings to be found; today while detecting in a sports field, I found a nice 14K mans ring with 3 diamonds! I was using my XLT. I want to try my X-70 and would like your opinion on which coil and pattern would be best. I've only had my X-70 about a month so still green to how it works. I have the stock coil, 5x10 and 10.5" 7.5KHz...so have choices. This field will certainly give up more rings and to sweeten the pot...trash is minimal! The field dates back to the late 40s.

Thanks in advance for your help/advice.
Ang[/size]

 

[BarnacleBill]

The 5x10 will be the gold getter with only slightly less coverage than the 10.5. Since you say that there is not much trash then you can set up a DIsc/Notch pattern that is pretty broad. I'll assume Pattern 1 is your general use Pattern, therefore Pattern 2 or 3 might not be in use. Whichever one is available set it to Accept +2 through +28. This will reject iron in the negative numbers and zinc pennies at +30 and above. You will dig foil & pull tabs with these settings, but such is life hunting gold jewelry.

1. Auto Noise Cancel.
2. Ground Balance with whatever method you like.
3. Set sensitivity as high as stability allows.

As a rule of thumb most rings will ID in the 10-12 segments. Very large Class rings have been reported as high as 28, and White Gold, thin Ladies rings, pendants, charms etc can be below 10. Chains may get down to -2 which I have indicated should be rejected in your Pattern set-up. But they usually straddle the 0(zero) point which is not indicated on the X70, I mention it for reference only as watching the display toggle between -2 & +2 your mind thinks a zero should be in there. So if you center up the coil on the target and are getting +2's intermittently, I would hit the All Metal button to see if the target is swinging -2 to +2. If you see -6 move on, an occasional -4 but mostly 2's is probably worth digging. Stud earrings and earring backs may also get down into those very low numbers. If you have some jewelry around, throw down a towel and lay it out for a little experimenting.

Being a White's Weed Whacker user you should start off by slowing down your swing till you find some solid sounding targets, and then increase your speed to see how close you can get to what you're accustomed to. Back when the planet was being formed I used some of the first fast motion White's and felt like I needed to hit a 500 yard drive to get any depth and a decent ID. Then suddenly the Metal Detecting magazine's were filled with ads about the new "slow motion" ground canceling detectors. I had to have one, but boy it took some doing to convince myself to slow down and have confidence in the new detector.

Lastly I would NOT use the Prospecting mode for detecting at this time, it's behavior is too foreign to what you are accustomed to with the XLT. It will find microscopic pin head sized pieces of foil that will drive you mad and will just waste your time if you are concentrating on ring shooting.

HH
BarnacleBill

 

[AlaskaAng]

Hello BarnacleBill,

Wow, you are such a wealth of information! Thank you so much! I'm headed out today and will give you an update. I feel I'm sitting at the end of a rainbow; there aren't many if any at all who've detected these two areas I found!

Ang

 

[AlaskaAng]

BarnacleBill,

I made the changes the the X-70 and headed back out to the field yesterday...I took it slow and used my ears more than the meter...I dug ALOT of pull tabs as you said I would. I gave up the ring hunt after two hours and then went for coins. Lots of coins popped out of the ground, no rings. The ground was real nice lawn type ground but had a dense deep grass root system that made it hard to find the object in the first 2-3" of ground...it's another reason I gave up so soon...lots of work to find a pulltab.

I'll get back out next weekend...maybe try the soccer field this time. I have a good 5 acres of untouched soccer fields (was an Army parade ground in the 50s) to search!

Thanks again for your advice and happy hunting!
Ang

 

[BarnacleBill]

OK Ang,

You've become a little more familiar with the detector and can begin to fine tune your approach. Obviously there are more trash items than you thought(tabs). If they are square tabs you can eliminate them by a couple of methods. They usually ID around 16 to 18, but some variants fall outside that area. i.e. It may be the commissary 15 years ago sold a lot of Dr Pepper, and they had a tab on those cans that ID'd at 14 which will dominate what you find. Either way the X-Terras are flexible enough to eliminate whatever is slowing you down.

It is good that you are hunting by ear as method One is ear discrimination. On most modern motion detectors square tabs give what is called the double hit, and that is how most people avoid them. But the X-Terras with either the 5x10 DD HF or the 6 inch DD HF actually give more audio information. They will give what is a triple or quadruple hit when approached East-West as in the diagram below. Thinking of the square tab as two adjacent rings as depicted on the left, then on the right enclosed by an outer rim.

[attachment 92615 SquareTabs.gif]

Method two is even simpler, but you may miss about 5% of the rings out there by notching out 16 & 18. Locate a tab, recover it, wave it across the center of the coil in the air and you will see 16 or 18 displayed. Push the Accept/Reject button and you will see it is now notched out. Keep in mind it must be on the display when you hit the Accept/Reject button or it will not work.

Through past tests by Fisher about 90% of gold rings come in around the nickel range 10-12, so if the tabs are ring tabs, the ring only, or the broken off beaver tail you will have to dig them. Over the years various ratios of dug ring tabs to gold rings have been offered, some have said as high as 1000/1. But I think it very much depends more on where you are hunting.

HH
BarnacleBill

 

[Grant]

Thnaks Bill, This helped me as well as I found a spot for my 6" DD with some potential for rings but has a lot of PT'S. Grant