Finally had some time for dirt fishin today. Guess what I found. CRAP. I was using the TDI with the 12" DF coil. I thought I would get more depth with the big coil, but I think there is just too much crap around to use that huge coil. Masking is severe. The deepest target I dug was the light bulb bottom at 8". It sounded so good, I was sure I had a deep coin. It sounded deep yet solid and smooth. All coins were 4" or less. I do better with the small Miner John 5x9 folded coil. Dug one bullet. Looks like a 45. My most interesting find is the 1959 D memorial. First year. How does a park get so full of nails? I can usually tell a nail from a coin on the TDI, but sometimes they can fool me and sometimes I just dig them anyway to make sure.
Don't feel too badly about it Will, I dig all kinds of nails, bolts, car parts and wine bottle caps all the time and every trip with my SEPro. They do sound good with either the small coil or the 11". Car parts along roadways, well I'd expect that, nails in parks is a whole other ballgame. I mentioned one spot a while back where an area 25 feet square was so littered with nails that you couldn't move the coil an inch without hitting a strong signal on the lowest sensitivity. Either a carpenter had his wagon set up there or it was brought in from a housing development and dumped a long time ago. The occasional nail in the fields of the parks I can understand and probably relate to signs people put up for a family get together, ei... "Big Johnson Family Reunion"
Anyway, I think we all get them. I dig them sometimes knowing what I'll find but thinking that if I rid it from the area, the silver may pop through. This does work, as I found that 43 Merc a couple of days ago about 2" from a piece of what looked like a rusted nail. But I also had a hint of a 04-29 VID which has Merc written all over it. Usually, if the signal is either too loud to be true, or too scratchy with a lot of sideways nulling, I know it's iron. But alas.... the truth is in the dig.
HH
Ed
Yeah I always dig some nails too. I suspect that this park was probably neglected and dumped on sometime in the last hundred years. I don't know why else there would be so many nails everywhere. All those nails is why I like small coils . Almost every old coin I have dug was with a small coil.
Another interesting thing I noticed yesterday. I put a penny on the ground to do a little air test with the settings I was using. I swung my coil over it and couldn't hear it more than maybe 3" away. I was thinking something was wrong with my machine. I checked my settings and made sure the coil cable was tight. Everything was right. So why couldn't I hit this penny at more than 3". I flipped the toggle to all and I found out why. There was something under the penny(probably iron) that was masking it. I didn't know that junk under a target could mask it. Does this mean that a coin at 6" will be masked by a nail at 8"? Very interesting.
Will, oh yes, I find that deeper stuff some of the time masking something above or sometimes to the side. The SEPro goes into All when you pinpoint/target. What I do to figure it out is angle my coil a bit and repass from at least three sides before I decide to dig. Sometimes the rust from the iron left a trail above it as it sank. Like a contrail from a jet. Angling the coil a bit lets you see the trail a bit better and helps you determine if there is anything above it. I don't do it often but it does work. Try it, you'll see what I mean.
Ed
Ask Gerry F. or anyone else who hunts with me, Will...
I pull an ENORMOUS amount of iron. Now, the Minelabs are TERRIFIC at i.d.'ing junk, however, at the depths I normally prefer to dig, and with the iffy signals I chase, digging iron is a natural by-product. As I mentioned on Tom's site a while back...
Iron doesn't just appear, or form, in the ground. It came from something/someone. If there is iron there, that means activity. And activity most probably means things other than iron
Joe
(08-06-2014 07:37 PM)NjNyDigger Wrote: [ -> ]Ask Gerry F. or anyone else who hunts with me, Will...
I pull an ENORMOUS amount of iron. Now, the Minelabs are TERRIFIC at i.d.'ing junk, however, at the depths I normally prefer to dig, and with the iffy signals I chase, digging iron is a natural by-product. As I mentioned on Tom's site a while back...
Iron doesn't just appear, or form, in the ground. It came from something/someone. If there is iron there, that means activity. And activity most probably means things other than iron
Joe
Yeah nails are part of the game. The problem is the masking. If I hunted 5 hours with a 12" coil and couldn't get one coin deeper than 4" that's bad. I do much better with a small coil at that place. The big coils are affected more by the mineralization too. This shouldn't be such a problem with a PI machine, but the masking is.
(08-06-2014 08:55 PM)PittsburghWill Wrote: [ -> ] (08-06-2014 07:37 PM)NjNyDigger Wrote: [ -> ]Ask Gerry F. or anyone else who hunts with me, Will...
I pull an ENORMOUS amount of iron. Now, the Minelabs are TERRIFIC at i.d.'ing junk, however, at the depths I normally prefer to dig, and with the iffy signals I chase, digging iron is a natural by-product. As I mentioned on Tom's site a while back...
Iron doesn't just appear, or form, in the ground. It came from something/someone. If there is iron there, that means activity. And activity most probably means things other than iron
Joe
Yeah nails are part of the game. The problem is the masking. If I hunted 5 hours with a 12" coil and couldn't get one coin deeper than 4" that's bad. I do much better with a small coil at that place. The big coils are affected more by the mineralization too. This shouldn't be such a problem with a PI machine, but the masking is.
That's why I'm very happy I met AndreyNY. Prior to knowing him, out of ignorance, I'd group all of the Minelabs together and say they're all about the same. Yes, on depth they ARE all about the same, however, that CTX is an UNBELIEVABLE unmasker! My Safari can hear the deepest hit his machines gets, but, where the CTX shines is around junk/iron. On my machine, I might get a VERY mixed, shitty signal. On the CTX though, it seems to 'see through' the junk/iron & give off a better tone, almost saying; "Dig me!". Is it a magic machine? No, there are none. However, certain detectors are simply more capable of reading between the lines/trash; GB's, T2's, F75's, Deus', CTX's, etc. Remember...
You're using a machine that is attracted to EVERYTHING; small bits of foil, tiny rivets, minuscule pieces of aluminum, etc. There's also a LOT of junk in the ground. How many times have you opened a plug and retrieved 4 or 5 pieces of trash? For me, it's common. Your PI is picking up on all of that, so, being able to decipher a coin from all of that trash is indeed a tricky undertaking.
Joe
Yeah Joe I pulled 4 rusty nails from one hole yesterday. My pinpointer just kept going off and I was thinking there has to be something good in here, but just nails.
My T2 is great at unmasking. Especially with the little 5" coil. That coil is amazing. The problem with that is depth though. With that coil in bad ground I don't dig any coins much deeper than 6". That's pretty good for a 5" coil, but that coil can hit coins in the air at 9". It will pull non ferrous targets right out of a bed of nails. The CTX would be fun to play with, but the price tag is a little hard to swallow. If I sold all of my detectors I still wouldn't have enough for a CTX. I wish rusty nails were worth something.
(08-06-2014 10:12 PM)PittsburghWill Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah Joe I pulled 4 rusty nails from one hole yesterday. My pinpointer just kept going off and I was thinking there has to be something good in here, but just nails.
My T2 is great at unmasking. Especially with the little 5" coil. That coil is amazing. The problem with that is depth though. With that coil in bad ground I don't dig any coins much deeper than 6". That's pretty good for a 5" coil, but that coil can hit coins in the air at 9". It will pull non ferrous targets right out of a bed of nails. The CTX would be fun to play with, but the price tag is a little hard to swallow. If I sold all of my detectors I still wouldn't have enough for a CTX. I wish rusty nails were worth something.
The solution to your problem is right under your nose, young grasshopper, lol.
Either clean out all of the trash, and then go in with the PI for raw, pure depth, or...
Ignore all of the trash altogether, and simply use the T2 to pry some goodies out of the junk.
The problem is, you're looking to get both depth AND unmasking capabilities at the same time. This is hard, IMHO. Gotta tackle one or the other first.
Joe
Yep that's the problem. Can't have my pie and eat it too. Maybe Bones will make me a waffle though.