A question for the group....

[Shutterbug]

Today I found a really thin gold chain. I saw the end of the chain sticking out of the sand. When I ran the detector (Whites DFX in the relic mode) there was no indication that it was there.... No sound, no vid, no nuthin'.... Nothing appears to be wrong... it will detect larger object like my gold wedding band I'm wearing.. and I found a bunch of coins near where the chain was... A picture of the chain had a nickel for size... Anyone have an idea why it wouldn't detect the chain? Oh yeah... I tried it in the coin/ jewelry mode as well with the same results... If I hadn't seen the end of the chain I wouldn't have found it.... Am I missing out on small gold chains

 

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[jeff of pa]

First off, Congrats on the find. and second Yes you are missing somethimg, and so are the rest of us. Small Gold Chaines are next to impossable to find. I read somewhere, when running a detector over these things, the detector seems to try and pick up each link seperately. Don't know if this is true, or even how it can be, However most Gold chaines are either detected by Eyes, or by a charm hanging from them. maby someone here can give a little more technical details on this.

 

[Shutterbug]

Thanks for the info... I was begining to think something was wrong with my detector....

 

[bakergeol]

Hey Shutterbug
I believe multi-frequency detectors have more of problem with this than single frequency detectors. I have the same problem when detecting native wire gold- an Explorer 11 or any PI would not detect it but it screams with my X-5.

George

 

[nedigger]

I, too, have heard that each link will cancel out the next and therefore you get no signal. It makes no sense to me, but it must be true, as I still have found no gold chains. Nice find! HH.

 

[jeff of pa]

One things for Shure. IF you do find a buried chain. double check the hole. more then likly there is a charm there that you got the signal from. and even if their isn't. you wanna check around the site especially carefull, because a charm could be in the same general area.

 

[Cladius]

Jeez and I just got done telling you what good ears you have! Good eyes!! A find is a find My Garret wont beep a chain that small I haven't tried my minelab yet. I will see if the bride (Broom Hilda) has a thin chain I can do evil experiments with. Cladius.

 

[Shutterbug]

Jeff... I too thought about a pendant that could have been on the chain and I checked all around the area but didn't find anything... I still think something is close by and the next time I go to that park, I want to go over it again... Thanks for the suggestion

 

[jeff of pa]

Make shure your Discrimination is turned ALL the way down. depending on its gold content, if it is there, you'll have a better chance at finding it. GOOD LUCK, SHUTTERBUG ; HH ; Jeff

 

[TORRERO]

Just to put my 2 cents worth in, the reality is that Gold is extremely hard to detect, and when
detected give off a weaker return signal than other metals.
In this way if you have a metered machine, you can see that a Silver ring reads very high, and a Gold
ring reads very low, but it depends on the size and amount of gold that is in the object detected.
A chain looks big to you and me because we see it in its entirety, but to a metal detector, its
looking at the little links, individually and something so small in Gold is almost impossible to detect
regardless of machine, as the return signal of the target is so weak.
There are machines made that are hyped up by the manufacturer to detect those really weak signals
hence we have those gold machines such as the "Gold Bug" or "Lobo" but these are so sensitive
that in wet salt sand or high trash areas they may become too unstable to use.
I have a Whites DFX, and when its sensitivity is all the way up it does better than some of my
previous machines at getting the small Gold chains, but it won't get them all.
On the other hand I had a Fisher CZ-6 Quicksilver that got coins on the beach very well,
but in "Salt Mode" you would walk over small gold rings because the salt mode filtered out those
weak signals..... hence no noise in the wet sand.
If you have the nerve, or the resources you can test this theory by taking a small gold ring, and cutting it open in one place, while the 2 cut ends are touching note the signal you get, low but
good, as the machine see's the ring in a circle, but if you open the ring suddenly the only thing for
the machine to "see" is that very thin band a 10th of an inch wide.
Now your machine won't respond to the open ring... Same amount of gold, just a different view.
Twice in my life, I got a good signal, and knew something was there, only to have it vanish
when I went to dig.... knowing I had a signal I looked around in the Sand (on the beach)
and found a gold wedding band..... I had clipped the ring with my shovel and opened it up and then
it would not register on my machine.
Hope this helps
Richard

 

[Shutterbug]

Thanks for the education... I had no idea that a gold chain wouldn't trigger a response from my detector. It's really strange that my DFX will pick up a paper clip at at 8 inches yet it won't pick up the gold chain on top of the ground!

 

[TORRERO]

Although I have never seen it said exactly like this,
I believe Metal detecting in general works like this,
When the signal from the machine reaches a target it measures the "conductivity" of that item,
creating a "return" signal that the machine picks up..
We have all heard this right, but go a step futher, and think of what your machine does under
power lines that have electricity running through them, as power flows through those copper
lines it creates "EDDY" currents outside the lines your machine picks up.
copper, silver, iron, if you ran electricy through them they conduct well and create big eddy currents
but when you run electricity through Gold, or like aluminum, those Eddy currents are very much
smaller, thats one reason they use Gold in computer boards, because of the no oxidation, and
very little resistance.
Thats why you get that Iron paperclip and not the Gold Chain.....