Any tips on digging less trash?

[halgreene]

Hi,

I've been having a ball with my new Fisher F5, but fiancé is getting a little frustrated digging up so much trash. I've been keeping the disc pretty low (not exactly AM but close to it), the thresh at -5 and the gain around 60. I've started notching out iron, foil, and tabs, too, but we still dig up a lot of trash. Not quite sure why the machine seems so chatty, or why the indicator jumps up into "quarter/50¢" so much.

Any tips on reading the tones or changing the settings so as to reduce the amount of trash we dig up?

Thanks,


Hal

 

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[Tom_in_CA]

Hal, What kind of site are you hunting in ? What kind of "trash" are we talking about ? I mean, if you say you already tried advancing the disc. control up to where you're rejecting up-through round-tabs (right?), then ... what kind of trash is that leaving ? You might try advancing the knob up through rejecting square tabs (or corroded rotten zinc zone) too. That will still allow you to find pennies, dimes, quarters, silver, etc... But you'd miss nickels and most gold rings. But ... sometimes cherry picking in junky turf (or under bleachers, etc...) and going for the high conductors, is the only way to keep sane. Because if gold rings were your goal, then simply go to locations better-for-gold-jewelry, to begin with. Ie.: go to swimming beaches, sand-volley-ball courts, etc... to angle for gold. Not junky blighted urban parks (at least not some of them, haha)

If you've already tried the disc. up to square tab rejection, then what kind of junk are you getting ? Is the junk you're getting is below your disc. settings (ie.: won't come in with subsequent air tests), then you must be choosing signals wrong. Ie.: not operating the machine right, to know what it's trying to disc. out. But if it's objects that are coming in higher than that, then you must be talking about highly conductive junk. Ie.: entire aluminum cans (or can parts, fragments, molten globs, etc... in the higher range). Or some sort of copper or brass junk, etc... If so, then it sounds like you need to pick greener grounds. What kind of site are you trying to hunt ?

 

[BC1969]

No easy answer for this, its a patience thing mostly, you have to learn the machine, and that can take a lot of time.
As for trash, we all dig it, even the guys that have been detecting a long time, and if you are beach hunting, to get the gold, trash is your friend then, for most gold rings fall in the foil/tabs range.
If you bought your detector from a local dealer, he/she will be your best bet for help, otherwise search YouTube for how tos, but nothing beats just getting out there and digging it all, when you are first starting out, remember the sounds it makes, practice, practice more.
Friendly tip that can make a huge difference in success, always recheck the hole after your recover the target, often other targets are in the hole.

Mike

 

[Red James Cash]

Theres an easy answer there BC lol.You want less trash,go metal detecting less often.

 

[airscapes]

I am not an expert and I do not have your machine. However, if you can not identify trash by the info your machine is giving you, you need to keep listening/looking and digging until you know what a bottle cap is before you dig it. If you are in a park and you have dug 10 bottle caps and you get the same tone and numbers, chances are the next on will be a bottle cap so don't dig it up.
Those high tones you are getting that are kind of not really repeatable and never repeatable in all directions are caused by the halo around a ferrous (iron) target that has been in the ground a long time. It is explained here Halo Effect There is a lot of iron where I hunt so I do not discriminate iron. Since my machine as a different tone for iron, I can hear the low iron tone along with the high tone and know it is a nail. If I discriminated out iron, I would just hear a high tone and it would be more confusing.. The machine i am using has 9 tones so it makes this a little more obvious.. not sure what yours does.

Also keep in mind if there is a blanket of trash in the top 4" of soil you will never see the coin that is under it.. It may also be time to find a different place to hunt.
This article will also help you a lot in understanding what is going on under your coil. Read as much as you can in one sitting and come back for the rest as it is a lot to digest. Then after a day of hunting read it again, you will really be very glad you did.
Truth About Search Coils

 

[Jeremy S]

Trash is part of the hobby. Pull tabs and gold rings can give identical signals to even the most sophisticated detectors.

Trash isn't as bad when you have a good pin pointer and are fast/efficient at retrieving targets. Its nothing for me to go on a two hour hunt and return with several hundred retrieved targets, even if 3/4 of it is trash!

As for avoiding trash, some say to stay away from non-repeatable signals. Lay out a good quality gold chain under some dirt and run your detector over it, you'll see a nasty low tone non-repeatable signal. If you just want coins, I'd say look only for high tones. If you want gold jewelry and deep old silver coins, you are going to have to dig a lot of trash.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

C'mon guys, whenever someone comes on lamenting a million pulltabs and foil wads, someone else is sure to come and tell them "don't give up, dig trash till your arms fall off. Afterall, if you don't dig trash, you won't find gold", blah blah blah.. So the poor newbie goes out to the blighted park, and ends up pulling his hair out.

For starters, it's already a "given" that alloyed gold and aluminum share the same conductive zones (size per size). So the solution isn't *only* to "dig trash till your arms fall off", but the MUCH BIGGER PART of the formula, is WHERE you hunt. If gold rings are your goal, then .... what the h*ck are you doing hunting places where the ratio of aluminum per each gold item can be 700 to 1 ? What sense does that make ? Instead the person should go to where the junk ratios aren't quite as bad.

Another example: I've been to some country yards where.... within 10 minutes .... it became apparent that the yards were used for burn pits (with the ashes and molten debri) spread out over the yard, as the years progressed. Now .... sure, ... I could dig 10000 pieces of burnt trash stuff out if I wanted, to get those lone coins, right? OR I could simply find a yard which doesn't have that sort of back-ground.

Location location location !

 

[Bottlecapbill]

I agree. Finding a site that will produce something is probably the most important thing you can do. How does one do this? I'll share my own method. This is less about research and more about the actual detecting. You have to go where you're likely to find what you want first(wealthy, athletic, or high traffic.....past or present). I always test a site first by cherry picking.

The first thing you have to figure out is what you're looking for. If you're looking for silver coins, you can cherry pick a site for high tones to see what turns up. If you find what you're looking for, then do a more in depth hunt to clean it out, garbage and all.

If you're looking for gold, cherry pick for the locked on unwavering VDI targets in the gold range(foil to high pull tab). Most gold will sound clean and lock on hard with little VDI variation. IF.....big IF you find gold, then you can widen your search pattern since a lot of small gold and rings with stones can still sound wonky. Clean the place out

If you're hunting for relics, you'll have to dig all ranges BUT......start out looking for the larger clean targets to see what comes up. If you do indeed find relics, then clean the area out of every target.

I personally find if you try to look for too many things at once, you end up wasting a lot of time. I'm a big believer in griding a site and cleaning it out of everything(including trash) BUT only if that site has shown promise.

Now here is the catch and where it gets interesting lol. Most hunters out there cherry pick. It's human nature to always take the easiest route. So if you're in a place with a lot of hunters who have cherry picked the crap out of every site, you have two options: the first being to clean out the trash. I assure you, there is good targets mixed in the trash of sites that were "cleaned out". You just have to decide if the work is worth the reward. I've done very well at hunted out sites cleaning everything out. It may take weeks......but the stuff is there. The second option is to go where others are unwilling to go. Into the thorn bushes. On the steep edge of a valley. Through the forest among the trees and killer bugs. Into the rocky slippery water. Around the outer overgrown edges of the park. Down the beach where nobody swims anymore. Whatever the case may be.

Use your brain and find a way. You'll be rewarded.

 

[bigfoot1]

while I think your question is unaswerable(see my sig)....here is a stop gap that will cost you the occassional find but keep you from ending up on a ledge with a rifle

when you get a ripper signal...raise your coil to about 3 inches above ground...if still a signal...dig it.

bottom line tho is....welcome to metal detecting...and... patience is a virtue


cheers

 

[halgreene]

This article will also help you a lot in understanding what is going on under your coil. Read as much as you can in one sitting and come back for the rest as it is a lot to digest. Then after a day of hunting read it again, you will really be very glad you did. ->> Truth About Search Coils

This article is the bomb! I think I can see where this is going, now (hobby-wise). My fiancé and I bought these machines to get out in the fresh air, have some fun, and dig up some cool stuff. Whereas it would be a total gas to find gold, it appears that one has to dig up a ton of trash in order to do so (at least, that's the message I'm getting from reading the forums). So we'll probably turn into what I understand are called "coin shooters"? Meaning, basically, we notch out iron and tabs and foil (and nickels?) and concentrate on higher signals? Does this make any sense? Like I said, it would be so cool to dig up an old class ring or gold bracelet, but seriously, if we have to unearth 10,000 pull-tabs along the way, then we might leave the gold to more serious detectorists and just go for higher, repeatable signals. In other words: coins.

Any advice here?

Thanks for all your help so far!

 

[Boatlode]

Dig everything. Discriminating detectors are notorious liars.

 

[airscapes]

I would suggest you lean the difference in the sound between a pull tab and a coin.. Don't discriminate just lean what to ignore.. After all the machine is not ignoring the trash, it just is not making noise when it sees what IT thinks is trash. The halo silver tone will still beep with iron turned off. You will not know is it is iron or a good target and still dig junk or a disappearing signal. Also try another place to hunt. I went over to my Mother In Laws house (brick twin build in the 50s). Yard is 10x20 and I had about 30 minutes before it got dark.. Almost dark I pull my first silver coin (1955 dime) from about 4" Parks are not the only place people drop stuff.. surprisingly very little trash in her yard but I don't think she let the kids play out front!

 

[Tom_in_CA]

.... Like I said, it would be so cool to dig up an old class ring or gold bracelet, but seriously, if we have to unearth 10,000 pull-tabs along the way, then we might leave the gold to more serious detectorists and just go for higher, repeatable signals. In other words: coins.

Any advice here? ......

Didn't you read my previous post in your thread ?? If you're at a place where you dig 10,000 tabs for each gold ring, then YOU'RE IN THE WRONG LOCATION. You keep falling for other people's wrong advice of "dig everything lest you miss a gold ring", as if that's the simple trick to finding gold rings. IT'S NOT. Location is the factor. Let me give you an example:

In early March of this year, the CA coast got raked by a strong southerly swell and southwind. My buddies and I found a certain south-facing beach, which had been eroded down several feet. Mother nature takes off a bunch of sand, and ... with it .... all the light targets too. And the heavier targets are left all over the wet sand in a sort of "natural sluice-box" effect. Between 4 of us we dug 15 + gold rings in a single day. And you know how many tabs and foil we had to dig to get those ? ZERO. In fact, there wasn't even any zinc pennies on the beach either (as they're lighter coins). Just all the heavier coins, fishing sinkers, etc.... There was so many coins, we actually got to the point where we were passsing all the high conductors and ONLY digging the low conductor (lest you merely end up with 300+ clad, blah blah). As fast as you could dig, non-stop.

So as you can see, it's location location location. If you don't have swimming beaches near you, then other close seconds are: sand volley ball courts. Sand wrestle pits or mud-baths type spots. Sand boxes. And if you simply MUST do turf, then pick the RIGHT KIND of turf: sports fields. Because if you go to picnicking/earing type turf, well gee, what did you expect? Because eating and drinking is a perfect recipe for junk: tabs for the sodas, foil for the food wrap, etc.... Contrast to turf strictly for sports, and you'll have less eating/drinking going on. And go-figure, with sports, the express purpose is frolicking motions, etc... And people taking off their stuff for "safekeeping" to leave along the side lines, at the goal-posts, etc... when they head out to play, etc....