For Dewcon and other curious minds?

[bigscoop]

Just when you think you have it figured out. Hunted the small coil today, sensitivity at about 3/4, disc at 1 but also using pinpoint to double check questionable targets. Both rings are small, a silver toe ring and a 10k - 2 gram white gold with sapphires and tiny chips.

Silver toe ring was about 5 - 6 inches deep and nulled half the time. The 10k white gold was about the same depth "and took my head off!" Though for sure I had just found the mother of all giant platinum rings when I heard that tone and pinpointed a rather large and solid signature. I used the same technique retrieving both items, a very shallow first scoop and then stuck the small coil into the hole for a closer examination (something I'm practicing on a lot lately.)

A) Why did the small silver ring null half the time? No iron in area when I rechecked the area after the retrieval.
B) Why did this small 10k white gold offer such a strong signal and such a large signature?

 

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[dewcon4414]

Hey BS.... lets add something to this to get you thinking:

I have yet to see a 8" coil express/present a measurable differential to small gold targets (white gold .. or otherwise) ...... as compared to the 10" or 10.5" stock coil. Now.............. that being said................. and I know folks reject/resent this next statement.............. but.............. will say it again: the SEF or.... especially the WOT coil (14" or 15"

is a loss in depth/sensitivity/performance to small gold items in wet salt. This is a most undesirable effect..... the reciprocal of what is originally intended to achieve. Now.................. this is probably a question (on the lines of what/how Dew thinks) is............. okay................... MUCH more ground is covered with a 15" WOT coil. Depth is lost on important items; yet, more coverage is ascertained. What and Where is the break-even/turning-point to quantify/justify more area efficiency .. vs .. less depth.

I have learned (with approx 40.5 years of detecting) that............. in general.............. the smaller the gold item found.......... the greater the percentage of higher value precious 'stones' embedded. Seems like tennis bracelets, earrings, pendents etc........... will give more 'valuable' diamonds than found in rings....... including in the aggregate averaging number: engagement rings. For our entire detecting history........... everybody (whether they realize it or not).... is a gold "ring" hunter. We have been measuring detectors performance for gold 'rings'. Rings, rings, rings, rings. And why would folks think anything different when/whereby the bulk of the gold recovered in beach hunting scenarios.... is rings, rings, rings. Because "rings" are about the only gold target that most metal detectors can detect.......... why/how would anyone think there is anything 'different' to find/detect on the beach. What a geophysical metamorphosis epiphany it would be if something 'different' would/could be detected on the salt beaches. Say........ earrings and necklaces. The "new" detecting mindset // 'thought-process' would turn the world up-side-down.

This was not my thoughts but someone i respect for thinking outside the box. Proof is always in the eye of the beholder when it comes to detecting. Dont care what someone says.... if its working for me then i continue doing it. In this case .... think about it.... are we really just ring hunting with the unexpected hopes of finds that occasional other gold target? I understand why some use disc over PI and some use WOT over standard coil. Its a process leading to more RINGS..... but not necessarily other gold items if they arent routinely found.

Dew

 

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[bigscoop]

Dew, it's funny you brought that up. Prime example......the type of targets I'm retrieving has changed dramatically since going to the smaller coil. I've found more chains this past month then I've found in the past year using the larger coil. "Mindset" is definitely a factor, as with the smaller coil you already resign to the fact that you're going to cover less surface area so you naturally slow down and hunt what little you can cover with more precision and focus. At least, this is the effect it has had on me. Now once this happens there is something else that comes into play, "more sensitivity" because I can run the small coil with max settings in a very stable operating condition and these factors are less effected by the sand/saltwater condition. The bottom line is that I can not only detect smaller items VS the larger coil but I can also detect them deeper VS the larger coil as this mixture increases. All of the chains I've found have come from heavily hunted areas that are fairly clean of targets, most of the targets I do find present very small/faint signatures which is probably why they're still there. Also, some of these targets are coming from surprising depths. Yes, you're going to cover more ground with the larger coil but at a price, and that price is sensitivity to smaller items and deeper/thinner white gold simply because these items are lost in the increased ground balancing labors and lower sensitivity settings that are required when using larger coils. With the smaller coil the entire scoop of the footprint is more easily maintained and with a higher sensitivity setting. The larger coil will still hit on small "very dense" items but as those items lose their density the footprint of the larger coil simply isn't sensitive enough to detect them. "Ring hunters".....a great analogy, for sure, dense items with comparatively larger surface areas.

Now having said all this....it was something simple that Gary D. wrote in one of his post that got me using the smaller coil again, it begged the question, "how can someone still find a fair amount of smaller gold behind other talented hunters?" The bigger stuff is probably already gone or too deep to be detected, but what about all that smaller stuff? My feeling on the smaller coil is this; if that ring is in the first 8 -10" of sand I'll hit on it, and if not then at least I still maintain the ability to hit on all the finer stuff those larger coils aren't seeing. I said in another post that last summer I had spent a great deal of time hunting an area where I know there has to be a lot of gold, and yet I had hunted it all wrong. This is exactly what I was talking about, I should have been hunting it with a more sensitive setup. "Turbulence" is a real sensitivity killer. A good PI machine....or just a more sensitive VLF setup? Or both? With the more sensitive VLF I'm not digging any bobby pins or fish hooks. There's just no perfect setup which is why I'm aiming for greater flexibility in engaging the different circumstances encountered and worrying a whole less about depth. Does me no good to hunt 16" deep if I can't see all of the items within that 16 inches. I'd rather hunt 10" deep and be able to see everything in that 10".

PS: If I could take all the bells and whistles and weight off the CTX3030 stick I'd consider getting one.

 

[bigscoop]

Dew, here's an interesting question I have been mauling over lately; A badly encrusted old gold object, or silver object, perhaps one of these is even laying next to an iron object, within the halo of that iron object. Now here's the question, in this scenario which coil is more likely to offer clue of the obstructed gold or silver content within the target area, the smaller coil running with less interference and higher sensitivity, or the larger coil running with more interference and less sensitivity? I think this is going to be a future experiment on the beach pretty soon. Not sure how this will play out but I have my suspicions the smaller coil has the advantage.

 

[lookindown]

Bigscoop, do you ever get a mid tone from a crusty zincloln? I use a CZ21 with the large coil and everywhere Ive hunted so far I can run autotune at 7 to 8 sens and dicriminate 0 at 9 to 10 with no falsing, does that sound about right?

 

[rons1947]

I had this happen, with the Excalibur 2,a couple of years ago.I had a target that was broken and would almost null out.It turned out to be a silver hoop earring with the latch open,making it a broken circle.

 

[dewcon4414]

I would agree the smaller coil...... if its not to deep. Larger coils if ran to hot do go into coil shut down on deep iron that the small coil dont even know is there.... which reduces depth. Thats why a small coil is a good choice in lots of trash. OR.... you can run less sensitivity on a larger coil.... you would be surprised whats just under trash and can be separated with a large coil just by reducing your coil HALO. Now throw this in...... concentric vs DD... most would say the DD, but with the narrow receive coil on the DD targets can get masked easier.

Dew

 

[bigscoop]

Bigscoop, do you ever get a mid tone from a crusty zincloln? I use a CZ21 with the large coil and everywhere Ive hunted so far I can run autotune at 7 to 8 sens and dicriminate 0 at 9 to 10 with no falsing, does that sound about right?

Yep, cruddy pennies often mid-tone. I run my CZ between 8 - 9 all the time regardless what mode I'm in unless I'm running the waterline where the turbulence is attacking the coil all the time. With the CZ I dig most everything unless the signature is really large. I don't use the CZ too often anymore unless I want to hunt an area quickly and don't really care about possibly missing some of the smaller gold targets, like chains or small profile deeper white gold. In fact, I just hunted a hole tonight with the CZ and I plan to go back to that same hole on Monday to hunt it again with Excal 8". The CZ found deep lead, coins, etc. Will be interesting to see what the small Excal fishes out, if anything at all?

 

[bigscoop]

I just came back from the beach, tied that 2 gram white gold to a heavy string and went out into the waist deep water. Next I took a full, straight down scoop with the 8" stealth and I dropped that white gold ring into the center of the hole and filled the hole back in. According to the string the ring was a bit less then 9" deep. In disc at (1) and with sense at about 3/4 I could still get consistent tics on that small white gold ring (in pinpoint it performed no better). And here it comes, something to possibly upset the masses, "I doubt the WOT could have read the ring" while running in a stable state at the same disc settings. Now I didn't have the WOT to try it, but prior experience with the WOT makes me fairly certain it would have difficulties acquiring repeat hits on that ring at that depth and in that deep of moving water. The 10" would probably have no problem reading the ring. By the way, in air test the Excal and 8" coil at the same settings could only read that ring at about 6".....as Shultz would say, very interesting. And, with the CZ-21 & 10. 5 coil, with the disc at (1) and the sense at 8, it never even saw the ring at all.

 

[lookindown]

Yep, cruddy pennies often mid-tone. I run my CZ between 8 - 9 all the time regardless what mode I'm in unless I'm running the waterline where the turbulence is attacking the coil all the time. With the CZ I dig most everything unless the signature is really large. I don't use the CZ too often anymore unless I want to hunt an area quickly and don't really care about possibly missing some of the smaller gold targets, like chains or small profile deeper white gold. In fact, I just hunted a hole tonight with the CZ and I plan to go back to that same hole on Monday to hunt it again with Excal 8". The CZ found deep lead, coins, etc. Will be interesting to see what the small Excal fishes out, if anything at all?

Thanks for the info...every now and then I get a mid tone from a crusty zincoln...I used to worry that my CZ wasnt getting deep enough or that it was missing small gold but it goes deeper than I want to dig sometimes and it will pick up a 0.5 gram gold ring at 3 inches. So now I just hunt and dont worry about it. If Im missing anything its not enough to worry about...thanks again.

 

[bigscoop]

Thanks for the info...every now and then I get a mid tone from a crusty zincoln...I used to worry that my CZ wasnt getting deep enough or that it was missing small gold but it goes deeper than I want to dig sometimes and it will pick up a 0.5 gram gold ring at 3 inches. So now I just hunt and dont worry about it. If Im missing anything its not enough to worry about...thanks again.

If you're picking up that 0.5 gram gold ring at 3" in the wet sand or in the saltwater you're doing excellent! And if that ring is white gold you have a very special CZ machine that I'd never let go of.

 

[lookindown]

If you're picking up that 0.5 gram gold ring at 3" in the wet sand or in the saltwater you're doing excellent! And if that ring is white gold you have a very special CZ machine that I'd never let go of.

Thats in an air test and not white gold...I found that tiny ring in sand under a swing with my AT PRO...the AT pro is a small gold killer.

 

[bigscoop]

Thats in an air test and not white gold...I found that tiny ring in sand under a swing with my AT PRO...the AT pro is a small gold killer.

I messed up when I bought the CZ with 10.5 coil. At the time I was wanting more coverage and depth, however, I failed to take into account the currents over here. The larger coil just produces to much drag in these currents and there are times when I can hardly keep the coil moving. All day water hunting with it on this area of coast is out of the question a great deal of the time. That's why I seldom use it too much anymore. Great for the wet sand and those rare times when the current is mild but other then that it can wear you down in a hurry. I should have gotten the 8".

 

[lookindown]

I messed up when I bought the CZ with 10.5 coil. At the time I was wanting more coverage and depth, however, I failed to take into account the currents over here. The larger coil just produces to much drag in these currents and there are times when I can hardly keep the coil moving. All day water hunting with it on this area of coast is out of the question a great deal of the time. That's why I seldom use it too much anymore. Great for the wet sand and those rare times when the current is mild but other then that it can wear you down in a hurry. I should have gotten the 8".

I know exactly what you mean. I hunted with mine three times in November on the East coast and everytime I tried to hunt in the water I couldnt control the coil so I went back to wet sand hunting. We hunt the West coast in the Summer and most days its like a lake, no problem using the big coil for 7 to 8 hours in the water.

 

[bigscoop]

I know exactly what you mean. I hunted with mine three times in November on the East coast and everytime I tried to hunt in the water I couldnt control the coil so I went back to wet sand hunting. We hunt the West coast in the Summer and most days its like a lake, no problem using the big coil for 7 to 8 hours in the water.

When I post I'm usually relating my experiences to the conditions over here, don't always clarify that. But it is different, beach can change overnight with just a small increase in the rate of water volume exchange between tides. If you plan to water hunt a lot a smaller coil is just about a requirement unless you're 6' 8", 260, and have arms like Popeye. I get chest deep in the water over here and I'm bobbing up and down like a cork, waiting for the next wave to blow my headphones off my head. I don't like it but I have to live with it if I want to water hunt very much at all. There are a lot of days when I'm out there and I just say, "Screw this!"