High amount of shallow trash, deep goodies

[Skrimpy]

Having a bit of a predicament. I know of an old picnic site (circa 1900), not listed on any old topo or beers maps. Apparently the story from some is that people used to come from all around to picnic here. So...off we went. We located the site, and started working it over. After hunting all day long my buddy got an 1899 indian (so we know we are in the right spot), but that was it...nothing else but nails, nails, nails and lots of them...This led my buddy to remember two articles he had read in W&ET. One in Volume 34 March 2000. It was called "Go Beneath "The Mask". The other Volume 33 March 1999. It was called "How Far Do Targets Really Sink"?. Without going into major detail about the article, we are theorizing that what really is the biggest problem with our high trash area is the density of the soil in combination with the high amount of nails.
'Go Beneath "The Mask" ' explains how some detectors react with even the smallest of ferrous items in the ground (in the article Tom Dankowski used staples) to test the reaction of some detectors when the staples were close to a coin. He got NO signal. No discriminated signal. No ferrous signal....nothing.
In the "How Far Do Targets Really Sink" article Tom explains that what really determines how deep an item sinks is not time but density (weight/volume) and surface area...ie the smaller heavier items will sink further (and faster) than the larger lighter items (in the article he shows how a gold ring will sink faster than a coin and where it will stop sinking...yes it will stop).

On to our picnic grove. We suspect that nobody has ever detected there (ie it's elusiveness in the research) and that it has a lot more to offer than one indian (my buddy had a sniper coil too...it did no good). The dirt here is loose. Really loose. This leads us to believe that these two points made by Tom in W&ET are coming into play in keeping us from finding the good stuff. There are so many nails here that our targets are not only being masked by the shear volume of the nails but being "buried" by a tendancy to sink faster. We didn't compare densities, we only assume that they are more dense with less surface area to slow their rate of sinking (ie they might sink on their sides).

Now to test our theory that both of Toms published articles apply here. Short of tilling, digging all the nails, or excavating and "sifting" the loose composted material of 100 years worth of leaves, we were wondering what might be the best way to go about getting rid of the nails and getting the deeper goodies. Our best guess is...
Take large garden shovels and dig or scrape a large "X" from one corner to the other of the picnic area about 5"-10" down. Then detect the "X". If we hit an area where we find more stuff than others, We refill the "X" and excavate a 10'x10' area 5-10 inches down and hit it hard. Then continue on to other areas.

My thoughts are that we are going to miss some goodies close to the surface that are not both "buried and masked" by the nails but just "masked" and close to the surface. We might have to sift this to make sure we don't miss anything. Or, I guess we could detect it and pull all the nails. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

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[TheSleeper]

Posted this in another thread with similar problems:

This may help a little.

Go to a roofing supply store, they have a yard nail magnet they come in different widths with wheels attached and a long handle, made to roll around a completed job site to pickup any dropped nails. It might be worth a try.

 

[cintisteve]

What machine and coil are you using? I use a white's xlt and bullseye 5.3 coil. This works great in trashy areas . It lets me separate the trash targets from the ones I want to dig.They make a lot of sniper coils for different machines. Try using one for the detector you have.
Steve(Cintisteve)

 

[Skrimpy]

Ah. That's just it. I use the DFX with stock coil. My buddy was using the XLT with the sniper coil. He got a 99 indian, in great shape I might add, and I got bunk. There should be more stuff there. After reading those two articles my thought is that all the good stuff is out of reach of his sniper and there is too much trash for my stock. The top soil is really soft leaf mold dirt and the hardpan is down 12-16". All the nails we were digging were in the 4-8" range. The indian and nails indicate to me that we have the right spot, so my thought is there is just waywayway too much trash to get at the stuff.

 

[ranger ricky]

no help on the search, but your certainly an example, of determination both physically and mentally to recover what will amount to you as a major conqueror only to be mis understood by those not drawn to unknown of the hunt & the find.
Its articles like this that i read that make me go through another shovel full another 15 minutes another what if I go over there and try. Wont wish you luck you dont need it!
You know at the end of the day what we have struggled so hard to find we can easily buy on ebay any coin ring watch etc, what is it in us that drives us so

 

[Skrimpy]

no help on the search, but your certainly an example, of determination both physically and mentally to recover what will amount to you as a major conqueror only to be mis understood by those not drawn to unknown of the hunt & the find.
Its articles like this that i read that make me go through another shovel full another 15 minutes another what if I go over there and try. Wont wish you luck you dont need it!
You know at the end of the day what we have struggled so hard to find we can easily buy on ebay any coin ring watch etc, what is it in us that drives us so

Well...I think that rare 1600 dollar bitters bottle, or 10,000 dollar half disme are what makes me keep going back. In this case it's that heavy traffic picnic area like the "Iceberg", or "Shark Pit" that drives my desire to get in there with big shovels and large sifters (not that we know it's like that, but that the possiblity is there). I could handle finding 1-2 hundred silver coins worth 2-10 bucks a piece, and possibly one or two silver pieces worth 100 dollars or more.

 

[gldhntr]

garrett gmh-cx3 with surface elimination set to a depth to miss the trash....g

 

[Skrimpy]

This will discriminate out the nails and nothing else? From what I have seen when any detector discriminates out the nails they discriminate out ALL signals including good ones that may be sitting close to the nail...leading to the purchase of a sniper coil (which in this case didn't prove to pull the goodies out). Of course the possibility is that the goodies aren't there but I highly doubt it. We are certain we've got the turn of the century picnic spot mentioned in the newspaper, and since it wasn't shown on Beers and property maps then I'm willing to venture a guess that it hasn't been hunted much, if at all.

 

[gldhntr]

notch tuning to enable you to only tune out nails, or bottlecaps, or what have you......g

 

[dahut]

It sounds like you have enough perseverence and you will hit on something eventually. Iron masking is likely the worst problem you can encounter. It literally blinds a detector, as you've said.

But you said another thing that puzzles me:

"There should be more stuff there."

Why should there be? You think there was a picnic site, you're convinced youre on the right spot, and you found one cent. But, why should there be more? What do you really know about the place? What was there in the olden days? Who visited? When did they come, why THAT spot and how did they get there? One cent does not a treasure make and essentially you are working on mere hearsay.

What Im driving at is how we rely on our insistence that treasure is where we believe it should be. Confidence, hope or bravado blinds us often enough so we cant open our eyes and see. Ever heard of Mel Fisher? When he discovered 'La Nuestra de la Atocha,' he was running on blind persistence, because all his "theories" had proven faulty.

If you have the dating right, then that many nails indicates a structure of some kind. Perhaps a gazebo or hall of some kind. If one existed, who built it? Why? Back to the first group of questions.

You didnt mention it, but you're probably dealing with wire nails since there seems to be so many of them. They have been common for a very long time, longer than you may imagine. Again, this screams "structure" to me. So lets, say there WAS a structure there. We've all heard about coins rolling through wooden flooring and yes, it happened. But people, then as now didnt, stand around tossing or dumping money on the planking beneath their feet, watching it go through the cracks. In fact most floors of the vintage your talking were pretty tightly jointed.

Here's what I suggest. GO visit a modern day picnic area, one thats run by a church or some other minimally funded group. Get a feel for what it looks like and how its laid out - and most importantly WHY. Keep in mind that electricity wasn't a factor back then. Now try moving off from your "nail bed" some distance, say 20, 40, 60 yards and begin working sweeps there. Is there a natural attraction in the vicinity, like a spring, creek, old grove of trees, etc at some distance? Try there, too.

Be aware, too, that detectors have been around 40+ years... if you know about that place, someone else probably does, too. You may not be the only one to have the "secret info." Is your access point the same one used to get there, back then? I know of one old site where I live that is near a modern road - but the one that was used to get there back in the day is a little known rut road....way over on the other side.

What Im getting at in all of this is dont assume anything. You can only work on what you know, not what you think is so.

Gool Duck.

 

[Skrimpy]

Ah. I knew this was going to be asked of me...I just didn't know how long it would be before somebody asked. The area we are in is along a a known stream. It is spoken of in the local newspaper that has been out of print since about 1915. In that paper we have found several of small articles stating things such as "Joe Schmoe's Baptist group visited 'The Spot' on July 18th 1910. The group consisted of 16 church members and their families." Or things like "Joe Schmoe and his family visted 'The Spot' while vacationing in Springfield this week". "The Spot", as conveyed to my THing buddy by his grandfather was a popular picnicing spot around turn of the century where many people from out of town visited, I assume for the scenery. In one of these articles there was a picture taken from high on top of a ridge looking down into a glen where two ladies were standing next to the stream. Needless to say, after hiking the stream for a while we found the spot where the picture was taken from. This area overlooking the stream is a very flat area with a manageable trail leading to it from the main road, while everything else around is very hilly terrain not easily negotiated even by those of us in decent enough shape to attempt it. The flat area has many young deciduous trees ranging from 1 inch to 3 maybe 4 inches in diameter, indicating to me that in the not too distant past the flat area was clear, while most of the surrounding woods are old woods. Very tall trees a couple feet in diameter with about a foot of leaf mold on the forest floor is just about everywhere else. The fact that there are nails here indicates to me the same thing...a structure was once here (my thought is pavilion or some kind of gazeebo). All of this combined with the picture tells me this is "the spot". This place was leveled by somebody and kept mowed up until the not so distant past...Basically, the area is way, way out of place with the surrounding terrain. Also, we hiked down to the stream. It wasn't an easy thing to do. It is over 100 feet and almost a vertical climb. It is possible, but not probable that most of the picnicing went on down there.

 

[dahut]

Well done! Like I said, you are persistent. Its in the details, aint it? Thanks for reporting them.

Now, lets say you go on a picninc tomorrow. You dont have AC at home, in fact you've never heard of it and your clothes are heavy cotton and wool. It's spring or summer and the day is growing, well, "HOT."

Are you going to picnic out in an open field, in the heat of the sun?

The trees will be your cover and hopefully you can catch a cool breeze while there.
With any luck, Joe Brown and his Sousamen are coming out today to play at the covered pavilion just over yonder.

Much as you'd like, you arent likely to expect the women folk to scramble down to the creek (unless access to it was DIFFERENT in those times).
Youve said there has been plowing or leveling or what have you, perhaps a convenient access to the creek has washed away or been dismantled. Just food for thought

 

[Skrimpy]

Much as you'd like, you arent likely to expect the women folk to scramble down to the creek (unless access to it was DIFFERENT in those times).
Youve said there has been plowing or leveling or what have you, perhaps a convenient access to the creek has washed away or been dismantled. Just food for thought

Oh yeah. Although the hike down to the creek is a very very steep, very very high one, and we can assume that most of the women of the late 1800s wouldn't make the hike, there may have been convenient access but the grade of the stream really isn't conducive to swimming. It's steep, shallow, and rough water. It seems to be more of a scenic site that would be a nice place to hike to, sit down, visit, eat, take pictures, but not really a playground or park. It isn't listed on property or beers maps. It seems as the only leveling has been done in just the small area where the nails are. Everything else seems to be pretty natural.

 

[Mirage]

Very good thread here. I was convinced that you needed to scrape off 1-2 inches of dirt at a time, checking the area and then repeating until you were about 8" deep. Yes just take the spot where you found the IH and do a 4'x4' area. I have done this and pulled coins after just scraping 2" of dirt. BUT....

Dahut raises a good point - why are the nails there? Did they not burn buildings in the old times to "get rid of them"? One spot we have detected had charred remains down about 6-8". At that same level were square nails. I learned that there were once cabins there. So...most likely when the new place was made the cabins were burnt. Even with the coins on top of the nails that place is a little tricky. You have to turn your sensitivity down.

Mirage

 

[Skrimpy]

The nails are wire.

 

[Shortstack]

Ah. That's just it. I use the DFX with stock coil. My buddy was using the XLT with the sniper coil. He got a 99 indian, in great shape I might add, and I got bunk. There should be more stuff there. After reading those two articles my thought is that all the good stuff is out of reach of his sniper and there is too much trash for my stock. The top soil is really soft leaf mold dirt and the hardpan is down 12-16". All the nails we were digging were in the 4-8" range. The indian and nails indicate to me that we have the right spot, so my thought is there is just waywayway too much trash to get at the stuff.

Program your machines to ignor the most common types of trash. They can be programed for more than one type can't they? I had an original XLT back in the 90's and, if memory serves, they could be programmed for more than one " ignor " notch. Increase the sensitivity slightly before teaching the detector what targets to ignor, then go slow and use very slight overlaps. Each of you continue to use different sizes of coils and see which size provides the best response for what you're doing. You might even try a larger coil and hold it about a inch off of the ground on your sweeps.

 

[Skrimpy]

Program your machines to ignor the most common types of trash. They can be programed for more than one type can't they? I had an original XLT back in the 90's and, if memory serves, they could be programmed for more than one " ignor " notch. Increase the sensitivity slightly before teaching the detector what targets to ignor, then go slow and use very slight overlaps. Each of you continue to use different sizes of coils and see which size provides the best response for what you're doing. You might even try a larger coil and hold it about a inch off of the ground on your sweeps.

Here is my problem. There are so many nails that it's almost like a thin sheet of iron setting higher in the soil than the goodies (the reason from the two articles I reference from W&ET concerning masking and density). I think that there are so many nails that discriminating out signals will mask the goodies, and going to all metal won't help because of the sheer volume of iron (this also gave us problems with ground balancing and overload signals). In other words I don't think any amount of discrimination will only hurt our cause. I think that only two things will help us. 1. Detecting our brains out to get rid of all the nails and then excavating about 6 inches of leaf mold and detect again or 2. Excavating and sifting the leaf mold and then detecting 6 inches below the iron sheet of nails. I think the latter is the more efficient and ergonomical method. So I posted the thread to see what everyone else thought.

 

[TheSleeper]

OK i can`t answer for u Skrimpy, but if it was "me" that found that spot:
It sounds like u have a free hand to do whatever it is u want in that area.

I would pick the most promising area, grid it 10' x 10' get me a tarp and start digging to the hard pan, put all the dug on the tarp and run a strong magnet though it to remove the ferrous, then after the hard pan was hit scan it, if it the hardpan doesn`t produce refill with the dug dirt now minus the ferrous and scan that as u fill. I would not scan it on the tarp as items under the tarp could give false readings. If this area doesn`t produce after all this then that would lead me to either continue with an adjacent area or let her go.

Now thats what i would do if it was "me" and i thought the area was very promising. Yes this sounds like one heck of alot of work, but if the research u have done warrents it then perhaps just one find would make it worth while.

 

[larrybass]

8) Super post here, Scrimpy! I believe you just may have opened up an interesting can of worms with it perhaps? Seems to me that I have heard MANY boasts, by many manufacturers over the years, about their machines being able to read past or through or around or whatever, iron junk and still get a hit on the non-ferrous, coin-type stuff, beside it or under it or around it? Now, am I wrong? Have none of you ever heard that fairly common claim before? Isn't that why Gldhntr suggested notching out the darn nails? Usually, like I said above though, it's made by the manufacturer, the people who REALLY know their machines and what they can do.

Some of these new fangeled machines, I'm afraid, are just too complicated. Of course, that's coming from the guy that names his trusty ol' bread n butter unit, his "Dinosoro". Have any of you ever done any serious air-testing with your machines, indoors, where you can be in a quiet place and let it teach you many things?

Yup, there is MUCH to learn about your machines yet, boys. If you have done any air testing of your MD before, you just might want to run some tests by it again, real soon. 8) You will be on a bit of a learning curve this time my friends, I promise. 8) As a matter of fact lads, I've just started a thread about this, A-test biz stuff in here recently, because I don't believe enough people know their machines well enough, and or they rely way too much, on "auto-pilot" settings while hunting.

So anyway dude, I'd have a tendancy to do what our man Dahut suggested and keep moving away from the main nail area, until you stop hitting the nails. Drop a handkerchief or other marker there and go back into the nail area again move over say 3 - 6 feet, and move slowly out again until you run out of nails or at least they start thinning out. Drop another marker. Repeat 5 or 6 times and then by looking at your markers you should be able to see the "edge" of something, like a straight edge OR, a curved edge like on pavillions and gazeebos like you said. Then, you hunt outside and parallel to , your markers. Do at least a couple of overlaping 3 foot wide swaths, from the start of your markers to where the last one is. You should find at least some different types of neat targets there. If you don't, I'd be settin' my sails and wishin' ya all the best...


Just my kanuky 2 cents.

Oh ya, and like I first mentioned, great thread you've begun here my friend. You're a dedicated TH'er and it's very cool that you are sharing your adventures with others in here! 8) We all get to teach and learn and share altogether on this forum. Like, how KOOL is that? 8)

LarryB

 

[OldBillinUT]

Hey Skrimpy

I did a little thinking about your site and this what I would do there. Obtain a small springtooth harrow designed for a small "garden" tractor. Buy or construct an electromagnet sufficient to magnetize the tines. Tow it through the loose surface to gather the nails then go to work. I haven't done the homework on this idea but I saw a show yesterday about how the large magnets that auto wrecking yards and steel recyclers use and they are made using an aluminum ribbon as the conductor and another material in ribbon form to insulate the windings from one another then the coil assembly is placed into the iron housing and the cavity inside is filled with what looked like epoxy.
This may prove to be impractical due to the amount of current needed, isolation requirements, eddy currents ect. Dunno just an idea.