newbie with questions

[gold panner]

I am a newbie to the metal detecting world and was hoping for a few pointers. Let me give you an explanation of what I am doing. I just bought a fisher gold bug a few weeks ago primarily to find gold in areas that I have been panning, but decided to try it out on a few old cellar holes around the house. So I went to the library and researched as much as I could on the history of some of the home sites. in that research found a picture of a fair from the 1800's. I know were the picture was takin and it is currently a still a field that has not been disturbed. so I call the land owner(who I know to ask permission) and he says to go nuts. Also told me they had fairs until about 1920. So I have spent about eight hours detecting there and have found about 15 wheat pennies all dated pre 1930, one silver dime, one quarter and a silver ring, gold ring, and one indian head dated 1906. The problem that I am having is there is a lot of nails in this site and I am having a ton of hits above 50 but when I dig them up 90% of the time they are nails. I am running my gain about 90% and my threshold around twelve. Should I be doing something different? I also have the stocked five inch coil on and am getting a lot of hits that are not registering what they might be. Would a different coil enable me to get some more depth currently it seems that I am good up until about 4-5 inches. I know there must be some stuff pre 1900's but I do not think that I am getting deep enough. The stuff that I am finding is in obviose spots so I do not think this field has really been hit. Thanks for any help that I can get.

 

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[4Strokes1Pick&Poke]

I would say that's a pretty good day when you find two rings??

 

[Molewacker]

Nice digs! Nails, bottle caps, can slaw, pull tabs - hate them all for sounding good, but you pulled out some great stuff from the junk.

 

[gunsil]

You just gotta learn to live with the junk or trash, we all do. If all detectors just found good stuff there would be no sport in it. All detectors, even the most expensive will often get fooled by certain junk, there is no way around it. A larger coil will go deeper, but in undisturbed areas most coins and jewelry will be in the top six inches or less anyways. The larger coil will not provide as much separation on targets either, although I prefer an 8" coil for general coin and jewelry hunting, and many get by with stock 11" coils for general hunting.

 

[victhedog]

You going to find nails and other junk , but it you find coins your doing it right.
plus once you get most of the junk out you can go back and find the deeper stuff.

 

[gold panner]

Thanks for the info. Is there a coil that anybody would recommend for a gold bug? I did not find all this in one day but over a few days a couple of hours at a time. Of course I am obsessed with getting back there every time I have an hour or two to spare. I have been finding the coins on the outskirts (where I can single out targets) of were I can see from the pictures where the rides and vendors were. If I try to get into the areas were the most action was from the pics that I have it is just too much garbage. but I guess I am just going to have to start digging garbage out to get to other stuff. Is it normal in older sites to not have much silver I am mostly finding pennies and the one dime was 1957 so that might have been random meaning long after events were held there. Last question is there something that I can use to clean coins up with.

 

[cudamark]

A gold bug wouldn't be my first (or tenth) choice in hunting an old fairground site. Just too many signals for me. If there is lots of iron targets, the smallest coil is your best option to get some separation of targets.

 

[Terry Soloman]

I have to agree with Cuda. If you are using the GoldBug 2, you are operating at over 71kHz - not really great for depth, fantastic for small bits of gold up to 6" deep, but not the best deep silver hunter. With the finds you have already made, I urge you to sell that Goldbug (unless you are in Arizona; Alaska; Nevada; California; New Mexico; Idaho; Oregon; or Washington State), and get yourself a more capable machine. Great Finds and Good Luck!

 

[gold panner]

Thanks for the advice. I did buy the detector for nugget hunting but now can not pull away from fairground. I can not wait to hit some gold with it though. It is hard I will not sell gold bug until I have used it this summer for gold but might if I do not do well with it. and get a different detector for coins. I did try it in a stream for about a half an hour and got three hits two .22 bullets and one small gold picker.. But the gold was in an area that I knew contained gold from a couple of years panning there. I will keep posted on any new finds.

 

[paydirt1850]

If you have the patience, I would dig every target. A iron target will mask most all coins within a couple of inches around it. If you leave the iron targets in the ground you may leave some nice stuff with them.

 

[Garrett424]

Looks like you're doin' just fine to me. Just keep doing what you're doing and in no time you'll be an old pro.
Like anything else, practice makes perfect.