Testing. Has anyone else tried this?

[shufflr]

Was playing around with my detector today sweeping it over various coins I have here. Just for experimentation I threw a bottle cap down about 2 inches from a silver dime. When I ran my detector over it in coin mode.....nothing. Turned discrimination off and got a very mixed signal. Mostly a solid middle signal. In sweeping over the two I could often get a hint of the tone I get when coins are usually found but I can now understand why some people say to dig everything because one could very easily bypass what could be a very sweet find next to a piece of trash.

 

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[BryanM362]

A Lot of variables there. Size of the items, depth, machine used, how close the items are, speed of your swing, size of the coil, and metal they are made of. I think most detectors will combine/average the signals to give you an odd reading.

I recently found a 1915 Canadian Large Cent and an old rusted pocket knife, right next to each other. The signal on my e trac came out as an odd zinc penny, but because I was on a good site I dug it....

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Was playing around with my detector today sweeping it over various coins I have here. Just for experimentation I threw a bottle cap down about 2 inches from a silver dime. When I ran my detector over it in coin mode.....nothing. Turned discrimination off and got a very mixed signal. Mostly a solid middle signal. In sweeping over the two I could often get a hint of the tone I get when coins are usually found but I can now understand why some people say to dig everything because one could very easily bypass what could be a very sweet find next to a piece of trash.

Well, it's easy to SAY "dig everything" (lest you miss a masked target) , ... but ... in actual PRACTICE there are some places where you simply don't have that option. You can try to strip-mine a junky park, or dig every last piece of iron out of a ghost town if you want, but .... reality dictates that there are some places where you simply can't do that. You'd get kicked out of the park before you ever got out of a 10 ft. square area, doh!

There's a park scrape going on in CA right now (park renovations) that's turning up silver for those of us in the know. It's a super junky old-town blighted park where ratios of wino-screw caps, clad, tabs, corroded zinc, etc... to each old coin, would be 100 to 1. Thus "depth" was never the issue. It was/is always trash and masking. But no one ever cared to go "be a hero" and strip-mine out all the trash. Instead we'd just gravitate to cleaner upscale parks elsewhere. Now that the scrape is going on, I can see that the depth of the silver was never really much more than 6"+. So it's not that the stuff was "too deep" for standard turf hunting, but only that it's just not feasable to strip-mine in urban park turf.

So it depends on where you're at, and what you can get away with, your objective, etc....

 

[calisdad]

The limiting factor here is soil condition. In summer it's rock hard so a 6" hole could take 30 minutes.

The good thing shufflr is you are becoming more familiar with your machine.

 

[luvsdux]

This example is a good example of the value of all metal when hunting an area that likely has goodies masked by trash. While you'll have to dig everything with the problems that entails, you will find the masked target(s) because the detector will respond to any metal under the coil. As Tom mentions, it often isn't practical unless you have unreal patience and persistence.
luvsdux

 

[cudamark]

This is where Minelab's two tone ferrous and the multi-target I.D. screen really shines.

 

[jeweler21]

I have been detecting for 45 years. When I first began, the knowledge from books and experienced coin hunters said that coins would sink according to ground conditions and moisture about 2" to four inches during the fall and according to the growth of roots, temperature, and moisture would rise back close to the surface in the spring. I have found little to discredit this theory through the years. It does seem that very old coins through their years of fluctuation in the ground may sink to as much as 6" or in extremely soft loam maybe a little deeper, but I think that in general anytime a coin is found more than six inches deep, it is because it was lost in an area that was tilled or dug during construction or a large amount of fill was placed over it. The most successful detector that I have ever used to find coins is the A. H. Electronics Super Pro body mount with a 81/2" coil. The detector no longer works properly or I would still be using it. It has the ability to discriminate pull tabs or bottle caps and pick up a coin lying directly underneath them. The AT Pro that I now use is as close to accommodating this situation as any other detector that I have used. The AT Pro gets more depth but I would give up the extra depth to have the excellent discrimination of the old A. H. Electronics detector. However, to find gold above 10K with it you had to run in all metal mode. In conclusion, I think the detector companies should strive for a detector with better discrimination and not concentrate so much on depth.
Just my 2 Cents. HH

 

[Normsel]

I recently purchased a Whites V3i and in several cases I dug a quarter next to a bottle cap and the only signal I had was the 83 for the quarter. I only have about 40 hours on my V3i and have dug $59 so far this month with weather permitting and have only dug two bottle caps. The biggest thing is knowing your detector. I also have an ATP and it rarely rang on a bottle cap or tab if there was a coin in the same hole. I don't believe in air tests because there are no real variables. If there is a tab or bottle cap in the same hole as a coin in most cases the coin with be the stronger signal and the tone will indicate a coin 1st and tab or cap most often has a different tone even if similar.

 

[shufflr]

Actually while out yesterday afternoon in a trashy yard of an abandoned house from the 20's I encountered a signal that was bouncing between foil and a penny/dime signal. Decided to dig it. Found a small piece of wire. Ran the detector over again and got a solid high penny signal. 1945 wheat penny was there.

 

[DDancer]

I've done that experiment many times. Its part of what I do to familiarize myself with new detectors or just playing around with my current ones to tweek them. In the field its somewhat helpful to know and honestly I'll pretty much perform the same experiment in new areas... ie dig it all.. as soil conditions usually change the way targets sound off when coupled with trash.
Doing this and coupling it with depth, size or VDI readings cuts down on some of the trash digging. However I have gone "Hero" in some places because excessive trash was masking older finds. The Hero option only comes into play with me when I hit more than 4 wheat cents in an area and I have a lot of time on my hands.

Kind of outside the topic for VLF machiens but I did similar experiments years ago with my Minelab GP3000 and SD2100 during a discussion about how balancing and auto-track can cancel out target signals. In that experiment I gradually taped on nickels to my coils and tried to pull a signal from a quarter gram nugget. It was quite revealing though there were still some who doubted me~ even with video~ and probly still do.

In the end its always going to boil down to knowing your machine, the area and just how much effort your willing to put into that next hole. Yesterday I did pretty much what I've just wrote and came away with about two dollars in clad from a new area.
Keep digging

 

[Msbeepbeep]

With the M6 I dig anything that bounces around saying coin. Not so much if it keeps hitting iron and bottle cap just once in a while to check and see. Tin foil is a Little harder to deal with being that there is so much if it compared to gold rings.