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Questions About Park Hunting With My Gold Bug


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I am looking for opinions on working a more productive park hunting range with my non manual GB machine.

I am currently using the stock 5 inch coil, I had been using a Nels Sharpshooter but have decided it is too much for the trash laden parks here where I live.

1. I have been digging the 44-59 vdi range with the understanding that some jewelry may be slipping away, how off base is this. I will dig a solid 80 and above, not fond of pennies

but small silver rings seem to fall in that range.

2.Is there anything of value found in the 60-79 range?

3.Most importantly, vdi fluctuation, how  much do most of you with experience allow for. If I get more than a six number swing, 3 up, 3 down, I pass. Is there a rule of thumb for this?

Wendell Clark

 

 

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Well, I'm far from an expert, but I also use the Gold Bug Pro with the 5 inch coil.  You probably are aware that US 5c pieces ("nickels") hit in the high 50's, typically 57 or 58.  The old "ring + beaver tail" pulltabs also hit here, but since those went out in 1975 you shouldn't get too many, unless it's a park that hasn't been searched in which case it's worth digging them, IMO. Also, I mentioned in another thread that I found an Indian Head Penny last Saturday and it showed ~74 on the ID, right about where you often find the dreaded zinc pennies!

One thing I've been speculating recently is that corrosion/deterioration affects the ID of US pennies of all types.  Yes, a clean copper should hit at 82, but how about one that's been sitting in the ground a long time?  I don't know.  I have books and web articles that claim that Indian heads hit at four different ID's on some White's IB's and Minelab X-terras.  But there were only two different composition Indian Heads:  1859-64 cupro-nickel and 1864-1909 95% copper, 5% (zinc + tin).  So how do you get four ID's with that?   My current theory:  corrosion.

As far as the spread on ID's, in my limited experience you can see this with coins that don't sit horizontally.  Ideally a coin sits horizontally and you get a clean eddy current and tight ID, but get them off horizontal (especially vertical) and the variation is larger.  How large?  I'm not sure.  Also I wonder about near neighbor trash.  But one thing that helps is to rotate your body (and detector) 90% and scan the target again.  Things that are asymmetric (e.g. nails and modern pulltabs = "square tabs") will give significantly different readings depending upon the orientation of the sweep with respect to the orientation of the object.

As far as jewelry, I can't help you there but there are many here who can.  I wish you well in your hunts!

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1 hour ago, Hard Prospector said:

I use the 11"DD on my GB Pro or F19 when hunting parks and it works very well. Bits and shreds of aluminum trash would just drive the smaller coils crazy. 

I can confirm that.  "Can slaw" (pieces of aluminum cans that have been shredded by lawn mowers) give strong signals.  Typically this is in the 60 --> 70 ID range on the GB Pro's discrimination scale.  But aluminum foil can envelop a wider range, since the conductivity can be low (for small pieces) and high for large chunks, especially flat chunks.  Gum wrappers, cigarette packs, and thicker foil used in grilling food can cover the spectrum from low 50's into even the 80's in my experience.  And large pieces of aluminum cans are very conductive, also.

Thanks for the tip.  I'm going to put the 11 inch DD on this weekend and see if I can go deeper.  I'm gaining confidence that the sites I'm searching are virgin (i.e. not recently searched by detectors) so deep is where the old coins are likely to be.  That's the treasure I seek.

 

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I used to have an aunt that detected.  I think she had an old Compass detector or something...this was back in the 90s

Anyway, she had more rings than you could imagine... hundreds.....

I asked her how she found so many.  Her answer back was: "I dig everything. Never trust a meter"

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FYI. just this year I bought a T2 and it has been a great machine to hunt parks. Ignores the aluminum trash a bit better (than the GB) seems to hit coins and rings deeper, less EMI issues and the VDI / target ID works really well. I'm sure the slight depth increase has to do with running at 13kHz (compared to the GB at 19kHz) but the sensitivity is still great. I use the 11"DD coil on that detector as well.

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I found the 19 kHz frequency coupled with the compressed non-ferrous VDI range of the gold bugs to hot for hunting for gold in aluminum trash.  Its basically a dig it all machine when hunting for jewelry hiding in aluminum trash.

My only advice for gold bug users is to hunt the hot spots and dig it all.

Good luck,

Mike

 

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