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Rusty Nails Into The Teens On Vdis


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I have a eqinox 600,where i live is a 1700s site.been detecting it for 20 years with a number of high end machines,also buddies of mine detecting it,year before last pulled out 13 large cents with my atpro.just a little side note atpro not used in pro mode is useless,in pro mode its awesome totally different machine. but back to why im posting,everything im detecting is mostly in the teens,strong signal ,rotate around the target, still a strong signal,dig rusty nail.everytime.i have iron bias at 3. most targets are going to be below 13 inches that is where my atpro massed out.so my question is why the teen vdi numbers for iron and is there a way to get past the 13 inch mark. sidenote, the house I live was George washingtons surgeon during the revolutionary war. any help is greatly appreciated. 

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Unfortunately cast iron can come as solid 13, and some other good objects can fall into 13 as well. When I see 13, I usually spend more time analyzing it. Rotating, using All Metal, listening to tone breaks. One other thing I think helps is using 50 tones, because rotating around does give small clues. There is also a certain character to iron, it has some raspiness in tone, while non-ferrous objects give this "rounder" kinda sounding tone. I think one can only hear it using 50 tones.

There are other tricks that people use, I'm sure they will be mentioned here shortly. 

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Hi Nordic,thankyou for your reply,the teens I am getting are round and no breaks in signal,also after digging down about a foot the vdi turns to 1 something,and a steady 1,but no object is found. Again any reply is appreciated 😊 thanks again Nordic ,happy hunting

 

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I don't own an nox 600 or the at pro, but one thing I'm fooled by the most is 18th century iron. It has a way different metallurgical make up than most modern steels and irons. It will cause my MK to read in the 70's. As for the false signals, iron rich red clay soils when wet or damp can make your your detector sense a false target. Everybody on this forum has experienced phantom signals, it happens from time to time.

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Steady 1-2 is usually a coke or energy gels(some), Nox picks these up strong, but it can be moved to Ferrous side of scale. Field modes already do that. I've never found anything of interest below id 5...

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 When I know I am in an area with deep/larger 19th century or earlier iron targets with the occasional desired non'-ferrous targets mixed in at the same depth I have some choices to make. I can either discriminate and filter out the iron by rejecting the iron range and turning up the iron bias, which will very likely mask most of the iron but may also mask some of the good non-ferrous targets too, OR I can accept most of the iron range (0 down to -5 or -6) and lower the iron bias ( I would also lower the iron tone volume level to a lower volume level and maybe change the pitch of the iron tone to something less disgusting) and listen to lots of low and mid tone iron responses while trying to pick out the good stuff, OR I can compromise and do a combination of both extremes. If you have already collected some of the nails and maybe some of the non-ferrous targets you are looking for, you could do some testing for the best settings before you get to the site. No matter what, you can always just press the horseshoe button (if you haven't already) and immediately check for low iron tones and negative numbers that should accompany any iron target at any depth using default Park and Field modes.  You can also hunt in a sort of default Park or Field mode with just two tones and with a moderate iron bias setting like 0 to 2, turn up the threshold tone until it is audible and when you get to one of those 13 VDIs and hear the threshold go silent all around the possible iron target, press the horseshoe button and listen for actual low tone iron responses which may help you decide to dig or not.

There are more ways around this problem that I haven't tried yet. This versatile adjustability is what makes the Equinox such a  wonderful and challenging detector. Some people who think they know...........have complained about how poorly the Equinox handles iron, especially with the 6" coil..........😱

There is a very good Iron Bias tutorial in the Equinox Essential Information section of this forum.

Jeff

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I don't think anyone addressed your depth question. I also don't know exactly what type of relics or metal you are specifically looking for or your ground conditions. 

I have found V nickels, seated dimes, three ringers, carbine slugs, musket balls, cartridges and plenty of iron (mostly junk) railroad debris past depths  of 13" with a Nox 600 and Nox 800. I usually was using Park 2 or Field 2. In the moderate to highly mineralized dirt I hunt in the slightly higher frequency weighted search modes seem to do better on overall depth. I generally use Park 1 and Field 1 for milder soil conditions or for the first 8 to 10'" in hot dirt. For your situation, without knowing what soil conditions are, you could also lower the recovery speed to 2 or 1 (=4 and 2 on the 800) and do some testing to see if that helps in your preferred search mode while cranking up the sensitivity as high as the coil you are using can handle. Those deep targets I found listed above were using 20 to 22 sensitivity. Anything higher makes my 11" coil and my feeble brain unstable from all of the ground noise.

Jeff

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If you are getting such a signal, you said it yourself above, stick your shovel in the ground near the target (don't cut a plug) and try to break the halo to see if you can get it to pop down to single digits or negative numbers.  Also, if you are getting a solid single teen number dig it.  If it is fluctuating in the teens that could be a clue that it is ferrous.  Do the shovel trick.  Use the horseshoe button to turn off disc and see if you are getting an iron grunt in synchrony with the high tone, as Jeff suggested above, that is another clue of possible iron.  Even then, sometimes you gotta just dig it to be sure.  

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