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Big Iron Avoidance Tactics?


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I use the Orx and primarily in coin fast mode. 
when at cellar holes And iron infested sites I get fooled all the time with great signals from big iron.  What are some of the ways to avoid digging so much?  Obviously big targets will give the echo signal and you can sometimes get an idea of size but what else can you look for or do?

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Not the best of solutions, but I can Only suggest smaller coils.....

Also, I'm not used to Xp machines, but ask someone details on iron rejection settings for first.

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3 hours ago, relicmeister said:

I use the Orx and primarily in coin fast mode. 
when at cellar holes And iron infested sites I get fooled all the time with great signals from big iron.  What are some of the ways to avoid digging so much?  Obviously big targets will give the echo signal and you can sometimes get an idea of size but what else can you look for or do?

 Someone in this forum called the Deus/Orx "bodybuilded Tesoros" . This is true the Orx is very reactive with a very good iron discri in the "coin fast" factory mode , just like a Tesoro. However it takes a long time to get used to the XPs audio  and their response to ferrous targets , often several months , sometimes years ...

In fact the Deus/Orx have been rather designed to perform in areas littered with little  irons ( old nails ) .And it can , like the Tesoros or other detectors , give a good signal on a deep big iron . Normally it is not a pb because such big irons are usually rare .

The most accurate detectors on big deep irons are to my opinion the ML multifreqs Equinox , Etrac , Vanquish , etc .. I almost never dig big irons with my Vanquish , the ALL METAL button helps a lot for this .. 

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Try to get your Orx to break on a medium iron nail, the old square ones. Set the discrimination so it just crackles. This should squelch out majority of the iron in the area and not discriminate out most of your good targets.

When you hit a crackle next hit that target at a different angle. If there is a spark of something else then dig it.

Lastly big iron and flat iron should still produce an iron audio from the tip or tail of your coil. Things like old bottle caps, oxen shoes, washers etc.

If your not getting an iron audio off the edge of the target you may want to nudge the disc down a hair.

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All single frequency detectors struggle with big iron and flat tin type steel, and steel washers. Large stuff like an ax head I can tell using a pinpoint or all metal mode and sizing the target, but if they are deep they can sound good. It is just that after a foot of digging I know I'm on something big.

For most stuff I prefer full tones, as there are usually a mix of tones including ferrous tones coming off these items. They have a big high tone spike. If you use very few tones, you only hear the high tone spike, and that is what fools a lot of people into thinking a ferrous items is a coin. Unfortunately you do not have full tones on the Orx, only on the Deus.

This diagram from the White's DFX shows it best. A coin signal, and a large ferrous item. Both have a strong high coin component. But the ferrous item on the DFX, V3i, and CTX display multiple low target id numbers referred to as a "ferrous smear" A detector with full tones allows you to hear these. A detector using full tones and only picking the strongest component of the signal gives a clear high tone coin signal. You do not hear or see the ferrous part of the signal.

Finally, these fake signals do spike quite high. On my Equinox they come in consistently at 39, which is a silver dollar signal. If I gets any decent non-ferrous target that spikes to 39 on a few passes, I know with 98% certainty it is ferrous. On most machines that is what you will see, a strong silver dollar signal. Well, seriously, how many silver dollars are there out there? You can either be aware of this and watch for it, or you can block the high end out via notching and suppress the spikes completely.

It is also common for severe iron hot rocks to read as silver dollars. The X-Terra 705 wanted new detectorists to not get faked out by these false signals, so it comes out of the box with the default discrimination patterns set to reject the high 48 reading. Just fine unless you really are looking for a silver dollar - the default setting blocks them!

whites-signagraph-display-ferrous-smearing.jpg

 

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Use the optional iron tone for discriminated ferrous and iron probablity tools built into your Orx and the big iron should grunt off the edge and not just ring up high.  Pinpoint or gold field should also give you an idea of target footprint since they are pitch-based audio.

SmartSelect_20200611-124929_Adobe Acrobat.jpg

SmartSelect_20200611-124957_Adobe Acrobat.jpg

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I forgot to mention you may also do better at higher frequencies rather than lower. I tend to fall back to 19khz at a very slight loss in depth compared to 14 or 5. Your Orx can go much higher.

Typical rundown on my MK is I will not discriminate but keep my iron audio on very low so it isn't annoying. Not sure if the Orx has adjustable Iron Audio so if it doesn't then kicking up the discrim until you quiet it down will make the hunt less fatiguing. When hunting with my AT Pro that doesn't have adjustable iron audio I raise the discrim to kill the smaller iron trash like square nails as I mentioned. 

I found that low conductors can over power high conductors and drag their values down so playing off of that I try not to completely eliminate common iron that can typically mask out objects. Obviously if you have an iron axe head on top of a trime your just going to hear the axe head. Digging big iron in some areas can better help find the small stuff that is hidden. Digging every nail will drive you mad!

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Thanks for all the great tips and explanations. I’m using different coils and frequencies and trying to see what helps most. I can very often  tell then I’m on big iron, but Still get fooled by many targets that I would swear are high Conducting-  non ferrous. I don’t wish to avoid all iron cause I like preserving and displaying the Medium sized better ones. The more targets I dig, the less often I’ll be fooled too

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4 hours ago, relicmeister said:

Thanks for all the great tips and explanations. I’m using different coils and frequencies and trying to see what helps most. I can very often  tell then I’m on big iron, but Still get fooled by many targets that I would swear are high Conducting-  non ferrous. I don’t wish to avoid all iron cause I like preserving and displaying the Medium sized better ones. The more targets I dig, the less often I’ll be fooled too

Well, after 45 years of detecting I get fooled also. There will always be questionable targets. I get ones that are real borderline, and I’m pretty sure they are ferrous. The thing is, we are out there to metal detect, and that means digging stuff up sometimes to see what it is. So I figure, hey, why not, and dig it up. And it’s usually junk. But every once in a while it is not. What I’m trying to say is that in my opinion, if you are not digging a little junk you are not trying hard enough. I look for reasons to dig, not reasons to avoid digging. I think some of the less successful among us are those who cannot tolerate digging junk, so they use high discrimination settings and cherry pick the targets. They are the people that say a park is hunted out. Then people like me go in and recover all the finds they left behind. So don’t worry about digging a little junk... it’s a good thing! :smile:

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