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Nugget Detectors & Target ID Normalization For Jewelry?


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Hey GB you're not supposed to laugh at that, I was being semi serious - but I don't blame you based on ML's track record.  What was it that the Wayne's World guys used to say..."Yeah, that will happen...when monkeys fly out of my [bleep]"  I guess I can dream that ML is actually listening.

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18 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Randy Horton (and friends) did a great job with that freebie.  Although I liked it when I first read it (after getting the X-Terra 705) I don't think I appreciated it for its full value, at least partly because I wasn't experienced enough to understand it properly.  It's not just about the X-Terra series as you've shown again.  Time for a refresher read!

10 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Too bad the Equinox can't shut off normalization. Be great to expand the low end and shove all the coins to the top.

Ditto on being able to expand the high end.  Sometimes I get iron targets up there and although they tend to show telltale non-coin signs, the extra resolution could be of value.  But I'm with you, if it's above Zincoln and reasonably consistent (or even inconsistent if weak, meaning it might be deep) then I'm digging it.  I'll take a Wheat penny over a clad quarter anyday, but I'm going to dig both.

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This sparked interest for me as there is a patch of land next to local puddle that was used for bbq's from the 60's-80's. Dirt is hard packed and a complete bed of aluminum square tabs, ring tabs, beaver tails and can slaw. I had cherry picked out the copper, silver and a handful of nickels but there are just way too many aluminum targets to pick through for any gold. I have never worried about a crushed can, those are usually large and loud enough to ignore on just about any machine.

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On 7/7/2020 at 5:00 PM, Steve Herschbach said:

I've fiddled around with this a lot over the years, but I always tend to come back to digging all non-ferrous in some chosen range, and so from a practical aspect it's not proven too important to me to have an expanded gold range. But that's just me. If you are into that stuff, get DFX Gold Methods.

That link has some interesting data, although it has left me with a lot of questions.  It certainly illustrates the different raw phase change scales of the DFX's 5 kHz and 15 kHz single frequencies.  Differences among various targets (particularly silver alloy vs. clad USA coins) has left me scratching my head, though.

I can see (in theory, at least) how better digital TID resolution could help distinguish between coins since the uniformity and quality control at the mint is very high.  But there are no size/shape/weight standards for jewelry.  And that pretty much carries over to pulltabs (shown in those data in the link, in fact) and even (weight-wise) to all kinds of bottle caps.  Naturally occurring gold?  Aluminum foil?  Can slaw?  Duh.  Is that effectively why you (Steve) say "...I always tend to come back to digging all non-ferrous in some chosen range..."?

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2 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

But there are no size/shape/weight standards for jewelry.  And that pretty much carries over to pulltabs (shown in those data in the link, in fact) and even (weight-wise) to all kinds of bottle caps.  Naturally occurring gold?  Aluminum foil?  Can slaw?  Duh.  Is that effectively why you (Steve) say "...I always tend to come back to digging all non-ferrous in some chosen range..."?

In a nutshell, yes. For every possible target id number there are both aluminum and gold items that will signal. So my “inclusive” gold range is from ferrous up to and including zinc pennies. If I want to narrow that down, I might knock off a couple low single digit numbers to get rid of the smallest foil, and maybe knock out zinc pennies, or both. I often dig all non-ferrous up to but not including zincs as kind of a default “jewelry hunting program.” The choice then is simply dig everything, or, dig only targets that have a tight, single target id return. Bottom line is I have found it’s best for me to not overthink it. It’s more about location than anything. A great location you better recover all non-ferrous in a given range. A poor location, cherry pick those, tight, round signals.

There is no right or wrong as long as you are having fun. I like detecting, and can go dig aluminum for a few hours and call it fun. The main thing for me is to not be plugging, but only popping shallow targets with a screwdriver. It’s easy so it’s fun, and volume matters more than depth in most cases.

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