Smaller Coil For Trash

[Flydog]

So I somehow discovered a fresh water beach that looks like its never been hunted. Yeah!

But I now realize why. The trash is INSANE! A large building burned down here in 1930. Great place for a beach right? LOL

Makes as much sense as me just ordering a 5 inch coil so I can collect a small handfull of coins.

Although I will know soon enough.......will a small coil be a significant help? Or,  it will help but dont expect miracles.

[tvr]

Having worked a burned down old home site that had a metal roof ... a small coil helps a lot; but you still need to remove a bit of trash to uncover some of the goodies. I worked that burned old home site with a friend. It was shortly after the original F75LTD and the Whites V3 came out. He had the V3 and I had the F75LTD. We were both just starting to learn those detectors.  He had the standard coil with no other option. I had a small coil (5 inch). He laughed at the tiny coil until it was finding lead, brass and a few coins and he was hitting nothing but iron ... then he started cursing ... a lot. It wasn't a miracle of finds, but the small coil helped take a few goodies home.

[GB_Amateur]

What detector(s) do you have accessibilty to?  Even smaller than a 5" round might work better, but obviously only if available for a detector you possess.

Never expect miracles....  But a smaller footprint coil can definitely help in extremely trashy sites.

 

[Joe D.]

   Tvr and GB are on the money,

   If the site is indeed worthwhile, and is accessible for multiple hunts, than detrashing the site may pay great dividends! Start with what you have, and be patient! You can grid small areas to clean out to start, and test your theory of old treasures! Any historical pictures, or aerial maps may help you to focus on the best areas to start!! 

  Keep us posted! 🍀👍👍

[kac]

Other way is if your machine has notch discrimination then cherry pick the good target ranges first, make a few passes. Easy stuff is the silver and coppers then work slow for the gold targets if any. Most stock coils can handle a fairly dense amount of trash, what is key is target separation and that is where narrow and smaller coils can make the job easier.

[Joe D.]

    Us knowing what your swinging would be a great help!👍👍

[Flydog]

Us knowing what your swinging would be a great help!

       Gold Bug with 11 inch coil.  Some say it has good separation. So far I have only "accidentally" dug one piece of iron.  How does knowing which detector I am using help with a question of smaller coil size? Would not the answer be the same for all detectors? Honest question.

I have been running just enough discrimination to eliminate iron but still the strong iron targets blow though. Annoying to listen to but the bigger problem is iron masking.  I can see how a small coil will be trying to identify less, or only one target at a time. What I've seen is....brief coin signal/TID, scan back and forth 10 times an 9 of those swings its saying iron, should move on but OK I'll dig, out comes a coin. Need to stack the odds in my favor.

Boy I don't think cleaning up all the iron sigs will work, take too much time and place will look like a battlefield. Maybe on the sandy beach but no way in the grassy park areas.

Cranking up the disc to eliminate all  below copper penny/dime for an initial attack may be a good idea. Or will it? I'd still have to go back over everything again ( time) and the iron is still there. Only benefit would be to get the high conductors before someone else comes along and beats me to it. I am curious to find out though if higher disc will reduce the large iron blow though. Haven't had this detector very long and it would be an interesting experiment.

Yesterday got a silver earing, rust bubbling though the plating, junk. Nice condition gold necklace, no karrot markng, the chain is magnetic but the pendant is not. Both "visual" finds on surface.

Got me wondering, SMALL/FINE gold necklace chains, are they always plated steel for strength or are there solid gold chains? I suspect in the smaller sizes even say 12k might be just too delicate but I don't know.

 

[GB_Amateur]

7 hours ago, Flydog said:

How does knowing which detector I am using help with a question of smaller coil size?

Because you have a choice of small coils.  I'm assuming you have the new (2010 and later) version of the Gold Bug, not the 1990's version.  If you already own the Fisher 5" DD then you're set.  If you don't, then you have the option of the NEL Snake (same as CORS Shrew).  All of those are DD's (which the Gold Bug requires) and have roughly similar area coverage (meaning amount of metal under the coil will on average be similar).  The ellipticals (NEL and CORS) will probably have a bit better separation which helps in high trash.  But it's a close call which is why if you arlready own a small coil you should just go with that rather than buy another one.

[kac]

Stock coil on the Gold Bug is not too huge so you might be able to squeak by with that. When I used the Gold Racer I used the ID filter to adjust base filter to discriminate out targets from a base point then used the tone break to adjust the tone break point. So.... in a park I would put my id filter to just above the foil line and kicked the discrimination upwards to where a ring pull would be. Everything with a normal vco high tone would be in the zinc to silver range and grunty stuff would be in the aluminum and gold range.

You should have similar controls on the Gold Bug to do the same thing and be able to narrow your search to the higher metal types. Gold machines don't have a notch discrimination and are just typically threshold based (setting and below get ignored) much like the analog machines.

Doesn't make the machine any less effective, just a different approach to hunting with them for a different purpose.

[Joe D.]

    Another reason to know what your swinging, is your experience level with a particular detector! The more information you give, the more help (if you want it), that can be given! I'm assuming that is why your here on the forum!

   GB, Kac, and many others here, are vastly more knowledgeable than myself! And probably have used the same detector(s) at some point! So that is why information about your equipment and experience is important! We ask everyone new to the forum this information and more, if they did not put it in their introduction in the Meet & Greet section! And sometimes we may ask more than once, depending if we read the introductions! I hope that makes our inquiries better understood!🍀👍👍