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F2 Iron Bias Non Ferrous Targets


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Great post, Jeff.  Your study is way more controlled than anything I've done, but our results are consistent.  (My soil is 2-3 bars on the Fisher F75 and Gold Bug Pro.)

First off, I hate missing an old coin.   Hate it!  Secondly, I really like nickels and I almost never ignore 12-13 dTID sweetspot signals on the ML Equinox.

I heard good things about the new F2 Iron Bias when it came out back in second half of 2019.  (I think I have the date about right, but maybe not.)  I would try it, play around with both FE and F2 settings after I got hits.  It never jibed with me.  I went back to it 3 or 4 times and I just didn't get a good feeling.   (I've had similar experience with hunting in 50 tones.  I use that for investigating targets, especially nickel-zone targets when pulltabs are present, but I never was able to mesh with it as a serach mode.)

I recall one early find where, F2 set away from zero gave a lot of iron tones on a deep nickel (how deep?  I don't recall but somewhere in the 6"-8" region).  That soured me but I still experimented after that.

BTW, I have iron in my sites.  Is it bad?  Most of the time it's not terrible and the more I 'practice' (by digging iff signals) the better I get at figuring out from the tone volume, quality, etc.) what nails often sound like.  But vertical nails??  They aren't common but they sure sound good.

Bottom line for me:  I'll gladly dig a couple dozen nails that sound like they might be coins rather than leave a Jeffie (or Buffie or V) in the ground.  A lot of detecting is personal preference, i.e. what one is comfortable with, and I excercise that option a lot.  So for those who find value in Iron Bias settings above zero, I'm not about to try and talk them out of it.  However, I do expect reciprocation.  😄

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Agree, good post.  All I can say is that I still dig a lot of nickels with IB F2=6 on land and at the beach.  I know the beach nickels are deep. I can’t say that across the board for the land nickels, but who knows how many deep nickels I’m missing.   I really am not interested in digging falsing iron so I am more willing to take a chance on the odd, deep missed nickel as long as I can still scarf up the silver, so I am the polar opposite of GB_Amateur and will retain IB F2=6 as my default.  (Thanks for not trying to talk me out of it Chuck).  The key point is that Nox gives you the option to set it up to your liking to trade deep nickels for no falsing or vice versa.

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14 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Agree, good post.  All I can say is that I still dig a lot of nickels with IB F2=6 on land and at the beach.  I know the beach nickels are deep. I can’t say that across the board for the land nickels, but who knows how many deep nickels I’m missing.   I really am not interested in digging falsing iron so I am more willing to take a chance on the odd, deep missed nickel as long as I can still scarf up the silver, so I am the polar opposite of GB_Amateur and will retain IB F2=6 as my default.  (Thanks for not trying to talk me out of it Chuck).  The key point is that Nox gives you the option to set it up to your liking to trade deep nickels for no falsing or vice versa.

Thanks for the responses Chuck and Hugh.

The nickels and especially the pull-tabs are an indicator for me. They are not specifically my target. Gold jewelry is my target at this site. I know what happens in this park on weekends and dropped jewelry is a given since there are at least 20 volleyball nets setup throughout the spring, summer and early fall and have been for years. I have found recent jewelry and coin drops at this park. If I am missing obvious deeper nickel and pull-tab signals at this site which appears to be the case, I am missing deeper gold and small silver jewelry targets too, due to an iron bias setting that is set too high F2=6, by default in every mode……….just so folks won’t dig rusty steel crown bottle caps and complain to Minelab.

I once had knee surgery and specifically told my surgeon not to put a external pain med pump in my knee that I could use if the after surgery pain was too much for me. I woke up and he had installed the pain pump. I was pissed. It fell out constantly and left a dime size bleeding hole in the side of my knee. I later found out that he went against my wishes so I wouldn’t disturb his weekend since the Red Sox were playing in the World Series. OMG!

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8 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Thanks for the responses Chuck and Hugh.

The nickels and especially the pull-tabs are an indicator for me. They are not specifically my target. Gold jewelry is my target at this site. I know what happens in this park on weekends and dropped jewelry is a given since there are at least 20 volleyball nets setup throughout the spring, summer and early fall and have been for years. I have found recent jewelry and coin drops at this park. If I am missing obvious deeper nickel and pull-tab signals at this site which appears to be the case, I am missing deeper gold and small silver jewelry targets too, due to an iron bias setting that is set too high F2=6, by default in every mode……….just so folks won’t dig rusty steel crown bottle caps??????

Great point, wasn’t thinking of that in my context because it is either coins or relics mostly and not so much jewelry.  But I certainly don’t want to miss gold coins, trimes, or half reales either - the one gold dollar I snagged was with a Deus at my favorite site that has given up three $1 gold pieces so far (two found with Deus’s and one found with an Equinox).  So that’s a consideration, for sure.

BTW what was the composition of those rings and pendants you found, Jeff?

 

 

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18 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

 what was the composition of those rings and pendants you found, Jeff?

Like I said in the original post: in order left to right, stainless steel, junk metal with gold plating, and two very small .925 silver that come in at 22 on the Nox.

Every target on that plate could have easily been gold.

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Thanks for the tests and info, Jeff, et al. This is what I was asking about a while back, but I still can't be sure I'm missing deeper gold. I love missing bottle caps on the beach but at what cost?

I've dug plenty of nickels and even a V nickel using F2=3 on the 600. Guess I'll have to go over those places at F2=0 and see if I missed anything.

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11 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

Thanks for the tests and info, Jeff, et al. This is what I was asking about a while back, but I still can't be sure I'm missing deeper gold. I love missing bottle caps on the beach but at what cost?

I've dug plenty of nickels and even a V nickel using F2=3 on the 600. Guess I'll have to go over those places at F2=0 and see if I missed anything.

My reason for starting this topic is to see what others are experiencing and not to presume that my results in higher iron mineralization are normal. 

Thanks for responding

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2 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Like I said in the original post: in order left to right, stainless steel, junk metal with gold plating, and two very small .925 silver that come in at 22 on the Nox.

Every target on that plate could have easily been gold.

You got me - TLDR and missed that paragraph :smile:

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Well I hope you mend soon, Jeff, but thank you for the clarification of your F2=0 comment in that other thread. I have read through many other threads about iron bias on the Nox and my take away was just leave it in the factory setting of F2=6.  I had played around with dropping it down to F2=4 a few times but didn't think it was making much difference in our Rocky Mountain park soil so I bumped it back to F2=6.

Today I went back to the last park I hunted a few days ago. It had a lot of modern clad fairly deep (4-6"), but I had only dug one nickel (1999) and 2 copper memorial pennys. I made it a point to hit the same areas I hit before just to see if I missed anythying but this time I ran my Park 2 with FE2=0 and today I found 6 nickels (1994-1977) and 7 copper memorials (1982-1964), most of which were 5-6 inches down. One of those nickels and a couple of the pennys were at 8 inches deep and I remember passing on many of those before because they just didn't sound good enough to me to dig. Today, the only iffy signal that I dug anyway, was a nickel next to a penny and a torn up Matchbox car. All of the clad coins sounded correct at depth and the pultabs did too, which I dug just to make sure. 

So thank you Jeff, F2=0 made an obvious difference for me. Now I have to go back and check some of the other places where I know I've passed on some deep iffy targets. Cheers, Rich.

 

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