Jump to content

Bill Watson's Gold Ring Vdi Chart, With Notes From Steve H


Recommended Posts

So for instance a gold ring that air test 13 on the Equinox same as a U.S. nickel in this case will not read 13 at 6" even though the nickel still does?

By the way I am land locked. No beaches for hundreds of miles other than a few man made fresh water beaches. As I mentioned I don't concentrate on hunting for gold rings. Maybe that is the reason I have yet to dig one. Chances are my coil at some point has been over one and I just passed it up.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


18 minutes ago, longbow62 said:

By the way I am land locked. No beaches for hundreds of miles other than a few man made fresh water beaches. As I mentioned I don't concentrate on hunting for gold rings. Maybe that is the reason I have yet to dig one. Chances are my coil at some point has been over one and I just passed it up.

Long bow,

You got a couple good answers that sort of point to traditional thinking on this. But beach and water or no, if you are determined, there are rings to be found on land. It is undeniable that there are more in the water, and they are easier to dig than on land too, but they can be found anywhere people concentrate.

There is gold on land. It sounds just like pull tabs. Also, the places to look change a little if you want more rings. Since you do not have nice slippery water allowing them to fall off easily, you need look where they are thrown off some sort of way. RIngs really do not come off all that easily like pocket change does. So, sports fields maybe, those are everywhere. Look for where adults go, kids are not as likely to lose the good stuff.

Consider also that not only are less gold rings lost on land, the easy land sites are hunted better and change less than the shifting sands. No gold is likely to be uncovered for you. So, consider hunting where the seasoned hunters are least likely to go. Heavy junk and open spaces offer some opportunity. That row of trees next to the ball field is more likely to be covered well than the outfield. Little things increase your odds.

If you are finding IH pennies and old nickels, you are already doing better than most. Dig more pull tabs and nice signals in general that are not iron. Gold hides in plain sight and gold rings hit hard. Every good hard signal not iron is where you can focus to start increasing your odds. Once you dig a few, you will get the idea.

Detectorists follow patterns as a rule. In well hunted areas, the same patterns get hunted to death, so hunt somewhere else in those places. Try the edges of the parking lot instead of around every tree for example.

Hunting gold on land is an exercise in hunting junk. Deep iron sounds like gold, shallow gold sounds like pull tabs and can slaw and all the foil people seem determined to spread. You have to learn to live with that. Coins separate out from modern aluminum pretty easy, gold does not. There is the challenge of gold on land.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, longbow62 said:

a few man made fresh water beaches

Unless for the kind of erosion we need...Without salt interference and colder water it doesn't seem like a bad idea to check for some extra cash😁

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/7/2022 at 3:56 PM, longbow62 said:

I have never dug a for real gold ring in almost 5 years of land hunting. Junk rings many. gold plated/filled a couple. I'm not a surface target hunter. I don't dig many targets that are not at least 4" deep. You would think I would have dug at least one by now. You would also think there would be more deeper gold rings than shallow gold rings anyway simply because of the more lost over time element. I dig my share of old nickels and IHP's so I'm cursed I guess.  

Most of my gold ring finds have been around the towel line at salt water and fresh water beaches. I've only found one in the wet sand. I've dug way more nickels than rings with the Fisher CZ6a. I have only found two thin gold rings in actual dirt at a park. On the CZ most of my ring finds will jump from foil to tab as I sweep over them. Only one ring so far as identified as a nickel and is the largest ring I have found. I've been hunting for 20 years and only hunt salt water beaches once a year. I have only found a total of 13 rings and most have been fairly shallow targets. I have never found a ring on a Whites detector, but have found 2 with a Garrett AT Pro. The Fisher CZ has found the rest. I have often thought about buying another detector setup better for gold and micro jewelry. I probably hunt 4 days a week during the spring and summer months, so that is a lot of time without a ring. It will happen for you. Just do some research and dig everything. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Geezer", the gardens of old residential homes have given me a few, the down-side is they are old and lost by women. The diamonds are usually small if any. I guess men don't like getting their hands dirty messing around flowers. 😀 But gold is gold and not the root of all evil. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, geof_junk said:

"Geezer", the gardens of old residential homes have given me a few, the down-side is they are old and lost by women. The diamonds are usually small if any. I guess men don't like getting their hands dirty messing around flowers. 😀 But gold is gold and not the root of all evil. 

What a great idea! Gardens. You state a great mechanism of loss there. Also try and find the old clothesline area if you can, those can be good for some old coins.

It is not always about the stones on these old rings, they are relics of people long passed. A different kind of value.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is probably nothing new, but often the composition/karatage of the gold alloys is reported along with the size/shape of the item on test VID vs. Target charts.  It looks to me that there should be v. little difference in the conductivity of gold alloys between some 12 to 20 karat (50% - 83% of gold), so the VID differences are probably driven by mass, shape, orientation (and depth/ground type) of the object, and not so much by the gold alloy 'karatage' when it comes to jewelry?

image.png.b798f67315a8a3948a41969513646a12.png 

On 1/31/2022 at 10:16 PM, Steve Herschbach said:

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, mcjtom said:

...So the VID differences are probably driven by mass, shape, orientation (and depth/ground type) of the object, and not so much by the gold alloy 'karatage' when it comes to jewelry?

For all metal detecting targets it's "all of the above".  But don't throw out composition as it's one of the components.  Trying to determine the order of imprtance of the variables would a tall task indeed, and IMO would not likely lead to a universal relationship but rather one inter-dependent on the variables.  E.g. for coins it's one order, standard (no jewel) wedding bands another, gold nuggets..., earrings....  And that's the tip of the iceberg.  Change any one of the variables and a new relationship might exist.

As an (extreme?) example of composition effect in coinage -- where the geometery is the simplest -- take the USA Wartime 5 cent piece.  35% silver and 56% copper.  So far you'd think "high conductor" that would likely ring up somewhere in the 20's dTID on the ML Equinox.  But if you'll notice, that only adds up to 91%.  What did I leave out?  9% Manganese -- one of the poorest conductors among metallic elements.  That drags it down to ~13 on the Eqx dTID scale.

Where are silver rings compared to gold rings on the dTID scale?  Today there are a lot of wedding bands made of base metal alloys -- titanium, tungsten, stainless steel are examples.  I haven't found any of those in a while (because I concentrate on US coin dTID's) but I don't think they are all the same dTID's as similarly sized (or weighted) gold rings.

But geometry (including thickness -- look where the European hammered coins ID) play a huge role, too.  You mention other geometric (orientation) and chemical (ground mineralization) factors which are also important.  Thus why I say "all of the above".

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, mcjtom said:

It looks to me that there should be v. little difference in the conductivity of gold alloys between some 12 to 20 karat (50% - 83% of gold), so the VID differences are probably driven by mass, shape, orientation (and depth/ground type) of the object, and not so much by the gold alloy 'karatage' when it comes to jewelry?

Indeed you are correct mcjtom, but so much else goes into it, including everything mentioned by the excellent response from GB above.

Also remember that TID can also be changed by any metal object lying near your target, even fragments too small for the detector to signal on. Targets can be masked completely, or the usual TID could be changed enough that it is not even recognized for what it is.

2 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

For all metal detecting targets it's "all of the above".  But don't throw out composition as it's one of the components.  Trying to determine the order of imprtance of the variables would a tall task indeed, and IMO would not likely lead to a universal relationship but rather one inter-dependent on the variables.  E.g. for coins it's one order, standard (no jewel) wedding bands another, gold nuggets..., earrings....  And that's the tip of the iceberg.  Change any one of the variables and a new relationship might exist.

So well said GB_Amateur. The relationship of the variables. Here is where the machine you use and how well you know that machine comes in. Therein lies your best control of how you approach those variables.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It looks like there are two VID clusters for those rings too (at least in air or if the signal is strong), somewhat blurrily demarcated by an imaginary 'nickel' (or maybe a pull tab in my case) of around 13 to 15. 

Quote

1534659561_goldrings.jpg.8c97a19a6f3c67154e0d5b03dc61e5a2.jpg

The low karatage of most of the rings didn't seem to make much difference (or actually could contribute to increasing the VIDs due to relatively higher conductivity of low-grade 9K alloy - see the gold alloys conductivity chart above). image.thumb.png.1cb43d5b75612a9a3a140279ac5693b6.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...