Coin Shooting Gets More Than Coins

[CPT_GhostLight]

I made a post in the Deus II section of the forum yesterday about my continuing learning journey with the D2. But it was also about my first experience coin shooting. Here's the link if you're interested. 

Exploring the D2 Learning Curve, Part Deux

I usually never notch because of fear of missing something good and I end up with piles of trash, a sore back, and sometimes a cool find. I've been hearing about a coin shooting progarm call the Silver Slayer by Rattlehead (also NWGA on Youtube) and many folks like @NCtoad, @Jeff McClendon, and others have been making great silver finds in worked out areas. All of the older parks in my area have been hammered since the 1970s so there is little to no silver coins left at this point.

Since I had a few hours off last weekend I decided to try coin shooting in one of the old parks I have gone over and over for a few years. I have pulled a few interesting artifacts from this park including a police coat button from the 1890s, a very old brooch, a couple of wheat pennies, but no silver. So I loaded up the Silver Slayer, lowered the second notch to 79, hit the ground running not really expecting to find anything. Saturday I was surprised by some 1960s nickels and dimes (not silver though), 3 wheat pennies, and a 1945 Mercury dime! All I can say is wow, that worked great and I didn't dig half the trash I normally do.

I went back on Sunday for a couple of hours to see If I could find any more old coins. The area I hit the day before didn't give up any good signals so I moved over to the nearby old tree line and started popping out signals again. There was a lot more trash in the trees with quite a bit on the surface, and in one spot the was a hord of over 20 toasted zinc pennies just under the surface. If I didn't know better (and I don't) I'd say those were probably dumped there by another detectorist. 😱 While I didn't find any more Wheat pennies or silver coins, I did end up with 11 copper Memorial pennies, a carwash token, a small old pewter heart pendant, a silver or silver plated beaded necklace, and a nice silver earring among the modern clad and trash. So thanks to @Rattlehead for making the Silver Slayer program available. It works really well and has opened my mind to learning more about how notching works and aids in unmasking. While I'll still use my opened up Fast and Relic programs for most hunting, the Silver Slayer is permanently installed for coin/jewelry shooting and to check for unmasking. 😎

[GB_Amateur]

Looks like you've found a remedy product that's better than snake oil!  Depending upon how it got there (more on that in a bit), it might provide some evidence of the age of the site.

In my area parks are often built on top of or adjacent to old homesteads.  When those buildings are razed, sometimes the contents get scattered and left for... us detectorists.  So although the park may or may not be from the beginning of the 20th Century or earlier, what preceded it may well be.  I'd say you've got a good hunting spot that either others haven't searched hard (because of the trash) or just ignored because that area didn't seem to be much used by park visitors.  I've experienced both.

I assume that 'silver slayer' program is really for any high conductor, and maybe optimized for the sizes of (high Ag content) silver coins and jewelry.  Thus clad and 95% copper pennies are likely finds as well as silver plated copper (junk jewelry and inexpensive, utilitarian flatware popular before stainless steel replacements took over).  USA 5 cent coins ('nickels'), though, not so much.

[CPT_GhostLight]

Thanks GB! Yes this park is built on top of the demolish houses that stood from the late 1800s to about 1966. The Silver Slayer program has two notches that allow signals around the US nickels range and from all US copper pennies up to the large silver range with everything else notched out.

 

[Compass]

"I assume that 'silver slayer' program is really for any high conductor, and maybe optimized for the sizes of (high Ag content) silver coins and jewelry."

I was wondering the same and thinking that most gold jewelry would not be detected?

[CPT_GhostLight]

You can adjust the notch settings to whatever you want to hunt. I have adjusted the notches to also allow common gold jewelry items to ring through, but the lower notch will blank out very small gold jewelry and thin chains, but also a most foil and small aluminum. I use a wide open (no-notch) program when searching for tiny gold and chains.

 

[Jeff McClendon]

Since Silver Slayer is based on the Deus 2 Fast program

17 minutes ago, Compass said:

"I assume that 'silver slayer' program is really for any high conductor, and maybe optimized for the sizes of (high Ag content) silver coins and jewelry."

I was wondering the same and thinking that most gold jewelry would not be detected?

Since "Silver Slayer" is based on the Deus 2 FMF Fast program with one of its frequencies around 40 kHz, it is just fine for gold jewelry. The idea behind Silver Slayer of using notching to effectively eliminate unwanted targets ranges can be transferred to any target range.

In the past with the original Deus, notching was an adventure (often unsuccessful) unless the only targets accepted were in the high conductor range. At least where I hunt in higher iron mineralization, every non-ferrous target would end up in the mid 80s to high 90s depending on its depth (3" or deeper) including gold rings and nickels due to up averaging no matter what frequency was selected or if IDs were normalized or not. 

Using Deus ll's notch feature and the FMF modes, that up averaging simply doesn't happen until the targets reach the edge of detection. So you can set notches wherever you want and for instance, low and mid conductor targets will maintain their correct tones and target IDs very accurately.

[GB_Amateur]

45 minutes ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

The Silver Slayer program has two notches that allow signals around the US nickels range and from all US copper pennies up to the large silver range.

It's not just the notching but also the transmit frequencies (well, more specifically receive frequencies that are processed) that are selected for each mode (by the engineers -- we users don't get to fiddle with those).  Typically high conductor ==> low frequency is best, and vice versa.  For sure you should still find metals over the entire spectrum (when not notched out) but likely other modes will give better performance for the USA nickels (and correspondingly worse performance for high conducting primarily silver and copper alloys).  At least that's the way it works for single frequency detectors.  Multi-frequency is quite likely more complicated, and being able to combine a low frequency with a high frequency could (conceivably in my simple mind) allow very good performance for a range of conductivities.

P.S. I'm probably overstepping my knowledge base here.  Maybe the mode chosen for the 'Super Slayer' isn't one that's heavily weighted to low frequencies.  (I don't speak Deus which makes my wandering into this unknown neighborhood even worse.)  I was speaking in generalities and you're referring to not only specific notching (to concentrate on certain targets) but also a specific mode whose primary design (by the engineers at XP) may or not be optimized for the highest conductors, at the expense of lower ones.

[CPT_GhostLight]

5 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Since "Silver Slayer" is based on the Deus 2 FMF Fast program with one of its frequencies around 40 kHz, it is just fine for gold jewelry. The idea behind Silver Slayer of using notching to effectively eliminate unwanted targets ranges can be transferred to any target range.

I think Jeff hit it on the head here, GB. I believe the Fast program ( and many of the other ones) has been stated somewhere to operate at 8 kHz and 40 kHz (simultaneously) so it can hit the full range from high to low conductors. I believe Rattlehead created the SIlver Slayer program to specifically target silver coins, but with some adjustments of the two notches it will work well for any type of targets including gold.