Equinox Ferrous / Iron / Steel Responses

[Daniel Tn]

I'm running the new version but I haven't really ran into any issues with it as of yet.  The only time I run into deep iron with the Nox is if I have hit a spell where I've not dug anything in a while, and then I start trying to force signals; digging those that I'm pretty sure are bad, but there is just enough of a high tone coming thru every now and again that makes me curious.  It was that way with the first version and the newer one.

 

What I have noticed though is something pretty eye opening when comparing to the Multi Kruzer.  Here lately I've just been using both machines with their respective small coils...6 inch for the Nox and 7 inch for the Kruzer.  In my soil, the Nox still goes deeper, despite the Kruzer having a slightly larger coil.  But that's not what I am getting at.  It has to do with iron.  This Multi Kruzer loves flat iron.  I'm talking it will sing out on it, repeatable and consistent 50 to 80 IDs on flat iron....it depends on the size/thickness of it too in what it will read.  I started noticing this when I would be comparing both machines....as in hunting with one, marking good signals with it, then getting the other machine and comparing those same signals.  I noticed when I would hunt with the Kruzer, I was getting several signals each time that it was giving an unmistakable good signal on...ID higher than the nickel range, and into the coin range....that when checked with the Nox, it would only give single digit numbers or at most, an ID of 10.  Well that's quite a difference....when you have one machine reading into its  higher conductive coin range and the other not even registering as a nickel.  I thought to myself "uh oh...".  That was until I started digging these things.  100% OF THE TIME....not just once...or twice...the target is iron. I have a whole pile of iron now that this is verified on....the Kruzer will read as a mid to high conductive target when it is flat iron.  The Nox will single digit read it AS LONG AS it is in multi freq mode.

If you go to the single freq on the Nox...you will get the same exact thing that the Multi Kruzer is doing over the iron.  It causes it to instantly shoot up into the 20-30 ID range.  

[Steve Herschbach]

Good info Daniel - thanks! Tidbits like that can be a deciding factor with detectors.

[Cal_Cobra]

On 9/22/2018 at 7:41 AM, Daniel Tn said:

I'm running the new version but I haven't really ran into any issues with it as of yet.  The only time I run into deep iron with the Nox is if I have hit a spell where I've not dug anything in a while, and then I start trying to force signals; digging those that I'm pretty sure are bad, but there is just enough of a high tone coming thru every now and again that makes me curious.  It was that way with the first version and the newer one.

 

What I have noticed though is something pretty eye opening when comparing to the Multi Kruzer.  Here lately I've just been using both machines with their respective small coils...6 inch for the Nox and 7 inch for the Kruzer.  In my soil, the Nox still goes deeper, despite the Kruzer having a slightly larger coil.  But that's not what I am getting at.  It has to do with iron.  This Multi Kruzer loves flat iron.  I'm talking it will sing out on it, repeatable and consistent 50 to 80 IDs on flat iron....it depends on the size/thickness of it too in what it will read.  I started noticing this when I would be comparing both machines....as in hunting with one, marking good signals with it, then getting the other machine and comparing those same signals.  I noticed when I would hunt with the Kruzer, I was getting several signals each time that it was giving an unmistakable good signal on...ID higher than the nickel range, and into the coin range....that when checked with the Nox, it would only give single digit numbers or at most, an ID of 10.  Well that's quite a difference....when you have one machine reading into its  higher conductive coin range and the other not even registering as a nickel.  I thought to myself "uh oh...".  That was until I started digging these things.  100% OF THE TIME....not just once...or twice...the target is iron. I have a whole pile of iron now that this is verified on....the Kruzer will read as a mid to high conductive target when it is flat iron.  The Nox will single digit read it AS LONG AS it is in multi freq mode.

If you go to the single freq on the Nox...you will get the same exact thing that the Multi Kruzer is doing over the iron.  It causes it to instantly shoot up into the 20-30 ID range.  

Good post Daniel.  I took the Multi Kruzer on a few trips to my Spanish Outpost site earlier this year, and although it really brought the site back to life, and I made some nice finds, including a super deep 1794 Spanish 2 reale, and a 1844 Cap & Rays Mexican one reale, I was definitely digging a TON of flat iron.  The flat iron was mostly that rusty tin, or rusty tin soldered cans, and that kind of iron.  My buddy went with me on the second trip there and he too was digging a lot of that rusty tin on his Explorer2, so neither detector was impervious to it.  I was really hoping to take the Equinox there in the spring, but ML lagged on getting them out so that didn't happen.  I'm hoping we can do another trip there over the fall, I'm dying to test the Equinox there.  Now in all fairness, this is one site that has very tame ground, VLF machines like the Multi Kruzer do very well there and go very deep, so the EQ800 has it's job cut out for it!

[Steve Herschbach]

I wish the Equinox were magic on flat steel but it’s not - just witness the bottle cap complaints. Flat steel will generally ring up in the “teens” but the larger the piece is, the higher it can read.

Forget all this more depth stuff. What I want is a detector that can simply and accurately tell ferrous from non-ferrous. Leave off virtually all controls and adjustments, just low tone ferrous and higher tone anything else. You would think that getting clean ferrous versus non-ferrous discrimination would be as basic as it gets, but anyone that hunts low conductors in iron knows how complex the problem is. And just because a machine does not false on ferrous does not mean all is well. It can’t be rejecting all ferrous if it comes at the cost of a lot of missed non-ferrous, but that is precisely what the machines that reject nearly all ferrous at all times are doing.

It is a real quandary because I do want a machine that does a good job rejecting ferrous, but at the same time I would have a hard time trusting a detector that is extremely aggressive at rejecting ferrous. A Sovereign or Excalibur will reject most ferrous, but those machines also tend to get very blind in dense ferrous. People tend to want to deny that i.e. “I dig non-ferrous out of nail pits with MY Sovereign!” but it is just a fact of BBS and FBS to a lesser degree.

I am convinced Equinox manages to pull some great targets simply because it does have you digging more ferrous also. Making Equinox kill ferrous just might also remove the magic - in fact I am betting on it. That’s why I generally leave Iron Bias at zero. But I still hate that flat steel!

Fisher F75 Ferrous Tone Quirk

New version software is working fine for me.

[Alluminati]

Sometimes when I want a nice compromise at the worst sites I dig say 18 and up, this gets most good coins and will put on the weight in big rings over time. This may be more effective then solid numbers because a lot of aluminum makes solid lower numbers. Dig numbers below 18 when you feel like it.

That being said, as soon as the targets thin out a bit I'm back to dinging everything, more or less, site dependent. If I think its a "tab" or a "beaver tail", I absolutely dig it. In the water every small blip of something non-ferrous gets dug, on land, not so much as I don't want to get caught up digging too much small foil. 

[Steve Herschbach]

1 hour ago, phrunt said:

Reality is starting to hit home with me about VDI numbers, looks like coin/jewellery hunting is a lot more like gold hunting than I thought, it's pretty much becoming a dig it all thing for me too if I want the best finds and I can just be happy knowing if I get rock solid ID's that I know are coins they're likely to be the coins but for everything else like rings, if I want it I have to put in the hard yards ?

Are the most likely junk items the ones where the numbers go wild, and I should just dig everything that's a rather solid VDI? knowing I'll miss the deeper on edge items but still preventing me from digging every single thing? Should that be my rule? 

Rings as round items with holes in general produce tight, often single number id responses. As do ring style pull tabs. One cherry picking strategy (no rules, just strategies) is to only dig those, which avoids a lot of irregular shape targets. Of course that jumpy target id can mean a gold chain or a star shaped gold pendant also. It’s all a time and patience gambling game, and my strategies vary with my mood. I always have a base goal however of eventually digging all the non-ferrous from good locations. Like a playground swingset area. What can you do but dig all non-ferrous? If time is limited, cherry pick, but next trip go after the next level of not so good targets.

How do you eat an elephant?

One bite at a time! 

However, this thread is about the Equinox update so start new threads if there is more to discuss on other subjects like this.

Inland Jewelry Hunting Tips

[Cal_Cobra]

When I was detecting the Spanish outpost site I previously mentioned with the Multi Kruzer, sure I was digging a lot of flat iron/rusty tin, and there's a fair amount of small arms discarded shell casings there too (mostly all varieties of .22 caliber).  I started not digging those TIDs, then as things started slowing down and I recalled that a U.S. $1 gold coin could easily fall into that range, I started digging them.  Sure most were in fact .22 shells, but I also dug a nice 1700's Spanish mesh ball button, and a really old, likely 1600's given how worn it was, pendant, likely a religions pendent, but it was so worn you could only see there was a figure on it and foreign writing, but too worn to really ID it.  My hunt partner has a lot more experience at these old Spanish era sites and when I showed it to him, he immediately said it was super old, pre-1700's in his opinion.  So it can pay to dig it all, but I agree with Steve, if anyone ever makes a detector that can accurately discern flat iron from non-ferrous targets, these old sites will really light up!!

[Daniel Tn]

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding of what the Iron Bias filter setting does vs what people think it does.  I think that is culprit in some people's problem with the iron, bottle caps, etc.

Without getting too deep into it, I will say that you gotta understand that not all FERROUS objects are iron.  Steel is not iron and iron is not steel.  A lot of the ferrous objects we call "iron" and lump into the iron category can actually be an alloy made up with non ferrous materials.  The modern crown cap "bottle cap" found on most beer bottles today are basically a steel alloy version of their older counter parts and contain copper, zinc, and I think nickel too.  What does this have to do with Iron Bias?  Well the higher you set the iron bias, the stronger it tends to filter out the ferrous part of the equation...which is great if an item is pure iron.  Bottlecaps and many other objects are not pure iron, so raising the iron bias on those simply removes the ferrous part of the compound but makes the non ferrous alloy part stand out better....right the opposite of what you want to do.  

[GB_Amateur]

6 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I am convinced Equinox manages to pull some great targets simply because it does have you digging more ferrous also. Making Equinox kill ferrous just might also remove the magic - in fact I am betting on it. That’s why I generally leave Iron Bias at zero. But I still hate that flat steel!

A year ago I m/l stumbled upon an 18th Century saloon/brothel/hotel and livery stable in a mining area of the Colorado Rockies.  There was sheet metal ('tin') everywhere.  I was hunting with the Fisher Gold Bug Pro, 5x10 in^2 coil.  That scrap metal was hitting in the low 80's (copper penny / dime zone) consistently.  I filled a gold pan with it.

I now have 160 hours with the Minelab Equinox.  Does it hit high (TID) on large iron/steel?  Yes.  Does it give some hint of iron?  Sometimes, especially when the edges are rusted.  Unfortunately so do nails near good (e.g. coin) targets.  In my limited experience the Eqx is very good at unmasking, but it isn't perfect (and I'm not expecting it to be).  Friday I had an inconsistent 24+ signal which was belching negative numbers (iron) along with it.  When I took a 90 degree angle of attack reading, the non-ferrous target disappeared completely.  I pinpointed a strong ferrous signal nearby (iron rod simlar to a 16d nail), removed it, and then swept the spot again.  Clean coin signal from all angles produced a 5 inch deep Wheat penny.

The difference between the Eqx and other detectors I've used is that it will often give hints that good non-ferrous target is available when ferrous is nearby.  It's not perfect, but the longer I use it the more it speaks my language (or should I say "I understand its language").  Sheet metal is way worse than nails, as Steve H. and others have emphasized.  But there may be sweet music amongst those grunts and that's what I'm listening for.

 

[Steve Herschbach]

Too true Daniel. I do lump all iron and steel under "ferrous" out of sheer laziness. Another real variation - stainless steel. As you note, an alloy, not pure iron. It gets so difficult typing about detecting if you try and include every detail and caveat for those who don't know. I am not sure on your take as regards Iron Bias however. I don't think it reduces the ferrous portion of the signal but enhances it the higher you make the setting. The idea is to make items not reading as ferrous that should go ahead and read as ferrous. From page 52 of the manual:

"The Iron Bias Setting provides some control over the Target ID response. A lower Iron Bias setting will allow the natural response to dominate which means that the target is more likely to be classified as a non-ferrous target. A higher setting will increase the likelihood that the target is classified as iron."

In other words, I think the Bias adjusts the "tipping point" between these mixed result items and whether they "lean" more ferrous or more non-ferrous. My setting of zero means I should be digging more ferrous, not less. With the hopes of not missing an item forced to read ferrous when it is not.