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Showing content with the highest reputation on 02/10/2023 in all areas

  1. Bob and I hit the new permission again. Bob and I focused on areas where his research showed former structures stood and we did pull some relics there including a few old buttons, including one with a neat geometric design, a small brass curio or lockbox key, and a pistol ball. After awhile, we decided to hit the yard area surrounding the old structure's cellar hole. After awhile, Bob met up with the farmer who was tilling the field and while he was doing that, I pulled a brass suspender clip and then a Merc. When Bob returned with 100 more acres in new permissions, I put him on the area of the yard where I just pulled the silver. That is the side where we have pulled the most coins including an 1838 Large Cent I recovered on the last hunt. Bam, he hits a Barber Spill while I work the edge of the foundation. I was pulling mostly shotgun shells and other junk but did manage a "TPA" pin in a hole with 3 wire nails. If the Deus 2 is saying there is non-ferrous and you train your ear to recognize ferrous edge falsing telltales, keep digging the plug because eventually the non-ferrous the D2 was telling you is there, will be found, even if you pull three nails out in the process. After Bob scored his silvers and eventually the Half Cent, I was really forcing it in the machine gun iron to pull some more older coins, and getting a tad frustrated with the toasted wheaties, shotgun headstamps, and more modern round or shallow copper, brass, tin, and steel household items that were blowing my ears off. I did manage to pull the intact copper table knife (it appeared to have been silver plated) and the features dated it to mid-1800's era style cutlery. I threw in the towel after six hours of detecting and we headed back to the vehicles but decided to venture into the middle of the soybean fields away from any known hotspots instead of walking back "as the crow flies", you just never know. Last time we did the walk back I found the brass 18th century pipe tamper in the middle of nowhere. It was mostly silence on the walk back with the occasional iron grunt, then "bam" I hit a banging "92" and was hoping to get my second silver. No such luck... It was much better than that - popped a two-piece CW-era military coat button out of the hole. All I could tell was that it was likely CW and was a little banged up. Cleaning it up at home revealed "North Carolina" around the edge, and my first CW button from the Northern Neck and a relatively rare Confederate Army button at that. That's brass as good as silver in my book. Enjoy the pics and Bob's story.
    27 points
  2. My brother and I went out for one last hunt for me this winter , we went out to a spot that encompasses several washes that we both found a goodly amount of nuggets in back in the 2015/2016 season when we first got the 7000s.We have been back to this spot several times since then over the years and found a few more small nuggets but yesterday i had the new NF 17x13 Z search coil on and i got a very soft tone that sounded almost like some of the smaller white hot rocks that are found here. But the hit was under two rather large rocks when i flipped the smaller of the two off the larger one the tone was a bit better so i dug down around 8 inches under the side of the large rock and the tone was getting better all the time. There were a lot of small rocks packed in around the rock so i got out my small pry bar and started to pick out the rocks till i saw the edge of the nugget since it was not that deep i thought a 2 or 3 gram piece as it was not really making the detector scream, but i sure was happy to see that when i kept prying rocks off it the bigger it got. Now over the years i know this was missed while using the stock 7000 coil and since the nugget was stuck against the rock with it's fine edge facing up not laying flat the stock coil just did not see it. As i said the first passes over the spot with the 17x13 it was so faint i almost moved on but something in my mind said dig this one. It weighs just over 1/2 oz. .
    18 points
  3. So, been a good while since I posted anything I've found! The beaches here have been pretty lean, since our back to back hurricanes washed everything out, and redeposited virgin sand! Only an odd Spanish coin or two, by a lucky few! And "mostly" very few recent drops for the rest of us! But there's always somewhere to hunt, even if it's not your preferred areas! Today was one such day! I've been slowly following up on some historical research, as many of you do, since I moved here about a year ago! And decided to work some old sidewalk strips! I had the 5x10 Coiltek on the 800, as I knew that there is always tons of trash in these spots! And while I didn't turn up any "vintage" coins🤯, just the regular clad and such, I did get a nice repeatable 33-34, that turned out to be a nice silver ring! While it won't win any value awards, it actually fit me perfectly! So it's a keeper! I'd be very happy with at least one silver (or gold) "something" a month, and so far, I'm on track this year! Last month was a nice Mercury dime at a WW2 Barracks area! But I can't wait for the beaches to pick up, with some Spanish, or Jewelry, etc... I'm not picky!!😁 And while I wouldn't wish for any more devastating hurricanes like we just had, a few well placed, "out-to-sea beach strippers" would be ok by me!👍👍
    16 points
  4. Just remember, every person who has posted tells their story to success and their are many more that could be posted. Every beach is different, every location has it secrets. It will be up to you to find the right one that works for you. When I first started hunting I came across a magazine article that hit home for me. Saved it.. I think it is in order..
    8 points
  5. Back in 2019 I took a bad fall on the mine while running water line. There were three of us working that day. It was July and the temp was about 110 degrees. We were running 2000 feet of 3 inch layflat from the source pond to a 180 ft long holding pond. We had built a dam across the middle of it with a little notched out spillway. We dropped pine trees and bucked them up. Then we used our excavator to haul them to the pond, set them in place, pack them in with gravel, and line the 5 ft high dam with plastic sheeting. You could walk right across it when finished. The trommel sat on a pad on on side and shot fine sluice tailings into one side and the dam that was used to settle the water before it came into the clean side where our pump for the trommel sat. We used the holding pond and dam to recirculate water supply and refreshed the pond from the source pond 2000 ft across the mountain. Water had to come up out of the source pond and gain 90 ft of altitude before it leveled out and eventually went downhill to the recirculating pond. One 3 inch pump didn't have enough head (lift) to clear the 90 feet so we were forced to put a second pump in series before the big rise in order to clear it. Once the water cleared the 90 ft height it was clear sailing. So there was an old Forest Service road we needed to get the water line under about 500 feet before it got to it's final destination. Luckily, there was a culvert and we ran the line under the road there. We had to use 2 45 degree fittings on each side of the culvert to make the turns because the road ran in line with the hose direction. We had no idea what would happen when the water crashed through. It ended up working just fine somehow and it didn't seem like we lost much pressure if any at all. There was a big drop off on the exit side of the culvert and I was pulling hose through. It was nearly a straight 30 ft drop of hardpacked gravels with nowhere to get a foot hold. Well, you guessed it - I lost my footing and went over backwards all the way to the bottom. Somehow, all I got was bruised and scraped up. I was pretty sore the next morning. I've had several bad falls on the mine and walked away from all of them. I think the old crew is looking out for me.
    8 points
  6. Another awesome hunt, Chase! The Dynamic Deus Duo is cleaning up, and congrats on the North Carolina button, Well done! I found your PTA button, actually TPA, the Traveler's Protective Association. https://www.tpahq.org/what-is-tpa/
    7 points
  7. Some further info here : We were lucky to have the pond on the mountain at the northern area of the claims. The crew that worked there in the mid 1960's was where we got a lot of the information in the old report. The old time hydraulic companies had worked this area but never got down to much of the pay gravels because of the Sawyer Decision of 1884 which pretty much shut down large scale hydraulic mining. So they had removed some of the overburdon in some areas which helped us out quite a bit. Being in a fault zone, bedrock tends to be all over the place. There are areas of exposed bedrock and areas where it's 110 feet or more below the surface. A geologist's nightmare as one person called it. We have used that pond to pump water 2000 feet at times by running several pumps in series using 3 inch layflat hose. Sometines, if we need more pressure, we downsize the hose with a coupler and go 3 inch down to 2 inch. Running 300 ft rolls of layflat acros a mountain is a workout and a half - especially in 100 degree heat. Getting water up there from the creeks is a long haul of about 3000 - 3500 ft and an altitude change of 100 - 200 ft depending on location. That's why we prefer the pond in that area.
    7 points
  8. I’m looking for gold, but I’m not getting any yet lol Beach Park Beach - First ring ever, aluminum? Beach - That fake doubloon got me… Beach
    6 points
  9. Hi Steve, Thanks for all your good honest and unprejudiced input, so clear even on the difficult bits that no one else can quite explain as you can. I thought I began late, in 1987 to detect for gold, but now consider myself fortunate to have found plenty of those virgin early patches. I have owned and used the 7000, 6000, 5000 and compared them on varied aussie goldfields. Which one have I preferred as my favorite? none of them. I use a highly moded MINELAB F1A4 modified by a genius self-taught guy in Melbourne Australia- Mick Spiteri of Detectronics. His most recent mod (level 4) was to enable my gain knob to be turned up significantly and yet the detector remain quiet, giving further depth. Also, with this level 4 mod he has further enhanced its ability on flyspeck bits. Cant wait to use it. I sold my 7000 because I had to extend the shaft because of my height and to keep the coil well away from my metal knees making it even more unbalanced and strenuous to swing. Yet on measured goldfield tests the hot old F1AF detected as deeply with its Nugget Finder 24x12 mono coil, except on shotgun pellets. Ok, I admit On a buried sardine-can size lump of lead I had to use a 20" round mono coil to match the 7000. In recent years my prospecting buddy used a 5000 and we compared signal strengths on varied undug nuggets. The F1A4 had the edge when he had to use enhance mode to quieten his 5000, which was most of the time, otherwise, depth ability was similar, with the FIA4 better on big nuggets and mine better on tiny bits. Well my buddy got a 6000 later, and it was a wizz on the smooth .3 gram stuff detecting it down to some inches, and my F1A4 finding the same size tiny bits nearby-no disadvantage there. But he was constantly tuning out the EMI on gloomy days. It would have driven me mad, and even on sunny days he had to do the same procedure but not nearly as often. Tell me guys, is it a faulty 6000, or are they all the same? ? Well last trip out, I found a patch of about 60 rough reef gold bits from .1 gram to 7 grams each, with some ironstone attached. Ugliest gold I have ever seen, in an area the size of a lounge room. "You will get lots more with your 6000 if you go over my patch," I confidently predicted. Well he did go over it , carefully, and found two 4 grammers under a rotten dead log I hadn't yet moved- but not a grain more. And if you didn't know, the F1A4 is the quitest P.I. you will find in stormy weather and handles hot ground as well as any. (Havent tried the new Garret PI but as Steve loves it I would love to try one) But don't think other modifiers can implement the same F1A4 detector transformation- not in my experience- and I sold detectors for 25 years until I retired a few years ago. Now you understand why I stick to it and it's not due to sentimentalism.
    6 points
  10. A while ago Phrunt suggested I run a magnetic over my beach to see how much black sand there was.. I was trying my luck at magnet fishing this morning but it turns out a magnet with a pulling force of 500 kgs is useless for the job.. But dragging the thing a few metres over dry sand was an eye opener.. 😮
    6 points
  11. It might be best go with your gut and sit tight, then, and hang on to your money. If it ain't broke, then don't fix it, as they say. You've pretty much got the bases covered with the 800 and D2. Nox 900 will only be an incremental upgrade at best and there may be some downsides beyond having to learn the new nuances. For example, I'm thinking the expanded ID range is a mixed bag - nice to have the expanded mid-range scale but there is a price to be paid with lower ID stability. Hearing good things about the Manticore on the beach (perhaps deeper than Nox) but nothing I have heard indicates it has an advantage over D2 in performance. So if you wait, you can also see how the Manticore saga plays out. So, yeah, there's no real urgency to buy a new model until you have to replace one of your existing detectors.👍
    6 points
  12. Still a bit unsure to be honest Chase.. I'm so used to the nuances of my Nox 800 that I'm hesitating like mad about upgrading.. I know the Nox 900 has features which would be handy for water or night hunting (like the vibrating handle and light), but in terms of performance I think the Nox 900 won't bring much more to the table.. Besides, I'm slowly learning that when the Nox 800 struggles at some spots, the mighty Deus II picks up the slack.. 🙂
    6 points
  13. Even when I was kid I was interested in history and loved poking around in my grandpa's cigar boxes of old things he would find when he went to the mountains to fish or go rock hounding. He used to say that I had one foot in the past. When my kids were little, we used to throw them in the Jeep and head to the mountains on adventures up goat trails to old mining and logging camps and bring home bucket loads of old scrap metal and bottles. Man if I'd only had a detector back then! I never really understood what my grandpa meant by "one foot in the past" until recent years when I got back into metal detecting. SInce I got back into detecting, I look at the forums and see all the wonderful things that people are finding around the world and it's truly amazing. I'm sometimes very hesitant to post my finds because they are mundane by comparison. But as I look around at the boxes and buckets full of what my wife calls trash, I don't see trash. I see connections to the past. Even the most mundane pieces of articles that found their way into some scrap heap on the side of a mountain were once tools, machinery, or personal posessions of a person who long before me cherished that item while they scratched out a living just trying to survive another year in some God-forsaken remote location. In the drastically changing world of today, it's almost impossible to imagine what it was like for people to just survive 100 or more years ago and how their posessions were few and the simplest little things brought immense joy to their hard lives. In that spirit, when I find a button or coin or piece of decorative glass, I'm instantly transported into someone else's world long ago and try to imagine what that item meant to the last person to touch it a few decades or century before. So I ventured out a few days ago to find some diggable ground away from my frozen metropolis in an old industrial area of the past. A friend of mine told me that I won't find anything good in an industrial area, but I disagree. Where there were people, there are pieces of their hopes and dreams all around. You just need to look for them. I took the D2 out to the land of the lost and noticed that almost all the tumble weeds were gone. It's hard to imagine there was anything there all those years ago but it wasn't long before the big iron started showing up. I switched back and forth between my usual Relic, Silver, and Deep HC programs because I was comparing signals with F350's Reaper program. All of the programs reported similar ID signals but the Reaper program has a very different sound on iron which makes it easy to differentiate non-ferrous. I did have to adjust the Reactivity a bit to compensate for the ground mineralization, but that program went as deep as Deep HC. I'm still trying to get use to the much different audio though as I'm really tuned in to PWM audio in Pitch and Full Tones and the Reaper uses Full Tones in Square audio. I'm still workin it out. So another long story short, my finds were nothing earth shattering, but still are interesting glimpses of life in the past to me. The only coins i found were a 1984 clad penny (where do those come from?) and a very toasted 1945 Wheat penney. I also found a buckle marked Hickok underneath, a "Union Made" button, shell shirt button, some decorative rivets, a pocket watch, a hem weight, and an older tape dispenser. It was flat when I found it and I couldn't tell what it was until I carefully bent it back into it's original shape. I also found some late 1800s-early 1900s era cartidges, the coolest of which is a REM-UMC (early Remington) .41 Long Colt caliber revolver cartridge that was unfired. And I also found a small clam shell (I have no idea where that came from) and an embossed "The Beyer Co" bottle. So thanks for reading and remember that even the most mundane finds could have been someone's most prized posession back in the day. Happy Hunting out there! The trash...
    5 points
  14. Don't know if it's to finally lock the detector but going from a beta version to a production version takes time. The final version needs to be 100% clear of any bugs, residual code, ... Better that they take the time and do it right than to rush it and release something that's not 100% up to Nokta standards 🙂 I have been playing extensively with the latest beta version the last few days and I must recall my earlier post about it being less stable as 1.09. Given a correct setup, it's at least as stable as 1.09.
    5 points
  15. Totally agree with you on this. People that don't have the machine don't understand this. I have people continually telling me on my videos to turn the sensitivity up on the Manticore to get better depth/performance. There are 4 major things that are going to determine how high you can run the sensitivity and not get yourself in trouble. EMI, density of iron targets, ground mineralization and on the beach salt. One or more of these are going to determine how high you can run sensitivity. Just because you can do a long press noise cancel and run the sensitivity up to 30+ while holding the coil in the air, doesn't mean you can hunt that way. I've located many deep targets on the beach that if I had the Manticore over powered, I wouldn't have heard the signal through all the noise. High sensitivity on this machine is counter productive.
    5 points
  16. Looks like you've got a little bit of black sand Erik, if I did that on some of the beaches here it'd be the size of a bowling ball dragging it that far 🙂 I'm surprised there is that much on Magnetic Island. I've always thought about doing some magnet fishing, then I thought but wait, they only bring up ferrous, I don't want to do junk fishing.
    5 points
  17. No preference really, just different tools for different ground conditions, terrains, gold size, etc., as needed.
    5 points
  18. Still waiting in Mountain Home. I’m hanging out until Gerry has them in. His service, training and support is outstanding and worth the wait. Blessings
    5 points
  19. Me too, I just can't justify buying another detector, I think it's about it for me for buying detectors, I've reached peak detector, my limit has been reached. Detectors all seem so close in performance these days often there is very little need for another one. Following Quest with interest though, it's fantastic to see another company enter the high end multi frequency market, further leaving the old institutions on their last legs falling further and further behind.
    5 points
  20. Today I invited Chase down to go to the old farm we went to last week. It's a huge farm with a central house that is long gone but some of the barns and the kitchen cellar hole are still there. We have permission to dig most anywhere. It started out pretty warm and only got better. Ended up at about 67 with very light wind. Perfect metal detecting day! I got there early, while waiting for Chase I got a WW1 service button and an old pocket knife in a field next to this one, it had been limed so it was like walking on the moon. For quite a while I wasn't finding much but a couple wheats, and tons of very, very good sounding trash. 😵 We went to the farmhouse site and started searching around late in the day, I went out into the front field and found literally nothing. 😀 I came back to the farmhouse, and Chase said he just found a silver coin, and I should search around there while he went elsewhere. Well that was a very nice thing for me! I turned around, took a couple of swings, and got a 91 on the D2. Today I was using the remote and the 13" coil. Dug a little and it went up to 93. About 6" down in the side of the plug I saw it, a 1904 Barber quarter! This is only the second one I've ever found. I was thrilled. First was a 1903. I swept my coil near the hole and got a jumbled 78, filled the other hole, and immediately dug a buffalo nickel with no date. As soon as that was out I got a 91 again, and dug a 1906 Barber dime! 🥳 Both coins are in pretty good shape. Filled that hole in and got a 95 nearby, for some reason it ended up being an old wheat. 🤔 It didn't end there. 😀 After digging all the stuff below: Got an 1896 IHP, and 4 wheats total, from 1912 to 1952 D. A rein guide, and a small cracked brass ring. No inscription. Then I was hunting next to the cellar hole and got this: It's either an 1800, 1803 or 1808 Draped Bust half cent. Wish I could get that last number. It was a 91, buried about 5" down under a brick. The reverse is so toasted you can barely see the wreath. I thanked Chase for his grace today, that was really nice, I didn't do so well the last time. He did good too, we both walked away with silver. 🥳 At one point I stopped to talk to a farmer that was "ripping" the field to loosen and aerate it, and ended up getting another 100ish acre permission a few miles away, one that has never been hunted (according to him) and used to be part of a very famous plantation here. YES! 👍 Here's my trash, horrendous today but no iron. Relic Reaper did its job. Those two huge solid copper washers sounded off like half dollars.
    4 points
  21. I just buy them all like an idiot. They all are a pleasure to swing and it is kinda fun to work over an area then go back to the truck and pull out another detector and do it all over again...detector junkie thats me 🤣 strick
    4 points
  22. Beach hunt # 23 was at a beach I have not done in years. This is an area that I wanted to try out the Manticore to weed through the junk and also try the GPX to hit targets below the vast amount of cobble that lay exposed in one section of the beach. But as we all know, things don’t always go as expected. First thing I noticed was that the bulldozer was at work and there were many big piles waiting to be spread out on the beach. Sounds like a win-win situation, as that sand must have been removed from somewhere else on the beach. I pulled out the Manticore and started hunting around the big piles. Unfortunately there was a lot of broken wire from the slat type fences they use to keep that sand banks in place. They work well but get busted up quite a bit from big storms. Also, the beach had exposed black sand on its surface. There were older copper cents at 2-3” deep, so I knew there would be better targets there. Unfortunately, the Manticore (like the Equinox) does not do well in exposed black sand. 2-3” on a coin was all I could get. Bummer ☹️ I messed with some of the settings but soon gave up. I don’t know if Minelab is holding back on some of the technology that can make their newest detectors work in black sand or if it’s not possible for Multi IQ and Multi IQ+ to work if black sand is present. Either way, I abandoned the Manticore and quickly fired up the GPX. I went back to the same area and started popping coins all over. Now there are drawbacks to the GPX, since I also started to hit pull tabs at 10+” as well. I figured there must be a gold ring somewhere, but not today. I thought I struck gold twice today, once in a hoop earring and the other was a stunning 5 heart stone earring. Too good to be true. Both were bling and no amount of close scrutiny would put the letter K on either of them. I did get a silver Mercury and Roosevelt, along with a silver ring and earring, so all was not lost. You can clearly see the difference in the amount of coins and jewelry between the Manticore and GPX when conditions get harsher. 😉 The beach has potential, so I may hit it again with the pulse. Now if I can just stop people from asking me if I watch “The Detectorist” comedy series. 🙄
    4 points
  23. I'm allergic to gold (and nickel). I dug a thin 14K chain last summer that I doubted was real (hallmark on the clasp too tiny to read). Put it on around my neck for the short drive home. Walked into the kitchen 20 minutes later and my Wife asked if I found anything good. I said this chain but it's probably fake. She said, no it's real, you're breaking out in a rash already 😁. - Dave
    4 points
  24. Why does this remind me of the following? (cut and pasted from this site )
    4 points
  25. I seriously doubt the Manticore accessory coils are $500.00. XP which has far more complicated internals are just $400.00. I could really use that M8 coil right now. I sure hope they start shipping soon. The M8 is all I can for see me buying.
    4 points
  26. 4 points
  27. Don't think I kept either detector in one mode without trying other settings or search modes. After all, it is a giant 160 year old test garden. That's where I like to go to learn. In the Goldfield mode, the audio is different but the default ferrous upper limit is 6. The bullets want to come in at the upper ferrous zone. If you run All Terrain General, the default upper ferrous limit is 9. The bullets want to come in at what would be the 7-8 upper ferrous range. You can open that up and hear them but your also opening up all the iron that falls within that range too. On the D2 I used Relic mode as a starter program but then figured out General mode was just as good. I was more impressed with the ID than anything without having to do any elaborate setting changes.
    4 points
  28. Yes mn, As you know the area more than a bit, growing up around here, (Florida East Coast!)👍 Unfortunately, "progress" has taken it's toll along the old beach road! At least here, compared to some counties to the South, Brevard County appears to have done their best to accommodate fair use by everyone, in their parks; thankfully!; and as it should be everywhere!! One of these days, I may have to try getting some permissions for the best areas that are still here from the past!! That's an "art" in itself! In the meantime, as you said, moving to a new area, opens up new possibilities! That's always exciting!!👍👍
    4 points
  29. Great job Chase! Those look great!! Glad you were a good sport, after inviting Bob over, for a "splash" of silver!! Wish I were as close as you for a hunt!!🍀👍👍
    4 points
  30. What a great hunt Chase, we were just talking about the "thank you for coming" gift that fields often give up coming back to the vehicles to leave. 😀 Saw another irony like that in a Hoover Boys video today, they say that when you're not finding much, say "Where should we go next?", And that's when you start finding stuff where you are. 🤣 Really like the way you captured that button so it doesn't show the dent. Awesome find! 👍 Thanks for coming down. And telling me where the silver was. 😀 This is an ever fascinating hobby.
    4 points
  31. Ok so i went to a completely different area today. Ground balance was in the high 50's to mid 60's and 95% of the time it ran rock solid no bump sensitivity what so ever. Happy Days! So my conclusion is it must be the way the multi point XGB handles curtain ground conditions. I didn't bother trying the 10x5 as the 6" is my main weapon of choice and will most likely buy the garrett 6" when it becomes available. Many thanks for all the reply's.
    4 points
  32. May 3 2000 Part Two Mining At Last Vern fired up the pump and we got water to the tom. Jacob was grinning from ear to ear and telling us to get to shoveling. Jim and I got busy and kept the tom fed for the next few hours with Vern pitching in as well. When we shut down we pulled the mats, put them in a small tub, and placed them on the bed of my truck. I figured we had roughly run about three yards of gravel. When we got down to camp we ran the concentrates through a little cleanup power sluice using a 12 volt pump at the creek. Then Jacob panned out the final weigh. It came to 1/10 ounce. Some fine and lots of coarse and some pickers as well. Jacob said this was pretty good for starters and proved there would be decent gold deeper in. We were all pretty excited about starting to mine and we all had some whisky with Jacob. It had been a great day. We are now gold miners at last. TO BE CONTINUED ...............
    4 points
  33. No it's not the Cult of Wireless. Some of my best friends are wired. It's whether wireless and wired coils can co-exist without a net decrement to the wireless platform benefits. The question should definitely be asked. It's not like we don't constantly feed back to XP that we need a small elliptical coil, and if wireless is preventing that from happening, well that's not a good thing. I'm just saying is it's a little more complicated than just adding connectors to existing D2 hardware. Though it's unlikely to be considered, based on XP's track record and the investment required, people should lobby XP for an exclusive wired-coil D3 variant because the technical compromises required to accommodate wireless and wired coils (connectors on the remote and WS6) with the existing D2 peripheral hardware would likely detract from some of the D2's best attributes, primarily weight and modularity. For example, I see that to make this workable without compromising the existing design, a minimum of two different remote variants would have to be provided to accommodate the real-estate for a wired coil cable connector and associated larger battery in the remote for power to the dumb coil to avoid increasing the wireless variant form factor and weight. Interesting thought question: It's been over 12 years since Deus 1, why has no one else even come close to equaling the Deus weight class AND performance in a wired design? Is that attributable to the wireless platform? 🤔 Anyway, it's not up to me or you to accept this. It's up to XP. As long as the positive attributes of the existing D2 wireless platform are not compromised and that continued innovation of that platform is not stunted by intoducing wired coil variants, I'm all in. Especially if it results in more accessory coil varieties. It would be great if Gary Black weighed in with his perspective. I think we should all take a hike, quite frankly...to our nearest favorite, unfrozen detecting spot.
    3 points
  34. Wireless coil, wireless RC Unit, and wireless WS headphones/ and wireless pinpointer / are an important attribute of the XP Company in the Deus1-2/ORX detectors about how a modern detector should look and work. It's hard to object to such a procedure, if such a detector is technically successful..., and works really well... and this procedure makes it possible to make a really lightweight detector... the only disadvantage may be that the coils are more expensive than classic coils with a cable... on the other hand, the same procedure allows you to easily make a lite version of the detector where only the coil and the WS4-6 headphone module are needed... Even though I own many high-end detectors whit cable coils - where I strongly value the truly universal possibility of using affordable additional coils... which makes it possible to significantly strengthen the already good detection properties of these detectors.. .... simply wired and wireless coils have their pluses and minuses.. but each of these options can be used well..
    3 points
  35. Here is one of the old debris shoots from the hydraulic company of 1860 - 1880 era. There are a number of them. They used these to shoot tailings down the mountain to the creek below. If you did that today they would lock you up and throw away the key. However, it makes for intersting prospecting. The long toms could be up to 800 feet in length before hitting these areas and all the gold they missed would end up in these cuts. The area here is very remote with lots of bear tracks and mountain lion tracks as well. Very hard to get water there but could be done with great effort. I would like to use a drywasher here in the dry Summer months. Also would be good for metal detecting.
    3 points
  36. Great points, Dig. So far, the only difference I've seen from a performance standpoint between the Nox 800 and 900, is that the TIDs are less stable on the 900 due to the expanded TID range. I like the 900's D-Pitch audio, and some here have run tests that indicate that feature might give a slight depth advantage on targets at the edge of detection, but I haven't confirmed that yet.
    3 points
  37. Natural diamonds are not usually set in .925 silver rings. It’s all about the mark-up/money. Spot price for 1 gram of .925 silver right now is $0.70 US. 1 gram of 10K gold is $25. 1 gram of 24K is $60 US. Most engagement style rings like Ken found, weigh in the 2 to 5 gram range without the gemstones and jewelry makers are going to mark up the setting by a minimum 3 times that price or a lot more depending on who made the setting and how. Lab grown diamonds and moissanite which is lab grown silicon carbide can be found in .925 silver like Ken found out and you can find them in gold, white gold, platinum and plated silver. Moissanite does not have a natural cleavage plane like diamonds. It breaks like glass in rounded fractures. That is good for faceting and makes it easier to make a shiny, smooth girdle which also helps with brilliance. Cubic zirconia has the same property. If you see a shiny, highly polished, continuous girdle on a faceted gemstone that appears to be a diamond……….probably isn’t. Cubic zirconia can also be set in .925 silver and in bling pot metal/brass settings. Anytime I see .925 stamped on jewerly it goes in the “good” container instead of the junk/bling container and deserves a close look. A faceted 1 carat low to medium grade natural diamond can start at $1000 and up. A moissanite of the same size and grade starts at around $199 retail. Lots of people like flashy jewerly and lots of people can’t afford natural or lab grown diamonds. Moissanite is a good alternative both for price and quality. Cubic Zirconia is bling quality. So valuable meaning stones worth thousands of dollars retail are not usually found in .925 silver alone settings unless it’s custom made.
    3 points
  38. The Nox would have hit those masked targets, if he had lowered the Nox's IB. I also find it hard to believe that this guy doesn't know this. Then again, he happens to mention twice in the video that he's a Minelab dealer. So sell your crappy 800 and buy a 900! Especially from him 🙂 I often see these comparisons in which the tester erroneously assumes that a particular number setting on one detector is the same as a particular number setting on another detector. Or they do know, but have an agenda. Note how in the comments, only one commenter points out that the IB is not the same on each detector. The tester replies to most of the comments, but he doesn't reply to that one.
    3 points
  39. Still on the subject of taking a bad fall, I can't stress enough how dangerous old mine sites can sometimes be. Severe drop offs and hidden shafts, large rocks, and many other places to get hurt. This incident took place in August of 2020. At the site where we set the trommel next to the 180 ft long recirculation pond I once again took a fall that could have been a bad one. The trommel was set 20 ft or so above the pond and the ground was on a steep angle. Before we had water in the pond I was setting up a heavy plastic sheet for the sluice runoff to run down and into the tailing side. To the left of that was just hard packed gravel that ran at a steep angle for about 50 or 60 feet down to the flat ground below. We had a crew of 6 working that day. They pulled up with one of the pickup trucks around noon and hollered over to me it was time for lunch and if I was coming I could catch a ride to camp about 3/4 mile away. Seeing as the temperature was already close to 100 degerees in the sun I sure didn't want to walk back to camp. There were several small Ponderosa pines on the hill and unknown to me there was a very thin and barely visible root running across the hill about halfway down. Yes, a trip wire if there ever was one. The crew was sitting on the haul road waiting on me so I took off down the hill running downhill towards the parked truck. Well, my right foot caught the root and I felt myself going head first down that steep grade. One of the crew members (Vern) hollered "OH NO" as I went flying. Somehow, out of instinct probably from my old baseball and boxing days, I went into a tuck & roll - tucking my head to my chest and rolling on my right shoulder and right back up on my feet like it was no big deal. One of the guys was amazed and asked me how the hell I did that. I just laughed and said that was a tuck & roll and I guess there is still a little athlete left in me. But I knew how lucky I was to be walking away completely unhurt from that fall. Once again, I think the old crew is watching over me.
    3 points
  40. Just read Chase's report of this trip and he said 'half cent'. Then I reread yours (quoted above) and it also said 'half cent'. My bad as I read too fast. Half cents are much scarcer, at least in those early years. And in fact 1808 had both designs (right facing and left facing) so 1808 is back in the running! In chronolgical order the mintages in my 2001 Redbook are (rounded to the nearest thousand) 203k, 92k, 400k. Too bad the reverse is obliterated as it would help dating if you can't figure out that last digit. There were so many die varieties in the early years that the date can sometimes be deduced from those. Still possible with yours but apparently only the obverse holds the clues now. (Hope it's the '03 -- sub 100k coin! Still, in the condition it's in, no monetary value but an extra feather in the detecting cap if it is. 😉) Addendum: Flipping through Bowers's reference work I was reminded that the official mintage numbers on these early coins wasn't based upon the date but rather just the number of coins struck during that year. (The 1804 dollar is the classic example of the discrepancy.) Bowers opines that the number of 1803 dated coins was likely much higher than 92k (meaning many minted in later years) but the flipside is that he also thinks the 1808 dated version of this design was much less than 100,000, the remainder of the official annual mint figure (400k) being coins dated with earlier years. If that last digit can be brought out better, even if unresolved, the 1808 might be recognizable as its last digit was bizarrely composed of two tiny zeroes. It is offset noticeably higher than the other three digits in the date.
    3 points
  41. Not to cast aspersions on the farm’s prior occupants, but you’ve heard the one about the traveling salesman and the farmer’s daughter, right? Considering the number of shotgun shells we found in the vicinity and connecting the dots, perhaps the pin was left behind in haste during a quick getaway.
    3 points
  42. It surprised me too, the sand looks so white.. but in some places where creeks run into bays there's a thick layer of black sand under the white crushed coral sand..
    3 points
  43. Yea, I've seen someone else have a similar issue and it was site related, some soil conditions seem to cause it, just be thankful it's not a GM1000 that's bump sensitive all the time 😛
    3 points
  44. In the edited video I didn't get a shot of the bar graph after I did a ground balance (I'd cut it after the cool palm tree shot), so I took a screengrab from the uncut version.. The ground mineralization (phase measured) meter on the right stayed on 87 on both wet and dry sand, whilst the bar graph remained blank.. Sorry, I should've made that clearer..
    3 points
  45. This thread has been such a source for knowledge for dirt hunters, hot dirt hunters, water hunter and beach hunters. Thank you to everyone who unselfishly shared their knowledge and hard earned skills to make this thread what it is. The Stalker
    3 points
  46. Go up and down the beach from high tide line to splash zone. Look for quarters, sinkers and chunks of iron. Once you find heavy targets, concentrate on that area. If you are digging bottle tops and pop tops, you are in the wrong area and wasting your time usually. If it's sanded in in one area, chances are it's sanded out in another area. Find that other area. Are the heavy targets high or are they low on your beach? Do you have the equipment to find deep and do you have the equipment to recover deep before it sinks out of recovery range? Is your beach sand as far as you can dig or is there a layer of clay, shells, rocks.....etc that will capture the targets at a certain level? What is that level? There are many great suggestions on this thread, but the only way you learn is to hunt your beach, learn your equipment and pay your dues by spending many hours hunting. I wish you the best of luck Gary.
    3 points
  47. Minelab is not making any friends by delaying the most eager customers and dealers while favoring essentially a big box that for the most part, metal detecting is a grain of salt. It would be nice if Minelab figured this out and threw all of us waiting a bone, maybe a finds pouch or digger or "we're sorry". There are enough close comparisons going on that a Mcore is not the only choice we have. ☹️
    3 points
  48. Welcome to the forum! Efforts to try and prove that any one of these three is vastly superior is nothing more than an endless rabbit hole of other people's opinions. The detectors you listed will all get the job done perfectly well. It's like you are looking at three cars, and they all will go as fast as you need, and get you where you need to go. So you look at the features and decide which one seems to suit you best. It's actually that simple. But as far as information, there are dozens of threads with hundreds of pages of information already here on the forum covering the questions you are asking. Read it all, but I think I can promise in the end it will still boil down to you picking the one that seems to best suit you for your reasons. Often it's budget, and for many it's ergonomics. I can use any one of these detectors and will do just fine. What will matter is the locations I choose and the hours I go detecting, not which one of these models I use. The thing you have to understand is this is mature technology now. You might be very surprised how little difference there is between a Vanquish and these higher priced detectors, and in most cases a Vanquish will find the same targets they will. It's only at the extremes where differences show up, extremes often only apparent to hard core detectorists who obsess over a tenth inch difference in capability. So again, I will reiterate that all the top end detectors have rabid fans because they all actually do work and allow people to make very good finds. It is your skills at learning and knowing whatever machine you choose and how you apply those skills that matter. A Vanquish used properly 100 days a year will outperform any of these detectors used 10 days a year.
    3 points
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