Cal_Cobra

On 10/24/2018 at 8:50 PM, RayfromAK said:

Real is the Spanish name for one coin. More than one real is a plural, in which case they are "Reales."  But it's not a big deal, so any way you want to say it's fine ?

I've always used that moniker, so it'll likely stay - lol

I've forced myself to hunt in 50 tone, and so far I've getting pretty used to it.  In an uber trashy area it may not be the best option, but for relic hunting, it's been working out.  I have noticed one oddity, large iron tools (axe heads, chisels, etc) at a site we were digging a few weekends ago were coming in around 14, that's not iron wrap around, so it struck me as a bit odd?

White's came through and said they'd ship me a replacement.  Haven't received it yet, so hopefully it's not just lip service, but I've always heard that White's customer service was pretty good.

Did they say anything at Detectival or the big detector show in Holland?  

Surely their only announcement couldn't have been the 15" coil which they already announced last year???

ML may make decent products, but their marketing/execution sure is a cluster.

Nice, cannot go wrong with reales !!

17" x 11" wow! 

Great if  you're a beach hunter or plowed field hunter I suppose, sucks for us relic hunters

Most of the oval 5x10" coils I've seen (Fisher, White's, Minelab, Nok/Mak) have been a closed design, and white color.  These coils are great for both prospecting as well as relic hunting in overgrown areas where open coil designs are easily tangled in the brush.  Even CoilTek made them for Minelab machines in the past if I'm not mistaken.  So it's a common coil design for this size/form factor, should've be rocket science for Minelab to crank these out and I suspect they'd sell a ton more of them than their 15" or 6" coils.  

Now that the 6" is readily available, and the 15" is trickling out, what, if anything, is next?

It seems like Minelab is finally listening to their customers, will we see the coveted 5x10" closed DD for relic hunting and gold prospecting ?

I don't really care if Minelab makes it or Mars, NEL, or anyone else for that matter as long as it works.  

4 hours ago, schoolofhardNox said:

What a hunt! Some great pieces there. Check the axe carefully for some round circular makers marks. Very early ones look pretty much the same as more modern ones. I'd call that a very successful hunt! 

Thanks!

I found three or four other axe heads, but much larger (and much heavier - lol), so they're still there.  This one was small, so I put it in my finds pouch, but I think it was also the reason I lost the other half of my eagle buckle as it made my pouch tipsey and it likely fell out when I was down digging ?  Hope to locate it next time we're able to visit this site.

Very nice recovery!!

I had a similar experience, I dug a DEEEEP rectangular piece of metal at an early stage stop/trading post site.  It was dirty and simply looked like a junk metal tag from something.  Got it home, and on a whim I decided to clean it and low and behold it was a piece of engraved Indian trade silver. Turned out to be one of my best finds on the trip. 

I got a new White's Ground Hawg Shovel in September, have used it on 3-4 hunts, and yesterday I was digging and it folded up like a cheap suit 

The metal tubing before the head, just bent over ?   I wasn't in rocky soil, wasn't wailing on tree roots, it was normal California soil, no clay, no crazy bermuda grass roots, nothing crazy.

Does anyone know if White's provides a warranty on this? I hate to loose $59 on a new "heavy duty" shovel ?

Tom and I were able to get out and check out a remote site that we researched in the spring.  A site that predates the gold rush by at least 20 years, and had nothing to do with the Spanish, but apparently it was used for a while.  There weren't a ton of targets there, but everything you dug was old, not a single pull-tab, no clad, interestingly no bullets or shell casings either nothing newer than the 1850's.  

The first bucket lister was a cast tongue and grove eagle buckle!  I dug the male part, and five feet away I dug the female part.  Somehow, I lost the female part ? The female buckle shown above it in the group shot is smaller, and was broken in two parts, and dug in two digs, but they fit together perfectly so they must go together. Also dug a broken tongue, so must be another eagle to match it out there, and below that is a thin female buckle part that's all mangled up.  

My second bucket lister was a decorative powder flask (one side only), also shown is a pewter spoon (pretty rare to find these in California):

Is the piece next to it a sword or knife scabbard?  Here's a close up of both sides next to a wheat penny:

This early Eagle on an Anchor Navy button was all crudded up, but I could see a glint of gold gilt left, so I used lemon juice to clean it, and am very happy with the results!

Is this a sword hilt?  ? Cleaned up nicely with lemon juice (tu)

Little sash buckle kind of decorative item:

Found this token, it's a large size, thought it was a large cent when first dug, but it turns out to be considered the first token issued in California!

http://tokencatalog.com/token_record_forms.php?action=DisplayTokenRecord&td_id=8515&inventory_id=8752&td_image_id=33494&attribution_id=8321&record_offset=2

Some misc finds.  There were a ton of tools dug at this site, axe heads, chisels, and other misc tools.  I dug a bunch of lead and other small scrap/junk conductors not shown.

HH,
Cal

Dew when you say the old program, you mean the 1.5 firmware?

BTW is that ice in that gold ring the real McCoy or is it CZ? 

I used to keep my dug  U.S. nickles, dimes, quarters and one dollar coins in my car to give to the bridge toll trolls, all the cleaning they ever saw was a quick rinse off under a faucet - lol  Most of the toll takers never complained, but a few off them did take a few seconds to realize that they were in fact U.S. coins - lol   At $5 per bridge crossing, you can unload a lot of dug change ?

I try not to dig iron in the areas I hunt, but many times iron gets dug up due to iron wrap-around anyway, but never are they anything that interesting for me, mostly ox and horse shoes, wagon parts, an occasional miner pick, oh and the hoes - lol

I've been forcing myself to hunt in 50 tone/multi, and am curious what settings you'd run for hunting in sea of nail sites?

HH,
Cal

Great finds, that kind of stuff just doesn't exist on the west coast.

I've always found it fascinating that the west coast Indians never learned to make refined metals, nor advanced dwelling building, they essentially were stuck in the stone ages up until the last turn of the century when the Europeans poured into the west coast.  Yet further south, pyramids that rival the great pyramids of Egypt were built, metal refined, and amazing artistic objects and advanced building techniques were utilized.   

On 10/3/2018 at 5:01 PM, Edsped said:

Where did they mention the SMF will be in a simplex housing?

That’s exactly my thoughts too, Nokta/Makro is literally the only one giving them competition. 

The scuba pointer looks great too, I have some spots in volcanic rock pools where only Pulse Induction units can work and my 12” DualField is just too big, I think I’ll be getting one and probably clipping it onto the side of my detectors.  Also being able to use it as a diving pinpointer or a normal pinpointer too!? 

Announced it at Detectival. 

I'll likely be getting one of their new pinpointers too.  I like the wireless aspect working w/the MMK, although I really wish one of these companies would get the wireless working like the Sunray inline probes, that would be awesome.

I finally received mine too thanks to a heads up of from a fellow forumite.  Planning a little trip in a couple of weekends to try some tough but productive spots, cannot wait to see how the Equinox and my Multi Kruzer does at these sites 

Nice going Andy!!   

2 hours ago, Geotech said:

Actually, it was a team of 4, and one might take offense at being called a guy. But, yes, they're all gone.

Hey Carl,

Sorry about that, I was under the impression you were the lead designer?  I take it your a hardware designer, not a programmer, is that correct?

It would be great to see a modernized version of the V3i, but I suspect White's wont be doing that any time soon, then again one never knows.

On 10/3/2018 at 6:03 PM, LowTide said:

Of all of the companies that could bring a Nox competitor to market Whites to me would be the horse out in front.   They have all of the pieces parts, but do they have the desire and the necessary engineering horsepower to make it happen?  Another factor for them would be profitability against a Nox 600 which is going to trend towards a sub $600 street price.

I know a lot of people are high Nok/Mak because "we finally have a company that will listen to us and do rapid development".  But if I were an investor in that company I would be furious with them.  And that is because of their product management strategy which is burning development cash.  Plus creating future obligations for each product that they release and will have to support looking forward. 

One of the unintended consequences of their "new models" release schedule is the killing of the used market for their own detectors.   The Nox has/had already disrupted values in the used market, so why use a product release/positioning strategy to aid Minelab in damaging your cachet?

Nonetheless I do understand that they are in a transitional stage of trying to combine two companies, with the added challenge of it being a family run enterprise.  Anyone who has worked for a family run business whether it is a restaurant, construction company, or engineering firm will appreciate the challenges one can face in those situations.

 

There's one problem with this train of thought, the guy that designed the V3i no longer works there.  The V3i code is complex and massive in size compared to all of their other detectors.  IMO the big question is, do they currently have the engineering talent/resources to even do such a project?  

Steve will likely know, as I don't really find White's to be interesting enough to follow that deeply, but after their latest product refresh cycle, it looks like they've abandoned SMF machines in favor of the AT market. 

I understand your thinking about Nokta/Makro, and agree to an extent.  I think now that their combined, we'll see this oddball trend where a new product would come out under the Nokta name, and then the following year an updated version would come out under the Makro name disappear.  From purely an engineering perspective, it kind of made sense I suppose, but the Nokta machine were more akin to a 1.0 beta mule platform, with the Makro machines being the 2.0 refined, general deployment platform.   

Interesting times ahead, and IMO we already have some great machines to use now from a variety of vendors while we watch how things shake out in the detector world.

Beautiful selection of coils, I think MARS also announced they'll be making MMK coils as well. 

Doesn't get any better then that!

Awesome, NEL makes some great coils!!  I have a few, love the NEL Snake coil on my Racer 2 better then the OOR coil, should be a great coil for the MMK.

They said their first SMF will be waterproof, as it'll use the same waterproof housing as their Simplex machine (beginner machine).  I'm not sure what the logic is on using the same housing, could simply be a matter of economics.  Their current waterproof detectors are good to 5M/15ft

They also stated their working on PI detectors too.  

Aside from Minelab, I feel like out of the current manufacturers, if anyone can come up with something innovative and push the envelop, it will be Nokta/Makro.

9 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

Not so odd, probably finishing up performance testing and then they want to run production for awhile to build up inventory so they can avoid the small coil issue where dealers were only getting one or two coils per shipment.  I think it's pretty obvious by now that whether or not ML realized how popular this detector was going to be, they simply did not invest in capitalizing their production facilities in advance to be able to meet that demand for the detector or its accessories.  They let marketing get too far out in front of the designers and production folks, probably because they have never had a detector as popular as say an AT Pro and were really unprepared to deal with the worldwide demand.  Getting inventory ramped up on the small coil probably squeezed production capacity for the large coil also.

Understood.  I'm impressed that a company like Nokta/Makro can spin off new coils at neck breaking speeds, but then again, their certainly not selling the volume of machines that Minelab is with the Equinox.