Hunterjunk

The opium bottle is a good find . A fair few turn up on the Chinese diggings here in in Tasmania , mostly broken . I was lucky enough to dig an unbroken one while digging a Chinese coin a few years ago . I have seen them in two colors .  I know about them self destructing too !  Two that I had recovered by sieving were sitting inside on my window shelf . A hard frost one morning saw both of them shatter into little bits like the old tempered wind screens used to.

Opium tins here were made from very thin brass and measured roughly 2 x 4 inches and half inch thick . They had a small area of Chinese writing on them that I still find occasionally on some fragments . There was a brass band that slipped over the two halves which was made of thicker material so surviving better in the ground . The fragments of these tins can make for many extra digs during a hunt . Last year I dug a part of one of these tins and when I unfolded the brass sheet there was the remains of a white paper label with a red dragon on it . A few days later when I went to photo my hunt finds I was horrified to see that the red ink had almost totally disappeared !  A few days exposed to light and air had undone the 140 years preservation under the ground  . Lesson learned , the hard way !

Interesting seeing these issues with the 105's . I have no trouble charging mine , doesn't take long .  When I disconnect the power from mine when fully charged about 50% of the time they then go onto WiFi search .  At first I did not notice the little blue light was on , and still was the next day . Wondered why they went flat very quickly at the beach ! Now I always check and often have to turn the headphones off . Seems that we will see more of these issues over time .

Thanks from me to all those who are posting their update experiences . I am carefully reading every post , and being very cautious  .  The Manticore in it's original form has been doing very well for me . It's beach performance in particular is outstanding , and in the bush it's pulling coins from hard hit sites .  So I will sit on the fence for a while yet and try to get an overall picture from all your experiences . on here and other social media .

Lucky you !  I consider the TRX to be the best there is .  I'll take a dozen at that price !

No good me going in one of those comps , I would be run down and trampled into the sand going by the speed they were all going ! Some wild swinging and a drastic lack of overlapping by my standards . On the other hand maybe I would attend , just for the scenery !

Works well .  Only undo one shaft lock at a time though .  Also the rubber bung in the top of the shaft went walk'a'bout the first time I hunted in the scrub .

Another gold ring on the beach today , a dozen coins from a hunted out 1800,s site earlier in the week . Gee I hope no more people around here get Manti,s !

The sound and comfort of the ML 105's is great for me , BUT , in windy conditions on the beach they are the noisiest headphones I have ever used . Something about the exterior shape causes wind noise to be severe .

4 hours ago, midalake said:

I thought it worked really well on a salt beach with moderate black sand. There are going to be lots of gold chains found with the manticore. Transitions good from wet sand to wave wash.

Agree 100% Midalake . I found it to be excellent straight out of the box on the beach . 

The "prolonged suffering" has come when relic hunting , and up to about 80 hours use I had nagging doubts that I had made a mistake buying the Manticore . I really liked Loren's vid as he was able to put many of my thoughts into words .  At 150 plus hours use now I am entering a period of admiration for the Manticore and will be very wary of any update from Minelab that may dumb the machine down . I am now digging very little iron as I learn the Manti's language . There is a depth advantage over the Nox , it's not huge but it's there . It's great at co located targets . Sound in enhanced is great . Ergonomics are better with the handle shape a massive improvement , no longer do I suffer carpal tunnel pain after a few hours hunting

The only real downside is the off center coil mount  that sees the coil tipping up in thick going . And the useless coil cover . All my Nox coils had covers so tight that I was worried about breaking them during removal .  The Manticore cover pops off every time it makes contact with a fern stem or rock .

12 hours ago, geof_junk said:

Hunterjunk, I like your 1906 Launceston Centenary find. Have not seen one of those before, great find. It must be unique having two Tasmanian tigers (thylacine) on it.

Thanks Geof , I didn't think about the two tigers . Reckon your right , it would be unique .  It's a fairly rare medallion only minted once by a local firm for Launceston distribution . I have never seen one before .

8 hours ago, PimentoUK said:

Plenty of familiar British bits there.
The pot lid is for cherry tooth paste:

toothpaste lid

Yep , just wish I could find an unbroken one .  Have dug so many broken ones over the years , really frustrating

With well North of 150 hours on the Manti now I feel much more in sync with the machine .  My Nox 800 is definitely a backup machine now . Lets hope we don't have to wait much longer for a small coil . Pics below from some beach and relic trips .

Even to a Tasmanian who knows nothing about arrow heads those look fake !   I am with Erik though when it comes to my finds . I have them in their hunt site boxes and anybody that doubts can take a flying leap . I know just how much hard work they represent . Case in point is that I have been extremely lucky to have found 4 gold coins over 12 years of detecting . The reply's , and the look on some peoples faces says it all . For 2 of those finds I have had witnesses but that really doesn't matter .  I say don't judge until you have walked the miles in the finders shoes .

Well done Eric ! Shows you just never know what has happened at any given spot in the past . Try them all ! Congrats .

All my Nox's [4] and their various coils have been very knock sensitive . My Manticore is far less . Let's hope it stays that way when we finally get a small coil as I have already found small gold with the 11" . I think the Manti will be a very capable machine on reasonable ground .

Some sort of approximate time frame from Nokta would be great .  If the silence continues I may end up going the whole nine yards and buy an Axiom . No way will I then buy a later release Nokta p.i. So come on Nokta , give us something to hang onto .

Put a drop of the good wife's nail varnish on those screw heads , should stop them loosening . We did the same with the screws on the roller guides of our game rods and it worked well .

4 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

You may have already addressed this so my apologies if that's the case.  Your sidebar says you have a Minelab 2100.  Is that a PI?  If so, have you tried it on this very highly magnetized beach?

Not a beach GB . It's a paddock that was once part of a gold mining town .  Sold the SD2100 a while back , I think it would have been very noisy with all the iron left from huts and mining operations over a 30 year period .

5 hours ago, steveg said:

Hunterjunk, that is some CRAZY-bad dirt.  With your magnet picking up a "ball of ironstone pebbles" when you touch the ground with it, I'm not surprised that you can't find a mode that works well.  

Steve

Yep crazy bad , and I have several other spots the same. At one using , using the Nox , I was just able to detect a powder flask on the surface under short grass , and I mean just ! There must be so many finds that are masked . Quieting the ground with another mode like LC may work on some ground , but also may come with a significant loss of depth .  It's worth testing some known targets when things get tricky .

Could be Big Sky .  It amazes me that Low Conductor mode , along with most of the others were virtually blind to silver in this ground .  It was pretty disheartening to find out that unless the plow had thrown finds to the surface then I was wasting my time .  Gave up hunting after 6 hours rather than my usual 7 - 8 .

By far the best pin pointer for depth , and it's tip directional accuracy . Unfortunately I have one that has died altogether and another that keeps losing it's ground balance . So sad after so many miles and finds together !  If Garrett would reproduce them I would be in the market for two more , and I am sure so would many others . Total waterproofing would be the go , water is the downfall of both of mine .

Yesterday I returned to the Ironstone and basalt paddock that I posted about earlier in this topic .  There has been at least 15 1880's hut sites there and although it's been hunted by others I feel that there is just not enough high conductor targets like silver coins .  So I took 3 , 925 silver coins with me to do some testing . These were English Three Pence , Six Pence , and a One Shilling . I scraped holes about 3 inches deep and buried the coins . Ground balance out in the 6-9 range and tried every mode on the Manticore . The machine was blind to all of the coins in every mode !  I tried every setting I could think of but nothing worked . The biggest coin [Shilling]  became detectable at 2 inches and the next biggest [ Six Pence] at 1 inch , while the Three Pence had to be laying on the surface .  All was revealed as to why this paddock was so stingy !  ATLC was the deepest , and noisiest with ATG close behind . This paddock would still have many treasures that it seems only  P.I. machine could see  .  Would be a nightmare to work in though with the sheer levels of iron off all sizes .  Something about this soil blinds the detector to silver in particular with multiple hunt days only returning 3 silver coins and a silver brooch , all within an inch of the surface . Bronze coins are a little better with pennies detectable to about 5 inches , while lead is still detectable somewhat deeper . Time to find some more benign ground !

I have one beach here that is multi layered dry black sand at the top of the beach . Sand mining was proposed in this area but knocked back by the enviro's a while back . I just do an auto balance then engage tracking . I have no idea what numbers the machine decides on !

Deep coins 10" plus mostly register as iron , no T Trace , but the signal is a very precise one which sometimes if I can get the target perfectly centered in the coil will give an occasional high tone squeak . More important to me is a very abrupt iron grunt that has what I can only describe as having a sort of "pop " to it .  When digging these targets it's common to dig through 4-5 layers of very black sand spaced by wider layers of yellow sand . 

The old saying " horses for courses " comes to mind .  For the last couple of weeks I have been hunting a paddock that is a combination of basalt soil and ironstone . Touching the ground with the magnet on my pick results in a ball of ironstone pebbles sticking to it . Add copious amounts of iron from about 15 hut sites and the detector is going nuts . Last week I used ATHC and fought the detector the whole time . Last Monday I used ATLC as suggested by the OP .  Vastly quieter and more pleasant to use !  Could use much higher sensitivity but by the end of the day I felt the mode lacked depth . Tuesday I ran ATG which also tamed the ground allowing sens as high as 26 and found 4 coins in a small area that I had run over the day before .  This sort of ground is never going to give great depth for a vlf but ATG works on this spot . The bonus was that after an 8 hour hunt I still had one third battery capacity left which is more in line with the beach modes .

Deep is doing it for me .