Compass

Thanks KOB, Missed you out there!

Thank you for the kind words Strick. Reading about and even meeting several amazing hunters has been a humbling experience but, like many of us in this hobby, I live to see the next piece of gold in the scoop and am constantly striving to make that happen more often. Wow! It is kind of painful looking at that picture of all those pull-tabs. 😬

Thanks VL. As much as I hate to skip targets I also feel that it may be smart to do at times. If there is so much trash that you are wearing yourself out by digging, it might be prudent to be more selective. At the beach, in certain situations, I have even ignored coin and silver tones in order to improve my chances of finding gold. It is a risky approach but one that has produced good results during the past year. Thank you midalake. I may do that the next time I go to this lake trying the Nox instead of the Excal. Say, for example, that it took me 30 seconds to dig each pull-tab during this recent hunt. If I skipped those 166 pull-tab signals, that would have given me an extra 83 minutes of time to dig other targets. Something to think about.

Wow - congrats on that dream week of detecting! Some real beauties in that mix. 😮

Thanks CPT, I went back after that hunt and got shut out but that's how it goes sometimes. Thank you School, It's funny how one target can change the whole perspective of a hunt. Without the gold the hunt would have been okay but would have felt a little disappointing for all that effort. 😉 Thanks TTT, Yes, happy with the outcome. I usually enjoy hunting the wet sand at the beach more than lake hunting but it is a nice option until beach conditions improve.

Just yesterday I was telling a friend that if I won the Powerball I would hire me a team of engineers and have them design a metal detector that identifies gold targets specifically. 😁 "...your trash tolerance is much higher than mine." This was in the sand so it was not as big of a deal. I could never tolerate that much digging in the dirt/grass. I feel dumb that I didn't know until a couple days ago that 18k gold had a higher TID than 14k. Better late than never though! 🙂

How many of the ubiquitous pull-tabs do you need to dig before finding gold? I'm sure that the answer depends on what type of detecting you are doing and with what machine. On a recent hunt at a fresh-water lake I was using my Excal and noticed that someone had been there before me. I was finding lots of undug pull-tabs (and other trash) so I figured that they were skipping those targets and maybe just looking for coins. I decided to dig all the high and mid-tone signals to see if that would lead to something good and after about 2 hours of detecting, dozens of pull-tabs, and a sterling silver band later, my efforts were rewarded with a gold ring. At first I thought that the ring was stamped "10k" but later I was surprised to see that it was actually 8.6 grams of "18k" instead. Inside the ring are 2 sets of initials and a wedding(?) date from over 50 years ago. I would like to find the person who lost it but doing so could be a big challenge. In about 5 hours of hunting I wound up with 166 pull-tabs and the one piece of gold jewelry. It tried my patience and was a lot of work but totally worth it to me. I also found lots of bottle caps and foil along with about 70 coins and 2 silver rings. Since that hunt I tested the ring on my Equinox and its TID read around 20. Pull tabs usually come in around 13 so maybe I could have used the Nox and saved all that extra digging?

Nice hunting! What is that gold colored object?

Yes CPT, for a ring over 40 years old it has very little wear so it must have been lost for a long time, say, maybe for 30-40 years. I and a few friends have hunted this lake and this spot for over 30 years and it's hard to believe that none of us ever found this ring before.

Thanks M, I was pretty happy to see the big class ring in the scoop. It seems like gold class rings are getting much harder to find these days. Thanks Jerry, The lake level seemed to be about the same or a maybe a bit lower than last time. My buddy found 4 rings but all were junkers. I'm sure that he had more coins than I did but he usually hunts closer to the shore while I wade out to my chest depth. Thank you midalake, When I do the rings are usually very small. Those big class rings can be like finding 10 average rings so I've decided to try and find more of those. 😄

I love hunting the wet sand at the beach but I am fortunate to have a few lakes to detect when conditions are sanded in. My last trip to the lake produced 3 more gold rings but the best one was a deep class ring that I am guessing was lost many years ago because it is over 40 years old and has very little wear. It's a hefty little ring at 14.4 grams and has a name in it so I have already taken steps to locate the person who lost it. I found this ring in an area that I have hunted many times before but this one was deeper than most and found using the "all metal' mode of the Excal. I usually hunt lakes using some kind of discrimination because of the trash but this find may encourage me to go back and try for some more deep targets and just tolerate all the trash.

Congrats on that awesome find Joe. A coin ring is still on my bucket list.

Congrats on the gold and silver! Interesting comments about the sand movement during this event. Beach erosion can make for a dream hunt but that sand has to go somewhere.

Congrats on the awesome find! I agree that you usually have to dig a lot of trash to find gold, especially, in a park, lake or dry beach sand. One nice thing about hunting in the wet beach sand after heavy erosion has taken place is that the lighter trash like aluminum and bottle caps often get washed away leaving heavier targets behind and the gold to trash ratio can gold way up.

I don't know anything about the Deus but that sure is a nice looking ring - congrats!

Thanks Joe, I can see why you love the Excal so much.

Thanks Jim, In looking at today's surf report it might be a perfect time to do the lake circuit.

Thanks strick, I was thinking that the 8" coil would be ideal for me as well but for a slightly different reason. Some lakes that I hunt are very difficult to dig in because the bottom could be clay, big gravel or finely packed dense sand. Pinpointing becomes very important because if I'm off just a little it can add minutes to the target recovery. If I can't see the coil because of murky water the recovery is even more challenging. A smaller coil helps shrink the area and helps me to dig less. Someday I may look into replacing my stock Excalibur coil with the smaller 8" one. There's got to be a few out there from old flooded Excals with perfectly good coils.

Thanks M, I agree, I use the surfer sites quite a bit. On my 3rd hunt at the beach I actually got there later than I wanted to and, sure enough, there was another hunter and lots of holes in an area I had scoped out earlier in the day. I didn't want to crowd him so I went about a quarter mile south and found another pocket of targets and found the small (2gram) gold ring. Funny how things work out sometimes.

Thank you School, It seems that every situation is different and while I agree that many different machines can do the job, I believe that there is often a best detector for a particular situation. I guess that why so many of us feel the need for multiple detectors - no one detector can do it all. As far as working hard goes, when I'm finding gold it doesn't feel like work. 😄

Thanks CPT, The hunt with the Excalibur was especially fun and satisfying. I think that the tones are more appealing to my ear than the sounds from the 800.

Thanks VL, Hard to say on the ring's age. The style definitely looks vintage but none of the coins I found were old.

I hunted each day for the last 3 days, the first 2 being freshwater hunts. On the first day I was using my Nox 800 with the new control box that I got recently. I was a bit reluctant to submerge it again but it worked fine with no leaks and in the first hour of use I nearly paid for the new replacement box with an 8 gram, 14K, hollow gold bracelet. I was on an overnight trip and forgot to bring the Nox battery charger so I hunted with the Excalibur the next day and had one of my best hunts this year with 4 pieces of gold jewelry totaling 30 grams. My Excalibur is one of my least used machines but in a side-by-side comparison with the Nox, in this particular location, I preferred it and felt really confident with the different tones. Each piece of gold was a low to mid tone and when I got those tones it was pretty exciting to see what I scooped up. Sure I found a lot of pull tabs, nickels and other low/mid conductors but I didn't get discouraged because it felt that the odds of finding gold were in my favor. From the surf forecast and news reports calling for a sizeable hurricane swell, I just couldn't resist checking out the beach after I got back from my lake trip. I was tired and sore but decided to take the TDI Beach Hunter for a spin during low tide. The swell was definitely impressive and I found a few pockets of targets in the wet sand. I wound up with about 50 coins and one small but pretty 14K ring with a small diamond making it 3 days in a row finding gold with different detectors each day - a first for me, I believe.

Yes, mine did have a serial # on it and I would think that all of them would. 5 pennyweights is about 7.7 grams so your ring has some good weight to it. Hopefully, it is gold even if it isn't a genuine Cartier. Mine weighed 5 grams but it is the "mini" style which is narrower.

Thank you for those references Chase. When I called the repair facility I first asked about having my damaged 800 returned to me. When they said that it was Minelab's policy not to do so I then explained that I really just needed the 4 screws that I had threaded back into old control box. To be honest, at that time, I thought that these screws were something special and hard to find but they really are pretty common so it was no big deal to get them (m4 x 16). I don't want to come across as being overly critical of the authorized repair facility. They are not Minelab, didn't engineer the 800 and aren't responsible for Minelab's policies. I do disagree with Minelab's claim that the 800 is fully waterproof and submersible up to 10 ft. It may be so for a while, as in my case, but I and so many others know that this waterproof integrity does not last long.