kac

I assume ID 12 is lower than copper on your machine and since it is non ferrous my best guess titanium. I have found titanium rings and they come in low on the range. Not as light as you would expect from what people say, close to silver in weight. Very hard, cant easily cut or scratch them. Maybe it is from a snow mobile ski? I believe they use titanium rails on the skis to keep them from wearing out easily. Might explain all the dents and divots.

Titanium? You said non ferrous. Hope it isn't depleted uranium.

Buddy mine found these turtles last Dec frozen in a farm field. They were smaller than a quarter. They were hibernating but the farm is active and they would have turned it over before they could make it out of there. Don't know what number they showed up as ? Will be releasing them in june.

What range did it chime in at on your detector?

Park near by has an old section made in the late 1800's where there was a stadium built and a ball field. At some time in 20's the ball field was moved and much of the area was backfilled with 15-20' of dirt from all sorts of areas. After the depression some nearby farm land was converted to more ball fields. Some of the dirt and sand had been there for a while. I found a sitting mercury dated 1877 just 2" down in one of the ball fields.. Also found a couple Indian heads 1906 and some buffalos but they are barely legible . I keep my digging to under a foot and use just a hand digger so I don't ruin the grounds. The greens keepers filled me in on the history of the place.

I like the idea of some discrimination on the Beach Hunter but the battery life seems pretty disappointing at 5 hours? Ever use it on land, is the discrimination enough to kick out foil? I would guess the discrete might cancel out gold rings especially thin ones? Friend I looking at a good general purpose machine but since he wants to do more beach combing I think the MX Sport or AT Max or Pro that I have might be tough to use since we have a lot of black sand and it does get tricky to gb these machines. Another friend has the MX Sport and he says he can't tell the difference with the beach mode on or off.

How does the TDI Beach Hunter compare to the Garrett Sea Hunter MKII with the large coil?

Found this last fall along with usual pocket change and whats left of a pocket watch. I think it is a name plate for a telegraph machine.

That really shiny nickel at the bottom of the first pic a wartime nickel? Looks like it has silver in it. Square tabs run just above nickels and gold. Folded square tabs trip me up quite a bit because they ring in even lower than reg square tabs. I swear people fold them just to mess with me in some sort of conspiracy ?

It could be just a chunk of waste metal from casting either from a runner/spru or large air vent. When sand casting there are pieces similar where metal is poured into the mold (spru then runner) and where it exits the mold cavity on the other side of the spru. These extra pieces are lopped off the final casting and usually re-melted. If it is slightly soft and heavy and doesn't have the oxidation you would see on softer lead or harder zinc I would guess it is tin based. I do quite a bit of pewter castings and that looks very similar. Pure silver would be much brighter than that.

I had a gun expert check them out, said they aren't worth much maybe a buck or 2 ea but still cool to find them. They came out after the musket balls.

It could be pewter. Britannia 8 is lead free and doesn't tarnish or gray out like a leaded pewter. Brit 8 has 92% tin, 6% antimony, 1.5% copper and .5% silver. Antimony is used to harden the alloy making it less malleable.

I believe they are Yankee 3 ringers, might be from a Colt Peacemaker, mid 1800's. I found these in a pond buried about 10" down in really hard pack sand. Shortly after I recovered them they oxidized.

I have a Tesoro, love the machine but it isn't waterproof. I will look at the costs to build one and the time, might not be worth the aggravation.

That's what I thought but was confused when I was looking at different circuit types and some had frequencies 150 and way higher. I always tinker around here, have all sorts of things I have made, some need patents when I get the extra $$$. I wanted to make a nice waterproof analog machine with switchable frequency ie 2.4 to 16 or so, what ever divides out and can use the same coil with minimal fuss. I thought there might be a market though small, for a simple manually operated machine that can be brought to the park, corn fields or the beach. I see all the digital machines out there with all sorts of beeps, whistles, backlight displays because you can't run one well without looking and the bigger price tags they carry but they tend to lose the smoothness in tones that the analog have. The new machines kind of take the skill factor out of detecting and to me takes away from the hunt. I like a little bit of mystery when I swing my detector and come across a nice clean signal. Having just a hunch that it might be a nickel or maybe, just maybe a gold ring seems to be more rewarding than reading an lcd panel with big words it's a nickel.

How does IB detectors compare to VLF and PI's? Worth trying to build one or just a waste of time?

Would air tests be a better comparison to a machines general performance on depth just to compare apples and oranges? Pi usually go deeper on the ground than air, Is that true with vlf?.

I agree you shouldn't have to babysit the service. Perhaps people can do their exchange with PayPal and use the PP protection. The transactions should not be your responsibility. Overall you got a good crowd here.

You could require a phone # and physical address for people placing ads on the admin side hidden from the public. That might discourage some the scammers.

From Thomas Bozek: "Please be advised that your product is now repaired and we are arranging its prompt return. If there are any costs associated with the repair, we will be in contact with you to arrange payment." What kind of company would issue an RMA under warranty then insinuate there might be charges. The pin pointer died in 2 months of light use under a 2 year warranty and their repair sent back an unstable unit. Why would they even repair a pinpointer in the first place? It isn't exactly a $4,000 metal detector, it's a pin pointer and one that probably only costs them $30 tops to make.

They might be downsizing and re-organizing. If that is the case I may go ahead and snag a sand shark. I really enjoy the Tejon, just a fun machine to use. Really like the analog no frills machines and smoothness over the vdi machines out there.

The first one I had was very stable, turn it on and wait till it stopped beeping and it would do as it was supposed to. Sensitivity was reasonable and I could run it on max in most areas. After 2 months the speaker died on it (it was never dropped or even submerged in water). Got an RMA along with an email suggesting that their might be charges to repair or replace. To even suggest that when an RMA is issued under warranty bothered me. The replacement I can barely run it at 3 in the same areas I hunt and often it just starts randomly beeping and this one now interferes with both my AT Pro and Tejon. I find it incredibly unstable. I may try to get them to replace this one next if they don't make a big fuss. For the longest time I used a cheap Whites Bullseye that the button actually wore out so I put a toggle switch in it's place and that still works without a hitch. It just isn't water proof. I probably should have just got the Garrett pinpointer but thought I would give Minelabs a shot as I was looking at some of their detectors. Not impressed with their service center at all and I find the company to be a little too arrogant for my taste. Just my opinion, I am not trying to offend others here.

Between my AT Pro 15hz and Tejon 17?hz I found the Tejon hits better on gold and AT better on silver. With that I am guessing the higher hz are better at gold and the lower hz better for relics and coin shooting. I can't say much for depth difference as the 2 frequencies are pretty close but the Tejon tends to be a little deeper in all metal mode. I have a Pro-Find 35, first one I had to send back for RMA in 2 months because the speaker crapped out. The replacement is horribly unstable and I need to run it at 1-3. I wasn't impressed with Minelabs customer support as they sent me an email with rma ticket and almost threatened their might be charges for replacement on the unit the first time. For something that was only $130 and their attitude being somewhat abrasive I am hesitant on buying a detector from them. This is just my opinion as others probably have good experiences but I know Garrett would never be like that and respond very quick. I have friends that had great support from Whites as well. I am suggesting that the pro-find might not be that stable in general and the mineralization or other factors may not be the issue.

Not sure if any of you knew of this site: https://www.historicaerials.com/ They have a view that shows old photos back to 1938 and topos going way back. The viewer is slow but has nice reference as you can click through the dates and see changes. It is a little hard to see but you can see some old trails, lost foundations and even early farm fields that have either been built over or trees have grown in. I use it to find some spots and I plug the gps coordinates into my phone's gps.

I bagged the Nel Big for my AT Pro. It runs very smooth, goes really deep +3' for a beer can in dry sand on the beach. On average it does 50% deeper than stock coil as they say. Pin pointing you need to shorten your sweep and go a bit slower for the AT to catch up and lock in. Downside is this coil is heavy! I got a sling and that didn't help so I shorted up the shaft and run the coil as close to my feet without tripping over it. Think it weighs in around 3lbs? Like swinging a Chiwawa at the end of a broom stick. In trashy areas it can be difficult to ground balance so I usually do the auto balancing then tweak it just above some grunting on swings. Seems to get me in the right range. Got some old grounds that others beat the hell out of I will hit with it.