Monster

This “skill building” is such a basic concept, yet it still seems that DROVES of people still want “the magic settings”....the ones that you never have to move again and will optimize whatever machine it is in question to every site they will ever hunt. Why would the machine in front of you have various controls to change various things? Learning WHAT DOES WHAT seems like quite a chore to some, downright frightening to others. WHY? The more you know (information that is scientific in nature and can be replicated anywhere) the better your odds of repeated success. It takes effort, more for some than others. But being totally reliant on others to tell you what to do under what circumstances doesn’t allow for growth in the skill set, and relegates the “average hunter” to remain that way. Only when a person decides to take control of their own hunting will results progressively move into the positive.

If I could only take ONE machine (flying there) it would be the one I can log the most hours on and understand the best. I’ve got both machines in question (CTX and 800) and while they both work well for me in a variety of places, there’s not a chance in HELL I would leave the CTX at home. That’s ME. Because of its accuracy and the lack of prior knowledge about how many targets I might find, I can locate and mark “sketchy” signals with GPS and check those later when I’ve run out out of better signals to look at. In a place that’s been pounded by SOMEONE over the years (or perhaps several “someones”), the remaining signals might all be pretty sketchy, but the superior discrimination of the CTX allows ME (because I have ALOT...i.e. a couple THOUSAND hours on this machine) to interpret the information in a useful and efficient way. After around 250 hours with the 800 (yes, I hunt RELENTLESSLY) it is showing itself for what it does well and what it is really good at. The two machines have an “overlap” in ability, but to say one is clearly “better” than the other...period...it’s just not the case. If I could, I would take BOTH. If you can only take ONE, take the one YOU understand the best by the time the event happens.

Well...there’s one I’ve never seen before! Incredibly good detail on that silver, it would be interesting to know how it got there. Newer coinage? Salt? No bueno...shoot, they don’t even hold up for 10 years in my southern Wisconsin dirt! It’s really a shame and borderline embarrassing to see what our “coins” are made of. When plastic play money holds up better....that’s gotta be some kind of crime.

Are you sure you weren’t “WAGGING A WAND”? If you were indeed “waging a wond”, I don’t know what that is but you sure found a lot of stuff doing it! I agree, there is a load of help out there for those who can use it, and the machine is a nice one. I’ve said before that using Minelab machines is almost akin to “cheating”, if such a thing was possible in the hobby of metal detecting! It is adjustable for many different scenarios, which makes its mass appeal, well....massively appealing. Nice start Hermit!

If you want to block the most noise get the Killer B Hornets. They are more rectangular and block noise REALLY well. I find them to be the most comfortable also, but this is all opinion of course. If you’re unhappy I will buy them from you, as long as they’re not full of sand and seaweed...😀

Hey Cal....now you gotta get Tom to chop HIS up! He’d go into cold sweats at the thought...😰

I’ve found a few in the past 5-ish years, 2 hand forged and a more modern one. I know that I’ve sawed/“made” wood myself, and when an axe handle breaks, the axe head now serves as a wedge when needed...and it seems I lost a couple just getting a tree to tip in the right direction. Just more easily lost/forgotten without the handle. Its always cool to see the tools of yesteryear. It makes one understand how hard our predecessors had to work at what we might now view as an “easy” task.

Lol! Chuck, I have been hunting 9 years, and it didn’t take me awfully long to make the hop from looking for lunch money to figuring out OLD COINS. While some days I think I’ve got the world by the nards, there’s always something that slaps me back to reality. Learning from others and from other’s experiences has helped me to understand the “why” many times. Some stuff is so flighty that it’s hard to say why or why not you’re doing well or not on a given day...but it’s the stuff within my control I try to concentrate on. After the first couple years I had quite a pile of clad and was sure I was an expert. A few years after that I realized that in the first two years, I had only scratched the surface of a MUCH bigger picture. If it’s one thing that has catapulted my hunting from clad to old coins, it’s multi frequency. I’ll leave that for a different topic perhaps, but that’s been the game changer in my area. Anyway....good to be here!

I enjoy forums that contain INFORMATIONAL posts which pertain to detecting. We all want to get “better” and be more able to go find what we are looking for at will. While this isn’t always the case, the more tools in the mental toolbox, the better odds we have, and I’m an “odds” guy. This forum isn’t new to me, I’ve been reading it for a few years. Where other sites go stagnant is when the same types of posts get put up OVER and OVER and OVER....and the SAME people respond with the SAME response....”Killer finds!”...”Great job!”....you know the ones....a guy had been hunting for 20 years and STILL puts up a EVERY Roosevelt he finds....where is the progression? I love minds that think outside the box while still adhering to the principles of detecting, which keeps things within the confines of reality. Stories get mighty tall sometimes, and it leads others who aren’t quite as savvy or experienced astray. It even leads people who know better to question themselves or their equipment, which can be quite damaging. This forum seems to be moderated quite well and even questioned when it needs to be by other members, and that is a GOOD thing! Sometimes in our enthusiasm for a new machine or a great find, we can tend to embellish the story, I’ve caught myself a couple times doing this back when I was a mere noobie. I of course realized that fiction wasn’t my thing, and to preserve my own integrity while telling the story, I had to present the situation with complete honesty. It doesn’t always make for the best and most exciting reading ever, but it’s REALITY. Most of metal detecting is hard work and drudgery, really. What keeps it fresh and exciting are the possibilities of what we might find, and the better tech and info we have out there, the more exciting it is! Thank you Steve for a great forum that not only entertains, but TEACHES. I can never get enough of that!

Looks like you have a silver dime as well Castle...47 perhaps? It’s pretty easy to get hooked into this thing, have fun with it!