F350Platinum

Yes, sorry, realized I should have done that. ? It's not in very good shape.

Dug a US Cartridge Climax no. 16 today, they were made from 1864 to 1921. Definitely an oldie! Especially liked the screw thread look to the brass. No shell, they were paper. I don't pay much attention to them, but if anyone collects them I could send it. Also dug a live 30-30 winchester shell. Hope there's no real danger to that.

Excellent thoughts! If I was to wear my tinfoil hat, my speculation would be that a long time ago (all these nails and tacks are OLD) someone sold the farmers a bill of goods that scattering the tacks and nails would leach iron into the soil. Only two houses have been demolished, nowhere near where I find the nails and tacks. They are everywhere, sometimes in 'bands' across the farm. I know where all the buckshot and bullets come from, they outlawed rifle/pistol a while back here but before that all bets were off. I've found .30, .40, and. 45 bullets. Lots of deer every day and night. I find .22 shells and bullets on the edges of the field where they hunt rabbits. I've found a live round or two! Also shotgun shells and a few percussion caps.

Yes, they range in size from 1/2 inch to maybe 1/4, some smaller. There are thousands of them in the field, the one pictured came in at 13/14, many are 7/8. I can usually tell I've found one when there is an iron tone, they have iron pins, and often they give a 3 tone sound like 13/14/15. I did them anyway because buttons also fall in this range, tombacs in the 5-8. I found a concave tombac today that was a 4. The worst trait of the nails is when they are curved, I think the Equinox is set up to enhance 'round' things. A circular piece of junk threw a solid 26 at me today. I agree it's great training, so was the old house spot where there was a lot of tin and steel. Here's today's stuff for those interested, another concave Tombac, one of those crazy ferrous buttons making #3 so far, my first pewter buckle piece, and another brass plate. It's always a good day to find silver, the little medallion is copper with heavy silverplate. It appears to say NC in the center! It's going to snow tonight, it was 55 today. Thankfully it doesn't stay around too long but I have a list of home projects to get done anyway. ?

Hey GB, thanks for the advice. I do have "all access", and the farmer said I can keep all I find. Could not have been more lucky! The ground is like butter here, very few rocks. Mostly thin topsoil, Blue Marl, clay and sand. It's been farmed for almost 300 years. I'm out here right now taking a break. This site is huge, about 180 acres in front of my house, and over 200 more up the road. So far (since November) I've searched about 50. Pictured below is my typical find when I get tones in the 12 - 16 (sometimes as high as 20) with iron on the cross sweep. I've been whining about these tacks, I just dug that and the old nail to illustrate the point. Here I rarely ever get anything over 23, even the Spanish Reales are a solid 18. ? I think I'd have to wash my pants if I ever see a signal above 30! The only time I ever saw one was with some steel in the site across the road, a 19th century site. The house is gone now, they pushed it in the woods about 15 years ago. Yesterday what I thought was a tack turned out to be a button! ? I will keep your advice in mind.

Totally agree ? I got a few falses with some iron, but a quick 45 or 90 degree turn showed it up. I was reluctant to change any settings from Field 2. This is only helping a little. I appreciate all advice I get. Again I hope y'all will pardon my enthusiasm, I'm grateful the ground hasn't frozen and I can still get out. Gotta get as much out of this as I can before spring.

Day 2 of F2. Didn't dig a single piece of iron! There is quite a lot of it in the field, some places littered with nails, and lots of broken farm equipment parts. Today's haul is interesting, 4 buttons, one of which was silver plated and two are decorated, what I think is a rein guide boss, and what might be a tuning key from an instrument. Also some kind of weight notched for string or wire, and a drawer pull back plate. As usual I also found an interesting piece of buckle. This field just keeps on giving up old relics. I wish I would find more coins, but after searching about 40 acres so far, buttons make my day. ?

I should have mentioned that I have a 600, so F2/2 is the equivalent of F2/4 on the 800. Rained lightly last night and today is going to be sunny and warm for February. I'm going to see if I can get more fiddling in, switch F2/FE modes when I find an iron target to see what it does. I doubt I'll find anything different than already belabored on this forum, but it was great to try something instead of running it vanilla. That's what I'm here for! ? Just got curious because of the surveys.

Finally got a good day to go out in the farm, the last two were pretty miserable. It was another day to find lots of tacks and buckshot, unfortunately the tacks fall in the numeric range of the nicer buttons, and the buckshot tends to come up like tombacs, so I pretty much have to dig 'em all. ? See my first pic for all the trash! I don't usually bother to show it but y'all have to see the amount of buckshot, bullets and tacks I dig in a day. ? Much mention has been made of the FE and F2 settings on the Equinox, so I decided to give F2 a shot since I've been running the detector in FE/0 with Field 2, and finding that I'm wasting a bit of time inquiring targets that turn out to be heavy or really rusty iron. I thought from reading a bit that I could try F2/2 for a bit hoping it would help. Didn't go to 3 or 1. After I dug the nails and the large nut in the bottom picture, I changed the settings. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but F2 seems to "tighten up" iron, causing it to not register as much in the 9+ range. While maybe a couple of the iron finds still falsed, for the most part a quick change of sweep direction turned the whole signal to iron. Found the tombac almost immediately, they usually give a small iron sound because of the iron shank or remnant but this time it was a solid 7. For the rest of the day I didn't dig a single piece of iron! Now they need an update with a Pb setting... ? ? The smaller button next to the tombac (neither are larger than a dime) says "PLATED" on it, and the little tag is odd, "xed fe" and the number 61 are stamped on it. The elongated bullet seems to have a 2 on it! I find a LOT of buckle fragments.

At first I ran just the speaker, but now am using wireless apt-x LL headphones. Never could get used to the wired headphones supplied. I found that with the headphones I was hearing fainter signals that may or may not have a display value which turned out to be a worthy dig. I hope someday there will be bone conduction headphones with apt-x ll or a design similar to shooting range headphones where one can also hear the ambient environment for safety; not to suppress sound but to simply hear both.

New with the equinox 600, but I have run it pretty much exclusively on Field 2, on the recommendation of a forum member whose settings are published in Andy Sabisch's book. ? I realize that the Equinox isn't a one trick pony, but it has yielded excellent results with a minimum of trash digging in the farm I'm hunting. It's a best conditions scenario. Oops noob error :ducks: I don't use any of the iron settings at all. ?

Ok, I'm a total noob. I probably shouldn't even be posting in this thread, but I have a strong compulsion to. There are many forums I could have joined, but l am wary of Fanboy sites and those with a "gang" that have a one way approach to the forums' objective, whether it is the original intent or not. I lurked many. I picked this one because I couldn't find a single objectionable post, the members seemed nice and even tolerant of members new to the hobby. There are discussions that go way over my head, but I learn thorough osmosis, absorbing information that I may not understand but that really clicks later. I am well aware that I am not a gift to this forum, but it sure is a gift to me. Most of what I know about metal detectors came from this forum, from the suggestions of members and interaction with them. I am slowly developing the "facts before posting" discipline here that many have displayed. I enjoy being questioned and corrected. There is no hype here, only experience! Lots of it. I am grateful for the warm welcome, the encouraging replies of members to my posts, and the cameraderie that has already occurred. Thanks, Steve H. ?

New myself, started out with a Garrett Ace 400 in July. I wanted a waterproof detector so I got a Minelab Equinox 600 in December. I've been using them both but beginning to prefer the Equinox for its ability to analyze a target better.

Brilliant suggestion! Thanks. Didn't see any tapered nose rings in a quick search, but never would have thought of that. ? Now I hope someone will tell me why there are so many varying sizes of furniture/carpet tacks here. They ID the same as many of the Tombacs I have found ? ?

Sorry didn't quote you when I replied. These are Bluetooth 4.1. no issues so far and they connect quickly after the initial eternity. ? Even the TronD headphones are unavailable right now! Just for the fun of it I wrote both Aftershokz and RedBonz asking them to consider making bone conduction headphones with Aptx-LL. So far crickets... ?

Yes, exactly the headphones I bought, Aksonic BT-80. From using the TronD headphones for a long time, I know that these cheaper headphones tend to come apart where they connect with the ratcheting strip in the headband, so out of the box I wrap them in places with electrical tape as a precaution. Even fixed my first pair of TronDs I bought two years ago for another purpose! I use them a lot and they broke down fast. Now they are like new. If you mean the small knob I found yesterday, it was an 18, the larger one I found a while back with the decoration was a 19. (Equinox) I keep the ID numbers of everything in Tect O Trak. For $4.99 it's a great app.

Looks to me like the hole was made with a knife, it is very crude. Not much is known about this area prior to the steamboat landing in the 1800s. I would expect to find a lot of relics and coins from that era but most of what I find seems to be much older. Someone recently alluded to the idea that there was a lot of trading with the native tribe that inhabited this area, as yet I have not found any evidence of that. It's going to be a bad weather week so I may go up to the county records and try to find out more.

1778 Half Real, today.

The past two days were nasty, 20s to low 30s with wind gusts to 40. Couldn't get out. Today it calmed down a bit with a forecast high of 36 and light wind, so I took the Equinox out for a test run with the new carbon fiber shaft and a new $39 pair of Aksonic BT-80 headphones. They are Apt-X LL and are way more comfortable and tight than the TronD headphones I have been using. Almost no wind noise because they truly fit over my ears. The ground was a bit frozen in spots but not too bad. First pass was uneventful. I'm thinking of calling my metal detectors "tac(k)ometers" for all the buckshot and furniture tacks I find in this field. On the way back (each pass is about 300 yards) I dug the wheat penny, date unknown, and suddenly got a solid 20 hit. The silver coin is a 1778 Spanish Half Real, in fair shape with a ribbon hole cut with a knife. Got a watch key, and another of those strange ferrous back buttons with a brass front cap. There is lettering on it but it is indecipherable at this point. The hook looking thing almost looks like it is a tusk! It is solid brass. Only 6 passes today up and back. Fun!

Wow! Looks like you have a search area similar to mine. Love seeing the old stuff. Thanks for posting your finds!

GB, This link, albeit annoyingly long, will download a .pdf with the best info I have ever found on Pistareens: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://numismatics.org/wikiuploads/CNL/Pistareens.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwitjvnStL_uAhVAFFkFHUyEAIsQFjABegQIAhAF&usg=AOvVaw2qQBZviF9OZCWbrPSkkTgY&cshid=1611863897712

... And also with you! ? Being kinda an accessories junkie, I "Tarted" it up a bit this morning with some Detect-Ed stuff since it is 31 degrees F with 40mph wind out there today. Getting it ready to get dunked, first chance I get I want to start searching the low tide on the river about 300 yards to the northeast. For some reason the LS Redbelly carbon fiber appealed to me, and since the water here is brackish (some salt) I don't want the original shaft to corrode. Of course all covers will come off before water use, but the box cover and grip were hard to resist, they remind me of the good ol' days in the Army. ? Gonna take it to the beach on camping trips this year as well. Last item will be the 6" coil.

Sorry, I misspelled "Pistareen". The parts I found are from 2 or 3 separate Spanish 2 Reale coins, both ca. 1720. Common currency in the Colonies, they cut them for change.

So far I've found some cut Spanish Pistorines, cuts from 3 different coins. Two Buffalo Nickels, an 1809 half penny, another Indian head (1879), and some modern change. I found two unidentifiable coins, one that appears to be a King George, and the other is modern penny size but so smooth at first I thought it was a button. I've found a lot of early to mid 1700s buckles and horse tack.

It happened in search mode, but this and the penny did it in investigation as well. There were faint ascending signals at first (no VDI), and the signal went up instead of down passing back and forth over the target. It was the initial rising tone that got my attention, albeit faint! Hope I'm being clear.