F350Platinum

Thanks strick, I'll take a buckle like that any day. Really. The "helmet" is an RCDIGS mount, it fully encloses the remote, and provides for running the waveguide into it. It will not allow the remote to fall off. Very precision made, and not expensive. https://rcdigs.square.site The maker of them not only makes them for the original Deus 2 shaft, but also for SteveG's CF shafts.

Today Chase came down for a "do your own thing" sort of hunt, we went to a permission of mine that almost guarantees at least something old. It was pretty cloudy today but exceptionally warm for mid March, there was a threat of rain all day but it never did, thankfully. The ground is still wet from the last storm under the surface, but the high winds blew the surface dry. I always fear Chase will come all the way down and not find much, but he did ok, just about the same as me but more buttons. It ended up being a good day despite the heat and the gnats that were everywhere. I only got 4 buttons today, one may be a small boss, but the biggest one is a silvered Dandy button. The smallest one has backmarks, and the top left one has some gold flowers on the front. I have no idea what the extremely figured piece of metal is top center. I even got a 1996 dime, my pay for the day 🤣 Of course the feature item I found today was the complete spectacle buckle, my book says pre-1650, so it's pushing 400 years old. 😎 This might be the first complete one I've ever found, I usually find them in pieces. Overall it was a great day to get out there, it won't be long now until the fields are planted. Only a handful of junk, this place isn't too trashy.

I've had a feeling that this was a "muster" site since the first time I hunted it, I dug a dropped Gardner bullet and a very crude button with military marks on it, which I gave to the owner. It was his great/grandfather's house. I'll have to ask him. That button was probably more rare. Couldn't find it either. The spot I found the coins and buttons and pits on is on a prominent rise, it would have been a great place for tents. The items were all on the back slope of it trailing down to the woods. 🤔 Looks like I'll be going back there 🤣

Thanks! 🙂 I've hit a bunch of firsts this year so far, I'm really enjoying it. Looked at the nickels again this morning and one is clearly an 1857. That button is pretty unique, might have been a visitor or maybe a hired immigrant to harvest whatever crop was planted at the time, and that was the only coat the person had. Doesn't make much sense for it to be here otherwise, nor the 3 ring Yankee bullet. 🤔 Kinda like finding a potato masher on the beach? 🤣 Maybe we're all entering a dimension... I guess when I go to Myrtle Beach in April, I should expect to find an egg beater or something 🤔 So far the Z-Flip is working ok for me, it fits nicely in my pocket or a pouch with a backup battery connected. I've had it a year and the only thing I have had to do is remove the screen protector as it cracked in the middle. Honestly it's better without it. 😬 I'm very worried about it getting dirt in the hinge and clean it often, I have a great case for it made by CaseBorne, a company that makes Milspec cases. Also have a "no fault" replacement policy on it 😁

I went to the area using the 13" and Relic mostly, when I couldn't find any more with the 13" I went to my cart and got the 9" WS6 Master, which also has Tekkna and my Relic program. Got the ball button and the other small object that looks like a button but may have been a bell. I switched between the programs which is harder to do on the WS6, as it only stores your saved program next to the original. While the WS6 Master is for all intents a whole Deus 2, using it is not as easy for me. I looked at the lead object again and it's definitely a seal, I found a sharper spot on the side where a piece of wire passes through it.

Thanks mn, I like to write, so I appreciate the nod now and again. 😅 These milder winters allow me to get out there, and I hope some vicarious pleasure can be had by those snowed or frozen in, or that just need the inspiration to get out there. 🙂 I probably have about 2000 acres of hunting permission now, but most of the prize spots are pretty well cleaned out. I can hope for new stuff to be turned up but it will be less than before. 😢 For the most part replenishment is just trash.

Thanks NJ, Despite this area being farmed for almost 400 years now, I don't find many seals, and they are much smaller. I've been over the house site rather well, but what I missed was due to inexperience and yearly turnover. 😅 This area contributed food and people to the Civil war, but no battles were fought here other than in 1812, and that was a very short skirmish. I've found the Union army minié ball, and a dropped Gardner that I gave to the landowner along with what I think was a very rare local militia button. The 3 ringer doesn't appear to have been fired either.

Thanks Colonel, I'm glad to have found a hotspot near the end of the relic season, no matter how small. It was a hunch that played out much better than I expected. 🙂

Thanks VL, It certainly is an odd assortment, despite finding stuff in two places far apart, it all appears to be from the same era.

A friend of mine thinks it may have been used as a backgammon piece. 👍

Thanks RVP, I saw that immediately when I looked back at the photo. 😀 Kinda similar to the Ducks Unlimited stickers I see on lots of vehicles here. 🤔 The sun coming in under it looks like an eye... In another lifetime I was a photographer, the camera on my Z-Flip 4 isn't as good as the ones on my previous cell, but I'm getting the hang of it. Too much of a pain to bring one of my cameras, it's a PITA to transfer photos from them anyway, the files are too big. It's enough work to keep the dirt out of the hinge on this phone. I bought the "Z" so I can keep a PD battery on the phone to keep it charged for tracking. While wheats are kinda commonplace, anything 1924 and older is 100 years old, I'd be happy with one. 🙂 Heck the last one made is a year older than me! 😅

And as I've written, it's not for everyone everywhere. As a matter of fact, it's very specialized for me, I prefer Relic overall. Notch at 00-00, set your tone preferences, and go. Vary Disc IAR to taste (thanks Chase). I've found Tekkna doesn't work well for me with any coil, just the 9". Relic works with all of them. If you're in a field with lots of really old iron, it will pick the cherries, apparently. It's kinda useful in a super trashy house site, but be prepared to dig a lot of non ferrous junk as well, I don't know how it is in the UK but people here just threw stuff all over the place. 🤣 Mebbe the Romans were more select. 🤔 Or didn't have aluminum 😁

Aww man, I have the same thing happening here, many of my spots are drying up, I'm not getting the quantity of stuff. It's back to the pounded sites with a different program and attitude 🤣 That is an awesome potato masher! 🏆 Congrats! 🤣

Nice rifle badge NC! You don't always find them in silver, it's older if it says Sterling. 🏆 Shame the rings are junk, is the shiny one Tungsten Carbide? Double silver and a V nickel in great shape. That's a really good day. 👍 I really like the 13" coil too, it doesn't miss much. 😎 Congrats!

I thought of that, usually the seals are split or have wire through them? This one is almost as big as a penny 🤔

Thank you, Okara. 🙂 Went out with low expectations and was quite happy with the returns! I've looked everywhere for that button, but I don't have the resources or knowledge some here do. It would be great if it was very rare.

It's been rainy the last few days, yesterday was so windy it wasn't worth going out. Today was supposed to be warm, it got up to 65 but was 42 in the morning. I loaded up my WS6 Master with the 9" coil and my Deus 2 with the 13", and went to the field about a half mile away. I haven't been to this spot in a couple of years, an old house stood here, and I got lots of coins and other late 19th century stuff. I really didn't think I'd get much today, but I did. I walked around where the house was for a while, really behind it. I found a couple of things , and decided to head out to a small corner that I only searched for a short time but found some buttons and a couple of IHPs long ago. Little did I know the spot was a small hotspot, I kept finding coins and buttons in there until there was nothing left. The area was only about 50x50 feet, maybe less. There was evidence of cooking pits there and chunks of sandstone indicating a much older structure. Each pit had large iron in the bottom, I assume a kettle long rusted away, and lots of oyster shells. That is always a good sign. I dug 3 IHPs, the only one I could read was an 1888. The other two are toasted, one slick and the other very encrusted. When the spot dried up I went back to the house area. A big surprise was digging my first Flying Eagle cent! It wasn't until I cleaned everything up that I found I had a second one. They're pretty toasted but I can make out enough of the 8's to know they aren't all that rare, but that's about it. It was kind of a thrill to know I got two today. That wasn't all though. Here's the stuff I probably can't fit in a display box, Looks like I dug a broken and bent musket trigger guard: Got some sort of tap or plug, some recent dog tags from 2006, a lock slide, a parasol slide, and a D Buckle full of the iron pin. Here's the trash, looks like a lot but it fits in my hand: It's all just buckshot, bits of lead and aluminum. I think there's a mangled spoon bowl in there. Ok, now for the finds: I got a Buffalo and a V Nickel at the house site, no date on the Buffalo but the V is probably 1893. At first I thought it said 1882 but that would not be my luck. 😀 Got a skeleton key, a Yankee minié ball, a small brass salamander with enameled toes, and 3 buttons, a fantastic ball button, a small thick Gilt button with some gold left, and my favorite: It says "Colombia Libertad". I looked it up and while there are many celebrating the liberation of Colombia from Spain in 1810, I cannot find this one anywhere. The back has "Colour" on it, so I assume it was made in England or an English territory. I don't know where the nicks came from. 🤔 It's definitely the 1810-1850 style that is single piece. I also dug this interesting lead coin, it has lettering on it. If anyone has any information about the Colombian button I would appreciate it!

Thanks strick, I'd probably go for the Anderson rig, got this pretty cheap but you get what you pay for. Took almost a month to get here. 🫤 I may go that way yet. 😀 "Zip ties are almost never long enough to do what you want to do, so buy a lot of them"... ... Would be my quote. 🤣

That's a good padded bag, bought one 3 years ago and use it to carry my detector(s) when traveling. Great price, about 50% off. It will fit 2. Gotta say that it might make some people nervous in some places, it looks like a rifle bag. 😎

Thanks, you can vary the balance by using the third shaft or the second. It's a tad heavy and the grip is thicker than I'd like but it was a fun project to build.

Finally finished my mini WS-6 Master. First off, I bought a Golden Mask style shaft for it, it came with a steel arm cuff and foot, poorly and unevenly drilled holes for the zinc bolts (all the fitment hardware is zinc 😵), and possibly a missing bottom shaft aligner. The shaft is carbon fiber, not the thickest I've seen, but it's fine for me. It has 3 sections which make it the longest detector I own, here it is next to my stock D2 fully extended: Yeah it's that long. You'd probably have to be Shaq or even taller to complain about it. Fully extended it's almost as tall as me (6'1). I could probably use it to search storm drains if they didn't have iron. 🤣 I disliked the arm cuff, so I replaced it with an Anderson cuff for Minelab FBS detectors, it's powder coated aluminum. I used a single stainless bolt as the second hole was drilled improperly, and put 3M Extreme tape on the flange before I tightened it. I have a single zip tie on it to prevent rotation, but it probably won't. Next obstacle was a foot, I bought a Nokta Universal Bipod. Again secured from rotation by 3M Extreme tape. It folds forward and is very light. I secured the WS-6 puck holder to the mount using a single zip tie, it will not fall off. I think I learned that here from one of our other intrepid rural engineers. Gotta replace that zinc screw however, I'm sure it will rust fast. I will probably replace all of the hardware. Completely compressed the detector is a little smaller than my stock D2: I understand now why the 3d section position holder was omitted, it allows the coil to be rotated to the side to put it in a backpack. The biggest obstacle I noticed was the coil yoke, does anyone understand the XP coil securing concept? Xp coils come with a plug of sorts that goes on the wingnut side of the coil. The coils only come with one washer, and the reason for it is simple: XP puts all of the rotation pressure on one coil ear, nearly eliminating ear breakage. The plug fits in a hole on the wingnut side, and pushes the coil against the single washer on the bolt head side. This keeps the bolt straight so it does not break, and puts enough pressure on the coil so it can be made difficult to rotate. I've tested this concept with a Lyman Trigger Pull gauge. The amount of pull on the shaft in order to move it has to be greater than 5 pounds, or the coil will flop. Not so much the 9" but definitely the 11 and 13" coils, which is why you don't want to use two washers - one on each side - to secure the coil. I can pretty much guarantee bolt breakage or flop. This shaft came with two washer/grommets, that equals floppy coil. Most washers are made with EPDM or some other such compound, and they are slippery. Slippery x 2 = floppy coil or bolt bending and breaking. 😎 I found a solution to this as well, I went to my local Ace Hardware, and bought 2 hard black nylon washers and a press plug to hold them together, inserted it in the wingnut side of the yoke, and used the standard XP bolt and plug to hold it all together. Below is a photo of the assembly, you can see how it pushes the coil left to put pressure on the single washer/grommet, keeping the bolt straight. This can be tightened almost as much as you want without breaking a bolt, I'm getting 8 pounds of pull before the shaft moves, that's really good for people that don't like to spend all day adjusting the coil! 🤪 Yes, I'm crazy. 🤣 I removed two of the zip ties on the cuff, they aren't necessary anymore. The whole thing weighs 992 grams, that's about 2.19 pounds, a little heavier than the stock D2, but smaller and longer, and far more secure to use. The twist locks are aluminum with rubber grips, probably the second best thing to the carbon fiber 😀 I prefer camlocks. it may not be totally practical but it was a lot of fun figuring all this stuff out! 🍀

Looks like that spot is winding down a bit. 🤔 Still got silver, and I haven't found a silver thimble yet 😀 your relic count is good! Got more wind coming, maybe some more will be uncovered. 👍 Great job!

Hey Lodge, I'm going with witchcraft 😁 I turn iron volume as low as 6 depending upon how much "big iron" there is. Relic is worse with big iron. 😵 I've put disc as low as 35, haven't seen a need to change it. You'll get mid tones on most things below it anyway, I think they picked that number for a very good reason, hope someone who documents IDs will come up with it. 🤔 The only problem with Tekkna is searching a place with lots of non ferrous junk, as you see a lot of it looks good, I turn audio filter up to 5 to identify most aluminum, and lift to ignore large objects.

Hmmm, didn't know about that... 👍 It's only good for first year, but thanks. 🙂 I've been on it for a few years now.

Yep. I use it all the time to track hunts, save locations and photos of finds, and it does help to know the name of the owner if they happen to show up. 😀 Most owners use PO boxes or mailing addresses, there are no phone numbers. I also use an app called REGRID that gives me more accurate property lines for free. I may switch over to CalTopo eventually, because they allow you to overlay historic topographic maps and Lidar is built in now... ...And it's free. They are going to add photos to it soon.