F350Platinum

16 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

It was fun as usual.

Well you sir, are the cufflink King. 👑 Always fun man!

37 minutes ago, NCtoad said:

This all with the 13x11 coil!

Hey NC,

Nice bit of pickin' there. 👍

Cool you were able to do that with the 13x11", when there's a tremendous amount of junk and nails, the big coil tends to down average, as does the 11", but you can still get great separation in the center. 🙂 I'm sure you've heard the "triple tap" from side to center to side on a single small object in a clear spot. 

When there is dense stuff, the 9" coil sees quite a bit less ground, so it should sniff out even more. I've found I can lower reactivity to 2, I hear a lot more stuff, but you can go higher for the trashy shallow mix.

Despite any complaints I might have about Tekkna, it's definitely a great tool. You do have to force yourself not to dig anything that isn't repeatable in all directions, but if something gives you 50% or more good tones it could be worth a look.

I can pretty much do the same thing with Relic but the extreme sounds are much easier to take with Tekkna.

Did you find you had to lower iron volume? I'm down to 6 or 7 now.

6 minutes ago, JCR said:

I want to have the ability to set a machine up to hunt the conditions I have. I don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

That's pretty much why I use my modified Relic program more than anything. 🙂 Kettle fragments, plow shares, even big stuff like axe heads and mauls are everywhere. Horse and ox shoes too. 😬 Also an abundance of hard-forged nails. This site has lots of steel junk, brass, and aluminum as well as iron.

I've tried all the programs in pitch, but find for myself that full tones in high square is best as it allows for some audible identification of aluminum.

For anyone interested, here are the settings based on the Fast program:

Disc 4.2

Silencer 0

Threshold expert Pitch 603 ??

Sensitivity 75  ??

Frequency shift 4

Iron volume 0

Reactivity 4

Audio response 6

After a while using it I switched notch from 23-24 to 00-00, which eliminated "some" falsing on deep iron, but not all of it. This works very well with Relic.

Here ya go, GG.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08QRQMLVY

Excellent headphones and inexpensive.

I did try it after watching the video again. I got the settings as best as I could, one thing I didn't understand at all is the threshold expert setting at 603khz. 🤔 He probably explained it but no captions.

I'm lucky enough to have an old 1850-1900s home site right in front of my house, probably one of the nastiest demolition sites I have in my portfolio.

Tekkna managed to squeak a few things out of all the junk there previously, but at the cost of digging a lot of trash. Lifting the coil was the only thing that saved me from deleting it.

I can see JTTFast as a very specialized tool, but just for the heck of it as I was leaving my yard, I ran the coil over some steel rebar that marks property lines here, and it hit it hard as a good non-ferrous target. 🤬

Quite frankly this continued at the house site, and with iron volume at 0 there was no way to know when I was there, so I had to use Tekkna to find the spot. I also often switch between Relic and the other two, Relic was way more accurate and hit targets much deeper. Probably the 24kHz max setting.

I found the fast program sounded off great on all really deep iron, some that both Tekkna and Relic (my main hunting program) also did. Worse, it couldn't "see" targets more than about 4" deep with sensitivity at 75, again something I don't get. 🤔 Lifting the coil to get the target to disappear is also a waste, sensitivity is too low.

Here's the result after an hour of hunting this nightmare:

Nothing but roof steel. Lots of early houses in the Southern USA are covered by steel roofing, some think it romantic, but when cut small, twisted and broken it's horrible.

I noticed one interesting thing in the video, he has a probably tough coin to find with a nail directly ahead of it, and never really passes the coil over the nail.

Honestly I know there are coins out there, but unless they can overwhelm the iron above them like the group of coins with nails on them, this is not "unmasking" either, again merely reactivity playing its part. I can turn it up with just about any program, and it will separate better, but higher than 3 without high sensitivity means loss of deep targets.

These are my impressions from a real site, not a test garden or wood blocks. The patterns he was sweeping over would almost never be something you would find in the real world.

So, my conclusion is "meh". 🫤

13 minutes ago, UKD2User said:

I agree that Tekkna really isn't about unmasking - Gary's version is not particularly good at that, as demonstrated by IffySignals' yt video on that subject.

I understand unmasking to mean making a good target, which is partially hidden by iron, sound like a good target. Adjacent iron makes good targets sound worse (more like iron) than they should. Increasing Silencer (like iron bias on Nox and others) increases the chance of a borderline good target sounding worse than it should - so does increasing Disc but for a simpler reason.

I think that Tekkna is more about 'decluttering' the audio, so that good targets are not drowned out by the audio of bad ones (different from my definition of unmasking).

Thank you! 🙂

I see that we are closer to what I'm getting at, excellent reply. 🏆 This forum is the last place we should be posting discouraging disinformation.

I did a little digging and found this video by Jack the Templar, very good in-ground test that makes way more sense than any I've seen yet, and it is clever:

It's not captioned but I am going to try and pull the settings from it. Luckily his D2 is set up in English 😀

I think this is the closest to "unmasking" as one can get.

Stay tuned. 🙂

@simsa, 

Where can we find the settings for Jack Fast?

Thank you for posting these videos. 👍

I guess I'm equally dubious and curious about this subject of "unmasking". 🤔 It's been mentioned many times in this thread, and yet Tekkna doesn't seem to do that at all. It merely "plucks" a desirable target from an abundance of junk. The goal is to get a consistent repeatable signal.

"Unmasking" to me is the ability to ignore an undesirable target using discrimination or any other filter to locate a desirable target that is either nearby or under an undesirable target.

I have only used one machine with which I was able to do that, literally set discrimination at a level that completely ignored the iron nails placed over a silver coin, by first dialing them out before placing them on the coin. No sound at all passing the coil over the nails alone.

That machine is a Tesoro Vaquero, I'm told that many of the other models made by Tesoro are also able to do it.

However, the machine only indicated a target was there, not what it was. That's less cool than what Tekkna  does in a sense. At least you have the additional ID information. What is under the nails could be anything.

I tried the Deus 2 and the Equinox, both excellent modern digital machines, first by ignoring the iron signal separately using discrimination and then notch, hoping to "see" the coin ID with the nails placed on the silver coin.

Sorry about the detail, but I didn't wish to be thought mistaken in my method. If I am that might be the explanation I seek. 🙂

Both the Deus 2 and the Equinox failed the test at any response level, either generating an iron tone or nothing at all. There might have been a slight chirp but nothing indicated the coin was "unmasked", no steady tone or ID. I would not have made the dig decision.

I performed this test on a board with two very old nails, covering a Barber quarter and dime with them.

All Tekkna does is discriminate one ID, and utilizes fast reactivity and very little filtering, with whatever other unknown advantages Sensitive FT has. I can pretty much get the same effect from other programs by just cranking up reactivity. Ultimately depth is lost, as I don't hear as many targets the faster I turn up reactivity/recovery.

So, I'm curious, what is this "unmasking" mentioned many times here? I watched one video posted in this thread as some sort of truth, but to me it was doing only a "nearby" comparison. 

To be fair I have not tried this under V2 on the Deus, perhaps that will help.

11 minutes ago, NJ Art said:

Spectacular complete spectacle buckle, that had to of put gas in your tank. Sweet it is...

Thanks NJ,

Looks like you had a pretty spectacular run lately too, thanks for posting it. 🏆

It's been the best year ever for me so far. Really hitting stride with the Deus 2, the V2 update made quite a difference.

I've been finding a lot of gold and silver this year, I really hope that carries over to beach hunting this spring!

1 hour ago, Valens Legacy said:

More amazing finds in your books, so when are you going to write a book so you can teach us newbies how to score big like you.

Good luck on your next outing.

Thanks VL,

Probably the first point I'd make in a book would be that in order to score big you have to be where the stuff is. 🤔 The hardest part is getting permission to look.

I can say for certain that there are many others that do as well as I do, but some only post now and again. I've met a few people who are very secretive about what they find. There are risks to sharing, luckily for me other types of hunting are more popular here.

I have definitely learned a lot, and have posted some of the methods I use here. I have considered writing it up in a book but finding a publisher that would make it worth doing is probably difficult.

As long as Steve H doesn't mind, I'm happy enough to share it with all of you that are specifically interested, and I appreciate the kind comments.

I've found however that I can wave any detector around pretty much anywhere and find a great amount of stuff, and the finds get better as I learn the tool. Having a place to talk about it with others is the key.

7 hours ago, ColonelDan said:

Your “good” days = superior for most folks.  😊

As I’ve said before, you live in the epicenter of US metal detecting, you use the best equipment on the market and you know what you’re doing!!!  🫡👍🏻

Soldier on…..

Thanks Colonel!

Sure was a bit of soldiering, we put in about 6 miles of walking. It's a big place but we got the unusual benefit of being able to park closer to the area.

Sadly the farmers are going to be in a bit of a rush to get the fields planted now, we're looking at a long rainy event late next week. This year has been a banner year for me, so I don't mind.

When I'm near the end of beach season I look forward to relic season, and now I'm looking forward to the beaches. 🤔 I like relic season more because it's quiet and solitary for the most part, but I get tired of stepping on corn and bean stalks, you should see what they do to my shoes, never mind the mud.

I do consider myself fortunate to live where I do, I probably would not have got into this hobby otherwise. 🙂

7 hours ago, JCR said:

Look’s like a fine day afield. Pretty Narcissus. I hate gnats.

Thanks JCR,

The photographer in me just had to stick the detector in that flower patch. 

It ended up being a better day than expected, we were supposed to go the day before but I had to cancel, and luckily it was a bit cooler. Mid 70s days are pretty common here in March, this El Niño season has been incredible. It started raining the minute we left.

I'm pretty sure what the gnats are is flying ants, they don't bite but simply get all up in my face. It's a yearly swarm that only lasts a few days.

8 hours ago, Lodge Scent said:

Good day you say F350? Fine day I say. That is a beautiful buckle. I've yet to sniff one out from my colonial sites.

Thanks Lodge,

There's no rush like finding precious metals, especially old ones, but yeah, I'd say that was a unique find as it is whole.

A while back I was able to reunite two broken halves from around 1607, but this whole one is pretty awesome. Found it totally at random in the middle of the field. All that is missing is the iron pin.

8 minutes ago, strick said:

Good stuff as usual 350...that buckle is amazing and would have made my day.....whats with the roman soldiers helmet on the dues 2 ? 

strick 

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.

3 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

Any chance there was a CW encampment here?  Fire pits (plural), Flying Eagle Cents (late 1850's), etc.  Keep researching that button.  Someone, somewhere would like to own that, with its historical meaning.

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 🤣

10 minutes ago, schoolofhardNox said:

Wow, some nice finds. Great button. 🥰 2 Flying Eagles shows you when that site was active. Being only produced a couple of years, they do not turn up very often.  Watch out for that Z phone. I have the Z 3 and the screen already cuts out when I open it. Just under 2 years old, so it's getting replaced next week. No more flip phones for me.

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 😁

1 hour ago, Geologyhound said:

Looks like you found a jackpot!  Were you using Tekkna and the 9” for that haul?

The lead piece could be a farm or field token? Earlier posters mentioned bag seals. There were types which had discs like this on either end connected by a band which would be bent in half.  The band could’ve broken off your piece. But I thought bag seals generally contained information on the contents.  Unless there is more detail hidden under the surface corrosion, this one appears to be fairly simple - which leads back to the token notion.

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.

3 hours ago, mn90403 said:

Your finds are too good to imagine!

WTG

I enjoy the read when I get a chance.

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.

3 hours ago, NJ Art said:

Nice hunt, you dug some holes. I have found bail seals bigger than quarters, looks proper for a seal.

 

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.

22 hours ago, ColonelDan said:

Good job once again!  🫡😊

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. 🙂

On 3/13/2024 at 2:06 AM, Valens Legacy said:

Many great finds again with some interesting items.

Good luck on your next hunt, and we all know that you don't need any, and stay safe out there.

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.

On 3/12/2024 at 10:13 PM, JCR said:

Maybe a token?

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

4 hours ago, rvpopeye said:

Oh , and the trigger guard looks like a duck. 

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! 😅