F350Platinum

Thanks! Loving the oldies. 🙂 Now that you mention it, possibly. 🤔 This peninsula is heavily invested in crabbing, oyster farms, and fishing. Your guess is as good as mine about why they would be found at a horse training/race track. 🤪 Digging in this area I've found broken kettles buried with burnt wood remains and oyster shells. My guess is they were cooking oysters for events there. Thimbles found with complete buttons (with shanks) might also imply repairs were going on for riding apparel. This place was heavily cherry picked, no silver coins in the area. There should be. 🙂

It was when I got there, 54, calm and sunny. Minute I got out of the cart and started walking around, it clouded up and got windy. Cold front came through like a freight train. Granted it only dropped to 50, but the wind chill increased. 😡

Well I went back to this place today, didn't have a lot of time but did well again. It was nice and warm this morning. As soon as I got out in the field it got cloudy and windy, dropped about 4 degrees while I was there. 😵 Searched the trashiest area I found, and came away with more stuff among the iron: More buckle bits, what might be part of an old knife handle, another thimble much more damaged than the first and smaller, and 7 more buttons, at least 3 Tombacs. 😀 In the trash I turned Reactivity up to 2 and they jumped out. Got another Dandy button but it's broken and not as large as the last one, the smaller button next to it is a Tombac. Here's a size comparison to a really red clad dime: The smallest button for comparison: Really tiny. A weak 53. Here's the second thimble, thin walled and brittle. Again only a handful of trash, one very big nail got me, but I pretty much knew it was iron because it was throwing 95's. The two big chunky lead things top left both have a hole through them.

Thanks for the research, GB. 👍 Thimbles have been something I've found only in fields where gatherings occurred, or in this case horse training/racing. Later ones are found around houses. A thimble was a special gift for a long time, I've never found a silver one which was usually a wedding present and had engraving on them. I was happy to get my first complete one, they generally aren't as tough as this one seems to be. It's also big, it fits my thumb. It's ironic that I seen to always find thimbles in places I find a lot of buttons, this place is no exception as my next post updating this will show. 😀

Thanks Cap'n, I'm really comfortable with my program, I just increase Reactivity when I'm in trash, it still seems to skip the junk and get the goods. 😀 Of course there isn't much junk so that helps 🤣 Most Alaska spoons I've seen poking around are really fancy, whoever the maker is put out a lot of different styles. The above is steel, a 1901 catalog I think. It's old! Found that spoon far away from the other stuff. Fun to track down those maker marks!

Thanks Rick! I haven't had many detectors, but certainly not one as accurate and light as the Deus 2. 😀 IMO it is difficult not to use it. The way I've got it set up does quite well with small changes as conditions change.

Istanbul is in the north, Adana is in the south near near Syria. I don't think Istanbul was affected by the earthquake.

Thanks! No problem, thought it might be a knife crossguard but it's too thin. Some of the places I go have newer buttons, but I always enjoy finding the really old ones, and when there's a lot of them. 😀 I haven't scratched the surface of this spot so that's great too. I'm pretty sure this place was hit but they didn't do a great job.

Thanks Strick! Wish it was something cool, it's a sun flare in the camera lens 😀 I'm kinda afraid to do much with the thimble, seems that the letters will come off if I get too aggressive. Buttons are toasted but show some detail, the big dandy was unexpected. Most of them have shanks! The big one was taco'ed but I could straighten it a bit without breaking it. The older they are the quicker they break. Most of this stuff is probably 1700s.

Hell yeah NC! Nice! 🏆 As Jim wrote, Seated is seated 👍 looks like a date might be possible. Hey if you find your photos are turned sideways, edit them a tiny bit before uploading and they'll be straight. If they're not right you should be able to rotate them, I always have to do stuff like that. Cool token too! Congrats man. 🙂 Glad you got out there, you always find something good when you post.

Today had a cold start but we're going into La Niña warm again this week, started out at 34 and got up to 57. It was also windy. I used the Deus 2 and 13" coil with my relic program. Today I hunted a very large field near my house, going to places I haven't hunted because there didn't seem to be anything there. 😀 I've been getting a lot better than I used to be with scouting, today ended up being pretty good! About a year ago the farmer of this 200 acre farm told me there was another barn here but I never found it. First I hunted the extended field and only got a spoon and some bullets. The next section I went to seemed to have nothing, but I was walking around the edges in the "turn zone" looking to find coins. This field has been hit hard in all the known places, but I now know of two that haven't been discovered. The first one gave me a lot of old relics, coins and buttons, even a KG3 cent last year and a standing liberty quarter last Sunday. It was a house no one knew about. I got back out to the big field, and turned back into the field I had circled to check the center, often people gathered in the center of these fields, and this happens to be where horse racing and training occurred. Started hearing iron, a lot of it, and found my first button. None of the buttons I found today were even the size of a penny, they came up in the 50s and 60s on the D2. Most were co-located with iron so in some places I had to turn reactivity up to 2, but mostly ran it at 0. Digging was easy, it's been a while since it rained, and there was only a light ice crust on the field which melted quickly as it warmed up. So here's what I got: The largest and most undamaged thimble I've ever found, an old thin spoon marked "Alaska", the only word I can read on it where makers marks are. 7 small buttons, none even as large as a dime. One huge Dandy button with edge decoration, a very cool extremely old brass buckle I found all 3 pieces of, part of a big frame buckle, a couple small bits and some unusual whatzit. A couple of the small buttons are decorated too, this place has very old stuff so they're also more toasted than other places, the first has a circle and square: This one has a star in the center and a circle, possibly a wreath and it looks like it has reeding around the edges: I've never found a full shoe or knee buckle, but this one I got all of. I wish I found more of this one! And here's the whatzit, no idea. It's copper, it was an 81. Here's the big thimble: It's brass and appears to have markings on top. Trash today wasn't even a handful.

I have the same thing going on here in rural ancient VA. People didn't have a lot of money, their wealth was measured in land. However, I'm getting better at reading the land (and using maps and research technology), so silver is turning up. Even found a very old gold ring in excellent shape. I agree with both of you. 👍 You have to put in a lot of time, and expect to get skunked sometimes. The good finds are delicious. 🙂

The best time to hunt the river near my house is this time of year, the tides are very low. Thing is, when nothing major has happened (flood, high winds, or people visiting the area), there isn't much to find. Spent an hour or so using my WS6 Master setup, and only got this: It was nice to find something, but I'd call it skunked. 😀 Still it's great to get outside. A few coins would have been great! 👍 Nice reality check. 🙂

Been watching this post with some interest, gotta hand it to ya for wanting to carry a ton of iron in your sacks. 😀 Now ya have me wondering what else is out there, been skipping most iron for a long time. I have dug my share of ax heads and hammers, not to mention plow parts. 🤣 Seriously though, Bravo. 👏 May do it when things get slow or lean. 🙂

Last year I went to a campground I had detected the year before, I had called the office and they said "yes you can detect this year too". I was out there digging away, and saw this woman with her dog watching me from behind trees, and walking through where I detected shaking her head. I knew what was coming. 😀 Next morning I was in another part of the park, and a staff member rolled up on me like SWAT, and told me the "new" park manager didn't want me to detect there, despite my previous permission. No problem, I jumped in my golf cart and rode up to the main office, met "Angie", the new manager. I talked to her for a while, and she said she got a complaint that I was leaving holes that someone's dog could get hurt in. I showed her my expensive digging gear, said with a smile: "believe me, if you can find a single hole I dug, I'll take you to dinner on me, anywhere you choose". "And by the way, I just dug 5 live rounds of Remington 35 (BAR ammo) next to one of your fire pits. It was only a couple inches deep, imagine if they moved it?" Her eyes widened, and she smiled and said, "You can search the entire camp if you want, just not in occupied campsites. I just go with complaints, but thanks for asking again!" 🤣 The campground was built on an old hunting camp, it had firing ranges. I've dug more than a pocketful of live ammo there. 😀 9mm, 45, and long gun. Moral: if you detect campgrounds, talk to the manager every year, don't just assume you can do it again. At another the General Manager stopped me, and I told him pretty much the same (no ammo), and that his assistant told me it was ok two years in a row. He thanked me for cleaning the place up, and let me go on my way. The next day I found a gold ring. 🙂

Welcome to detecting. 🙂 You entered the hobby at a good time, for the most part the "beep dig" detectors are pretty much done. It's far from perfect but light years ahead of what it used to be. I tried it many years ago and was put off by the uncertainty. My favorite iffy signal is a "gettinbetter", one that starts out mid-range and ends up being a high conductor like silver. The good comes with the bad. Keeping at it will bring you better results over time. Learn to laugh at pull tabs and bottle caps 🤣 And guess what? If you get another detector you start all over again. 😀 The more you understand what you read here, the sharper your skill will become, but nothing beats persistence.

I don't like to wear over ear headphones either, and have used these on ear headphones since I got my Equinox two years ago: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08QRQMLVY They are Aptx-LL, are extremely light, and very loud if you want them to be. They pair just fine, and you get the appropriate Low latency icons on the screen of the detector. Battery life is 20 hours, so they will outlast you on a hunt. They are USB C, and charge quickly. I've worn them in 30 degree and 95 degree weather with no discomfort. In the winter I wear a hat, and in the summer a bandanna. The only thing I might suggest is wrapping the headband with some gauze sticky tape as such: Where I am I have coyotes and loose dogs and rabid animals of all types. Even been breezed by an owl once. This time of year it's hunters, easy to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have been inadvertently shot at. At the beach these headphones are loud enough to overcome the surf on the east coast anyway, and still provide situational awareness. One day some psychopath was screaming at me from the sidewalk at a beach, I acted like I didn't hear him, but I had a 5 foot steel scoop, so he stayed on the sidewalk. Good thing for him and his friends. Best of all they're $39. I keep a backup.

On the "box" end of things, I'd say that digital processing takes a lot of the inconsistency away, but the coil is always going to be slightly different.

Nice hunt! Congrats on the gold. Comparing the Manticore to the GPX is probably a test, but you certainly proved it will hold its own. So I guess you create a scale with your hands and decide whether you want less trash and shallower finds, or more trash and older, deeper stuff? 😀 🤔 Seems to me a win/win either way, but the point is you still can go deep if you want. 👍

Wow. An absolute bucket lister that will be very hard to beat. 👍I still can't get out of the 1690s myself 😀 Good on you, and here's to many more. 🥂

I'm almost completely a field user over a tester. 🙂 I can tell you that I've used general with some mods and find it to be very accurate even at depth. My soil here is almost always moist and non-mineralized. It may get drier by August, sometimes we get July droughts, but the last two years we've got a lot of rain. From reading the instructions and marketing hype regarding every new detector, it feels to me that if anything XP understates the abilities of its machines, so I'm inclined to trust how the instruction manual reads. What I posted was from XP mode descriptions. I can also say that Relic and some of the other fancy programs like Deep HC work well, but eat battery, and are very specific. My mistake at first was diving right into those thinking it would give me some advantage 🤪 It most certainly did not. With my Equinox I started out in 50 tones in field, and ultimately ended up preferring 5 tones in Park 1, just an analogy. With the Deus I'm trying the different tone modes, there are quite a few, and right now I like square/full tones. That may change. It's all about "trigger time", and finding what works best for you. If you're a "tester" with a moist test garden and a dry one, you'll fast track to your preference. 🙂

My first was the worst, but ended up being how I got into metal detecting. I tried to find a "bang for the buck" detector to look for nails in the yard after a roof job, and believed all the hype on the Internet (it's still there) about the Garrett Ace 400. Bought one, found lots of nails, and was happy to not get any in our vehicles or lawn tractor tires. I had a feeling that there might be some old stuff in my lawn, and most beginner advice was to start in your yard. One of the first things I found was a WW2 service button, then musket balls, pistol balls, and buttons that were much older than the service button. 🤔 I used the Ace from July to November, searching every bit of my yard, and started poking around the forums reading advice. This forum stood out as the most informative, the rest seemed a bit cluttered and full of "Outhouse Lawyers". I was especially impressed by Steve H, Chase Goldman, Jeff McClendon, GB_Amateur, and a few others, so I dug in and held on, got my ass kicked a few times. By Christmas I was ready for a new detector, and had got permission to detect the farm in front of my house. Yes, the Ace found some cool stuff out there, but the Ace pretty much identified everything as good so my fabulous wife bought me an Equinox 600. I couldn't afford the Deus 1 at the time and the dealer told me I didn't really need it. He was sort of right. I found some cut pistareens the first time out using it in the farm. By then Chase had contacted me and I invited him down to hunt and perhaps offer some advice on how to best use the Equinox. Well that went well, I went off on my own, used the Equinox everywhere and found a lot of great stuff. As I got used to it, the stuff got better, but I knew there was more... Now I have the Deus 2, and can't seem to put it down. At the moment I don't think there is another detector in existence that will beat it once learned, and it still is facing improvements! This is for farm relic hunting and confidence on the beach and in the water. I'm a pillager by trade 🏴‍☠️ 😎 Along the way I bought a Tesoro Vaquero just to see how the better older tech worked, and I'll be damned if it didn't blow all my detectors away with a simple square nail on coin on board test I did. I have yet to investigate that further. 🤣 I do know now that yes, the Tesoro can disc iron out and find the great stuff under it, but it still means digging a lot of crap until that situation comes along, just not iron nails. 🤔 That's cool and much better than the Ace that can't do that, but still not better than learning how co-located iron and non-ferrous stuff sounds with an expressive machine like the Deus 2, or in fairness the Equinox 600. With forum ideas I now use the Vaquero with wireless headphones. There are tricks I can still learn with the Vaquero. I now have the Ace 400 and 3 coils gathering dust. It served me well at first, but as with guitars, you have to have a "real" one if you want to sound like Jimi Hendrix. 🤣 Yes, an expensive detector won't instantly make you good, but it sure helps later on. I owe this forums' administrator and members a great deal as well. The check is in the mail 😏

Program 1, General, and the 3 water programs, Diving, Beach 1 and 2. All 3 use Conductive soil subtraction, here is an excerpt from XP: "Conductive soil subtraction. GENERAL uses low and high frequencies and gives an excellent assessment of targets in the soil. It suits both beginners and experienced users. It offers an excellent target/false signal ratio in the ground, as it rejects the moisture in the soils, which can cause halos and false sounds when passing over holes, for example. You will therefore have more confidence on deep targets. This damp / wet soil subtraction thus attenuates the very low electric conductors like coke (coal, and conductive stone) and to a lesser extent certain very thin targets like aluminum foil."

Absolutely, if you have a Windows computer with Windows 7-10, and at least a USB 2 port.

Be careful though, if it's old stock it may have a version earlier than V.0.71 that had a bug in it where it locked up if it was away from the coil. The manual is your best cheat sheet. 🙂