TampaBayBrad

6 hours ago, Tony said:

The test will be my 18K wedding band buried in a length of PVC water pipe....probably in damp beach sand.

Just tie a piece of string to it with a piece of masking tape on the other end for easy spotting. Post your results, sounds interesting.

2 hours ago, Compass said:

I wound up with 24 quarters, 28 nickels and 49 dimes.

🥱Ho hum....Is that all you could find Compass? Ha! That's a lot of diggin' dude!

You are correct on the nickels.. just below pull tab range at 26-27. Nice hunt, too bad there was no gold other than the small pendant but gold is gold!

You're on a roll....

I would hurry back and keep hunting before it gets covered up again or somebody else finds that spot. That is truly a weekend to remember with some beauties found! Strike while the iron's hot!

Fantastic!

So the inscription was clear enough to peg it's owner as one of the former land owners? That is something else. Truly a cool/unusual find. Congrats. That's something I miss about being strictly a beach hunter. I may find my share of gold, but it ain't old!

2 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

There's enough iron in our detecting sites already....

and aluminum.....

1 hour ago, ColonelDan said:

I’ve noticed a distinct lack of coins on our Florida beaches (East coast) in the last few years.  Pennies if anything g will be found more than anything 

Yea, not like it used to be. But really....most of us go to the beach to hunt for gold anyway, not coins. The thing is you need something like a coin to dig occasionally so you don't get bored. Ha! 

8 hours ago, fishersari said:

15 dollar for a parking spot.. holly molly

7 hours ago, Tony said:

And during the "quiet season" as well......yikes.

Yea, it's quite the "Gotcha" move by the various small beach municipalities up and down the coast. One area even charges $4 an hour on weekends. It all goes into the city's $$ fund for whatever they need to use it for. Yet, if I go 8 miles north at one small town, there's free parking at most all streets that have beach access points. Almost all the small beach towns from Clearwater all the way to the mouth of Tampa Bay charge $2.50 to $4 for an hour. I usually go once or twice a week for 5 hours so we're talking around a hundred bucks a month for my detecting habit. 😬

11 hours ago, The Seeker said:

Happy new year to my fellow pirates 🥳

To you too Seeker. Plated is still a lot of fun to find and it looks like you scored some nice ones!

I christened my new M15 yesterday morning with a 5 hour hunt at the wrong beach. They had just done a dune restoration project there to replace dunes lost to Hurricane Idalia. Along comes a no-name storm about 2 weeks ago that cut into some of the brand new dunes and deposited the new sand all over the beach. Yay! I wasn't going to leave without giving it a good try as I had already paid my $15 for parking 5 hours.

Arrived at 6 a.m., put my headlamp on and started swinging. Almost zero targets at this very busy parking lot section of beach. After 2 hours of swinging with just 4 coins to show for it, I decided it's cold, but not too cold to try the coil in the water. In I went at 8 a.m. to waist deep with the waves hitting me at chest height occasionally. Shiver, brrrr!

Here's the thing. It's a LITTLE tougher to swing in the water than the 11", but not enough to deter me from leaving it on for some more use. I didn't find a darn thing in an hour and a half in the water except junk targets, (again, wrong beach) but I was happy that the coil IS possible to use for an extended period of time in the water without totally wearing out my arm and shoulders. The coverage advantage is very nice. The swing is a tad slower than the 11", but not much.

Performance wise, I didn't dig many coins to really test it well. I did dig a crusty zinc penny at least 12" down running 23 sensitivity in the dry sand. I dug a matchbox car at about 15". Pinpointing was easy, no different than the 11". I don't use the pinpoint function of the detector, I just cross the target using the center of the coil as a reference point. Anyway, more time with the coil is needed for me to have an opinion on it's depth compared to the 11". I sure like the quicker coverage though!

I'm happy with it. Glad I bought it. Now if that water would just warm up....

Now you have been bitten by the gold bug. Makes you want to get back out there right away and find some more! Congrats.

8 hours ago, okara gold said:

Hey Brad. Maybe this will give you the urge to get wet. 😀

Gee.....Thanks a lot Okara! You got me. 😄 Now I'm for sure going at least one day this week. Gotta check out my new coil and test the water maybe. Today is for watching NFL football and my Bucs winning the NFC South!

That 14k sure looks purdy. It's so sweet to see that gleaming clean gold stand out among the shells in your scoop! Yea man! Good job....

13 hours ago, Redneck said:

Brad, If you are looking for a inexpensive suit,  check out xterra wetsuits. They are used by the triathelon swimmers.  Reasonably priced and very warm. Excellent quality. You get just a tiny bit of water in the suit thru the leg and arm seals, but no water flow thru the rubber surface its self. Around $200 -250. They come a bit snug so order a larger size. Good Luck.

Thanks, I'll check it out. Not sure I'm ready to commit to the bother of suiting up just yet. Our cold water season is really only a couple months long and there's no depositors going in the water during that time anyway. I may get the urge....

1 hour ago, bklein said:

I think I was running configured as you guys are suggesting: beach LC, prospecting mode.  I dug a hole in the wet and dropped my gold ring on a string into it - digging the hole deeper and repeating to test depth. It would become a still rather strong ferrous target - which the manual suggests may happen. I didn’t try/toggle the ferrous tone function - I’ll try that today.  Just saying if you are running like this, dig the ferrous targets.

Interesting. Out of the water I am running Beach LC, upper 4, lower 0, all metal, ferrous threshold 0, recovery 4, prospecting audio, 21-22 sensitivity. I don't have black mineralized sand.

I would be out of the hobby if I dug all ferrous targets on my beaches! Crab trap pieces, tent stakes, rusted bolts and nuts are too numerous to waste time on down here. Maybe a good idea on cleaner beaches.

I was looking through the manual for clarification on what you said it states about a deep non-ferrous target becoming ferrous sounding with prospecting audio. I couldn't find anything other than this:

"The Ferrous Tone setting allows the ferrous tones to be turned Off. This means that when detecting in All Metal, ferrous targets will not give a ferrous tone, and instead will give a regular detection tone. This is a useful feature when searching for gold, because very weak gold targets can be pulled into the ferrous region by nearby ferrous targets or by the ground signal from highly mineralised ground. By turning Ferrous Tones Off, the gold signals will be more clearly audible."

Is that the section you were talking about? If so, I understand if it's a ring deep and next to a ferrous metal or if you are at a black sand beach. Multi-IQ+ is supposed to be great at separating ferrous from non-ferrous, but we all know how marketing likes to boast. That's why it's interesting to me reading your test and the resulting ferrous indication you got on a gold ring....deep or not. Is it a 10k ring?

16 hours ago, Airtemisa said:

Clive, in this extra mode, I understand you that those extradeep targets will sound still ferrous? Is that correct?

If yes, that means we have to dig every ferrous sound? Or is something special in that particular ferrous sounf targets that could tell us that are pushed by that "special" configuration? 

I don't think that is what he is saying. No way I dig ferrous sounds unless I suspect it may be junk jewelry which sometimes adds a good target "ding" sound along with the ferrous grunt. I run my ferrous volume at about 10 instead of 25 like Dankowski does and I can differentiate easily between ferrous and nonferrous. When you get a combination off both sounds, check your 2 D screen and see where it's plotted and which numbers the TID is bouncing around and if you're getting a red line to decide if you want to dig to investigate. Crossing up from different directions may result in a more "no dig" sound than just checking one direction.

1 minute ago, fishersari said:

Hard to say.. but the coims found around was from early 1800 to late 1800

Those are some nice relics from the past then. If I was a collector, I'd go back and get them from under that tree.

2 minutes ago, fishersari said:

Found 5 nos of cannonballl/shot puts 😁. Left it under a tree.. too heavy  too brought back

How old do you think those are?

Got my 15" yesterday, but don't plan on making a beach trip until next week. Will report my thoughts then. I'm liking what I'm hearing from you guys. 

Those are some flat looking miniature cannon balls Fishersari! Nice find....

There are four M15's in stock at Fort Bedford Metal Detectors. Mine arrived yesterday. Will give a report when the weather gets a little better to hit the beach. I may even freeze my butt off to give it a try in the 62 degree water! (no wetsuit)

8 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Why do VLF guys have to drop in on every PI thread to declare it’s not what they would use? Don’t. Nobody is telling you that you should. You obviously have never been in a place where your VLF gets 50% depth and calls anything past that as ferrous. If SMF was so great every gold prospector would be swinging one but fact is they are lackluster second cousins for performance compared to a good PI. The OP was asking for advice on a PI, not about anyone’s opinion on whether a PI is worth using or not.

Geeze.....sorry for entering the conversation.

The OP asked "I need a new PI specifically for beach detecting wet salty sand, in tidal areas mainly looking for jewelry. "

That's my department. Nothing about gold prospecting in mineralized soil. Sorry for adding my 2 cents on his topic of a PI at the beach looking for jewelry.

On 12/25/2023 at 11:01 PM, Tony said:

If black sands (remember not all black sands are bad unless attracted to a magnet) aren't a problem then the PI detector may offer no real advantage to a decent multi frequency VLF machine.

 

On 12/26/2023 at 12:06 AM, Skull diver said:

 

I do not mention the difference with a digital instrument of today, which I think is exactly as deep and sensitive as a P.I.

On 12/26/2023 at 2:22 PM, cudamark said:

With the great SMF machines available today, there's very little need for a PI in the water IMO.

This^^^^ You guys already said what I would say....I have no interest in digging everything. Pull tabs, foil, iron....no thanks.

Well said Skull diver. Merry Christmas to you and all my other pirate pals in here. May the New year be a happy, plentiful and prosperous one for all of you.

6 hours ago, NCtoad said:

I ended finding  a lot of split shot sinkers

Those are a pain in the azz falling through the scoop holes! 

Good hunt. I'm hitting some not-so-busy beaches because it seems as though the competition has cleaned up the hot busy spots by now with very few new beach goers to replenish this time of the year.

The scorpion looks like it was ripped off of someone's chain the way the loop is broke clean through. Interesting link pattern on the chain you found. Good work!