Sirius

Here's yesterday's finds.

Went to same beach again today. The gravel was still there and right in front of it was non gravelly sand. Found a chunk of change again and two pieces of silver with plenty of heavier junk mixed in. This area just keeps on giving.

4 hours ago, TampaBayBrad said:

I bought a wooden shovel handle from Home Depot which has been working fine for a long time. When you drop it in the water, it stays on the surface for easy retrieval without a noodle wrap.

Does it not bend from strain at the point where the handle attaches to the scoop? That's what happened to my aluminum handle.

Do gold nuggies sell for a premium?

On 1/22/2023 at 2:19 PM, Erik Oostra said:

These are this morning's finds from hunting the lowest of low tides.. From tomorrow I'll also hit less popular bays whilst the tides are still low.. At least I'll be able to hunt again when I normally wake up at 4:00 am.. The low lows also mean high highs, and during the next couple of days I'll also have a looksee at places where foreshores and beaches have washed away.. Especially those spots where I find old silver coins, they're always good after big tides and storms.. 

This morning I stuck to an stretch way beyond the shark nets where I normally can't get to without dive gear.. This bay slopes a bit steeper than last night's so the incoming tide wasn't chasing me so hard.. I was a bit disappointed as I had my hopes set far too high.. I've always wanted to have a leisurely hunt in this spot without scuba detectors and I've long dreamt about all the jewellery that's made its way down there over the years..

But I keep forgetting about the bloody council with their beach rejuvenation program.. This involves huge dredges and dump trucks a couple of weeks a year to keep the beach in front of the pub from disappearing.. This part of the bay is a lucrative tourist trap and the council will do anything to keep it going.. Including dumping tonnes of sand over potentially rich hunting grounds.. I hardly had any signals and good targets were all shallow and fairly newish (except for the square nail), not like the gold ring from another bay which looks like it had settled deep in its spot years ago..   

Anyway, here's todays finds.. All junk.. Except maybe for the tungsten carbine ring.. I've got three boxes for all my rings, earrings, bracelets, necklaces etc., One for gold, one for silver and one for junk, and I can never decide if tungsten rings are junk or not.. I'm not going to keep a separate box for them (although they pop up quite a lot), but I know some people will pay big bucks for them.. I've recovered one which was a dude's wedding ring.. I'm pretty sure that's what the others were as well.. I'm not saying I love them (but they do feel so smooth and heavy), I'm just having a hard time deciding if tungsten rings are worth flogging off to jewellery dealers? So far I've been giving them away to anyone who likes them.. 

How the heck do you have the endurance to go out day after day? After breaking my sand scoop handle, I've been run ragged. I'm also going back out tomorrow anyways. 

Got back from my latest excursion. The theory proved correct this day, but I was a few days too late for the good pickin's. The gravel patch acted as a huge wall for heavier material and in front of it was a large coin line where I was just digging up coin after coin after coin. Even found a few silver dimes and a merc dime too! Talked to another detectorist who was on the scene and he said that he found some jewelry in the same zone but 2 days prior, so I missed out. It was still a productive day, up until the handle for my scoop broke. That handle is way too important, and without the leverage my hands were just destroyed by the end of the day. (That thing only lasted a week too since it was aluminum) 
Luckily it's been jury rigged with a iron pipe from home depot so it should be good for the next trip!

2 hours ago, Goldseeker5000 said:

Today was an amazing day. I only hunted for about 2.5-3 hrs. I got one nail, second target I never retrieved, but I think it was a chunk of a square nail. Third target was my nugget. It came out of the ground encased in caliche and weighed 23 grams. It is still sitting in muriatic acid, and is down to 14.88 grams. It is getting close. Should end up with at least 12-14 gram nugget. 

Wheres the viiid? Also didn't know you're in this forum Reese!

24 minutes ago, Erik Oostra said:

Also include beaches never used by tourists.. Many coastal areas have beaches and swimming spots that only locals know about.. They don't get the traffic of popular beaches but if they've been visited by locals over many decades they can be very good spots to hunt.. One beach I hunt on the mainland has revealed old silver coins over 100 years old as well as modern ones.. 

I've found many of these beaches using Google Earth, it also show if access tracks are well used.. If I know people in the area I'll ask them where they swim or used to swim when they were kids.. One gentleman drew a map of his favourite beach and detailed descriptions of how to get to there.. This beach turned out so isolated it seemed no one had ever been there, I didn't even find much junk.. Still the chance of having a look at different country is always good, it's where gold prospecting meets beach hunting..    

When I explain what I'm after nobody has ever been offended or angry at revealing family secrets, instead people are as curios as I am to find out if there's anything there.. I've also had people tell me where they lost rings many years ago and offer a reward if I found them..

I guess I'm looking for the quick finds and many targets so beaches work for me. The sea will always provide even with detectorists around, but I agree that secret swimming holes could be relatively untouched, compared to populated areas. It would seem like a project you'd have to dedicate time to search for and explore.

6 minutes ago, King-Of-Bling said:

I would in no way compare the 2. Not for free anyway. This is where you can start to get into specifics after you locate the appropriate beach. I don't mind offering a bit of free advice , but not for days on end. Stuff that took me along time to learn. You need to get out there and pay your dues. Put in the work. GL

I need more time out there, but yeah two rings in front of the gravel pit is already a good sign. You're more likely to find lighter material in the gravel patch than heavier stuff that gets dropped in front. Coins, rings, you name it. Will report back if i find more stuff in the same locations. If gold flakes lighter than a ring can be stopped by gravel banks, then gold rings can definitely be stopped by a gravel patch.

13 hours ago, Sirius said:

I really missed out then. I'm more aware of the tides now so i'll be going at better times. The last two rings i found were at sunset and they were close to each other at the front of a gravel patch. If I took some of the experiences of gold panners to heart, Gold and heavy stuff always stop at the front of gravel banks, thus it would be a good place to look when the tide is down.

here's a few graphics to illustrate this idea.

thank you for the clarification!

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I ran a gold test on 4 kHz park mode with a gold object I found on the beach. Rang up 18-23 which are gold numbers. But on the beach it may have different results due to the salt conditions. Not sure if it would be picked up if on the beach and on park mode + 4 kHz. If it could be picked up, then it could be a way to pinpoint only gold if the focus were only on gold numbers. Any higher and 40 is probably falsing?

I really missed out then. I'm more aware of the tides now so i'll be going at better times. The last two rings i found were at sunset and they were close to each other at the front of a gravel patch. If I took some of the experiences of gold panners to heart, Gold and heavy stuff always stop at the front of gravel banks, thus it would be a good place to look when the tide is down.

I've seen people wear waders if they wanted to be half in the surf. I probably can't go too deep because i've got into the surf before and got my glasses knocked off. Better to stay in the wet and run in when the tide recedes to do a quick scan. Also wearing a hat is probably important cause sunburns and all that good stuff.
The Legend has a bottle cap reject feature and seems to work pretty well. The most I find are going to be targets like can slaw, and for some reason a ton of copper wiring. 

Hunting during a storm is pretty risky and I personally wouldn't want to get soaked. But the hunting from high tide down to low tide is a pretty solid plan especially if high tide is early morning. Plenty of time to hunt, and it's something i'm planning to do this sunday!
Would you also suggest picking a few beaches you know would produce to narrow your search down? Seems like a few of these beaches just keep on giving time after time even with other detectorists around! So It might be cool to keep searching the same areas for new goodies that might have washed up.

I can certainly try, it would also seem like the wet is going to be the place where most of the treasure will be found as the tides push in material( including treasures), and then retreats leaving them buried in the wet. At least that's what I could gather from Merrills guide to metal detecting beaches. I also have to consider going as the tide is going down; to which websites like https://tides.willyweather.com/ help determine when low and high tide would occur.

I also found two rings right next to each other kinda in the same area. Though one was fake, the other one was heavier and might be silver. Like objects seem to show up in the same places.

I am a novice metal detectorist armed with a Nokta Makro Legend, a garrett carrot, sand scoop, and boots. Went to a number of beaches and found them lacking in signals, but also found beaches loaded with signals. The ones that were especially bad, were ones where you had to pay to get in, or were not popular (aka not near a city). Also beaches that are completely washed out of sand, lacked the infrastructure to hold good targets unless you waited till low tide; to which you might have more room to work with.
The best beaches I've found are the free ones; with people actually getting into the water (or at the very least getting their feet wet) with a decent amount of visitors. The best targets were the ones found at low tide; which just happened to be at the end of the day so working quickly is a must. One beach provided a ton of targets along with solid finds of some small pieces of gold and silver. Compared to other beaches I've explored in the past week, it was just loaded with targets which increased chances of finding something cool.
 I was wondering if anybody had more to add to this? It would great to learn more about detecting techniques on the beach/ knowing the kinds of beaches that should be explored if you're looking to find a ton of targets. 

Mine actually came as 1.07

There really isn't a need to run it at max volume unless you have trouble hearing it. Even with headphones I can hear plenty (even deep targets however faint), so I usually keep it at 1 or 2. I guess i'd be more concerned if perhaps submerging it causes the speaker to break faster? Though it's not much of an issue unless you're diving with it or you get caught by a rogue wave. 
Thus, I would conclude that it's probably just faulty hardware for some of the speakers and it's good that they addressed the issue early on for the most part.

Likely is. Some people use their legend for many months with no problems . My Legend came in with v.1.07 so I hope it's not one of the bad ones!

I did the 4 kHz test, too many false signals so beach mode is the way to go! the problem is always that the good stuff is found during low tide, and low tide today was just an hour or two before sunset so not much time at all to do much of anything!
I did manage to find a junker ring during low tide, and you know what they say: A ring is a ring. Even if it's a junker. Another detectorist using an equinox 600 (and was in the water longer than I was) missed the junker ring target so It's safe to say that The Legend is perfectly capable of finding rings. Now only if I could find a gold one..

This is interesting, so far from what I watched this guy has figured out that bottle caps sound like iron on the edge whereas other stuff still retain that sharper tone. Learning new stuff every day!.

The day went well, no fancy stuff like gold rings and such, but a whole lotta coins. First beach I went to they were sanding everything in so that was a wash. But the second beach was intact and ripe for detecting. Found a number of coins, few Junker earrings and stuff that may or may not be silver. (I didn't get a good look yet) And of course, trash. The tide was in when I started so i couldn't hit the waters edge, and by the point it had receded I was exhausted. Water pooling in my holes didn't help. 
On the way out, I came across another detectorist with a equinox 800 running on 4 kHz and park mode. I asked why he was in park mode, and he said that 4kHz hits gold the best even on beaches, he even found a gold ring a few beaches down which was interesting considering his settings. He also gave advice about listening to tones which is something I definitely need practice on. Anyways, I was wondering if his settings could work on beaches despite the saltiness of the sand and such. Has anyone had any experience with running a legend on park mode at the beach?