Jump to content

GB_Amateur

Full Member
  • Posts

    5,842
  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Forums

Detector Prospector Home

Detector Database

Downloads

Everything posted by GB_Amateur

  1. Yes, I forgot about that. I don't know what 'older' has to do with "oval square tabs" though. (Would you explain?) I wasn't aware there's a way to tell age if they are indeed oval (what I call 'racetrack' shape). But, yes, broken modern racetrack tabs as well as ones bent over onto themselves dTID lower, typically enough nickel sounding to make me dig them. Fortunately, like the pop-outs, they are pretty rare. But some people seem to have nothing better to do with their time than remove pieces that were designed not to be removed, bend them, break them, and finally toss them on the ground. 'Idiots' is too nice of a word for them. Thanks for your detailed response. It confirms my previous thoughts that running an analog or analog-like detector is all about listening carefully to the multitude of sounds it makes. I'm learning that backward, but hopefully I can still learn it.
  2. My favorite times to go detecting where I live are September through April, and maybe into May. Summer -- with combo of heat, humidity, and direct sunlight -- are trying. I'm sure many (especially Australians) would relish my 'cool' summers but I'm spoiled. Our Southern Indiana winters are not like further north. The ground rarely freezes anymore (not the case in the recent pre-Gwarming past) and as long as it's above freezing (majority of winter days) and not windy, I can stay warm. No leaves on trees, grass not growing, no poison ivy (except for the stems/branches), a lot fewer people in the parks, damp but not soggy ground -- nearly perfect detecting conditions. (Depending of the site, I may need to push or rake leaves out of the way.) I still have to find unsearched or undersearched sites, though.... I see that a lot when I drive around the rural areas. Time for you to buy a bush hog with your detecting spoils??
  3. I started a new thread on a subject that we were discussing in this thread. In a post there, @kac said: ...When you get into can slaw and pull tabs you can easily just skip all that by cranking up the disc to the pull ring mark where class rings sit and most aluminum has dropped off and make an easy and quiet hunt for coppers and silvers. This looks like what @dogodogwas saying he likes do when cherry-picking high conductor coins. Sounds like you stil accept Zincolns. Is that right? Do you set the disc so that ringtabs are truly silent or on the hairy edge (giving ratty response)? (kac continues:) Hunting in the aluminum range the Tejon has the advantage of dual disc so you can work a tighter range but that can be just as tedious as hunting with a VDI machine and constantly checking numbers with the exception that as I mentioned before there is a pop to most aluminum. Is the 'pop' dependent upon where you set the threshold? I recall you (and maybe others as well) mentioning this previously. Is this one feature that makes an analog detector superior to a digital (for that particular 'discrimination' technique -- I don't mean superior across the board)? Is this something that you need to train your ear to pick up? I think cut square tabs and nickels for me are too difficult to hear the difference and oddly their numbers are nearly identical on just about all my machines that have VDI screen. I don't know what you mean by 'cut square tabs'. Do you just mean modern racetrack shaped pulltabs broken off from the can? So listenting for the 'pop' doesn't distinguish those from nickels? If I'm expert at anything in metal detecting, it's aluminum drink can pulltabs. I really like nickels and as you note, their dTID's (on detectors with digital Target ID readout) are in the same general range as pulltabs, sometimes with overlap. Most of my experience is with the Minelab Equinox (to be specific I'm talking Park 1 or Field 1, 5 tones, Recovery Speed = 4) and here is a breakout of the types of targets by dTID: Nickels: (start with the 'wheat' and shift to the 'chaff'): dTID sweetspot in the 12-13. There can be differences depending upon such things as depth and amount of corrosion. Shallow fresh drops are usually 13 while corroded ones tend towards 12. Most of the time I get some 12's and some 13's. Deep nickels (quieter on the volume scale and also more bars on the strength meter) can blip an 11 or 14, but still most of their dTID signals will be in the 12-13 band). The signal strength is the key for me. If I'm getting a rather weak nickel signal I'm not strict with the techniques below. In my area pulltabs don't tend to be as deep as the deeper nickels so most of them give a pretty strong to very strong signal. Rolled over beaver (only): Have quite a bit of 11 along with 12 and a bit of 13. In fact I can (most of the time) distingish these by going to Park 2, 50 tones, recovery speed=6 where they always give lots of 11. Smallest (latest in series, so closer to 1975 vintage, particular the single piece ones as opposed to those with a rivet) ring+beavertail, extended: mostly 12-13. I end up digging all of these as trying to distinguish from nickels is too risky. Modern punchout (near disk-like piece of thin aluminum that's part of the can lid and gets pushed into the can when opened): almost completely in the 12-13. These are pretty much impossible to distinguish from nickels, IMO. Just dig 'em and cuss the idiot who went to all that trouble to remove them. Bent over itself ring-only pull: These are assymetric so probably give a 'tell' when picked up from different directions, but they tend to be strongly in the 12-13 sweetspot. Modern racetrack pulltab: Fortuantely these seem to be one of the easiest to distinguish with the Equinox as they give both 13 and 14 dTID's. The 14 is in the long direction so if perfectly aligned you may get only 13 but you don't have to be much off that alignment to get the 14. 'Early' circular ring only (i.e. beavertail missing): These are easily separated from nickels, somewhere in the 15-17 range but unless bent do not come close to the 12-13 sweetspot. Of course these (and all others) are still a problem for jewelry detectorists and their symmetry (except for the rivet extension) make them sound really sweet, as if a nice fat gold finger ring). Ring and beavertail (attached) but with tail folded over or even wrapped around the ring: These tend to dTID lower than ring only, but still above the nickel sweetspot. 14-15 with maybe some 13 thrown in. Some more unusual varieties (at least in my area) are the early 'squaretab' which rather than racetrack is closer to rectangle, and even kind of butterfly shaped sometime. These dTID higher than nickels, and in fact a bit higher than the modern racetrack 'cousins', especially when not on-axis (meaning you're coil trajectory isn't solely along the narrow part). Another less common are the small ring+beavertail (intact) which contain a rivet. I'm not confident these are easily separted (dTID-wise) from nickels. Finally, there are many varieties of ringtabs associated with other cans such as Pringle potato chip cans and some automotive fluid cans. Those are larger and still further distance from nickels. One last word of caution: a fair amount has been written about Wartime Nickels ("silver nickels" which have no nickel content but rather quite a bit of silver and some manganese). In my experience they signal with the same dTID's as standard nickels but some have reported their TID's going up even into the Zincoln zone. In those cases, discriminating against pulltabs can lead to missing those. I do think they are rare but maybe I've passed over some?? So, kac, after all that, how does your Tejon respond to these various pulltab types, and do you set your threshold so as to be able to ignore all of them?
  4. Or the site was too challenging for the detectorist and s/he threw in the towel. (I've heard of this happening from stories by the superintendant of the park I hunted all of 2020.) There was a post here by author and blogger Dick Stout a couple (maybe more) years ago where he said something similar -- that the reason people make finds with new detectors is because their lack of familiarity with the new toy leads them to do things differently, more carefully, more experimentally, digging things they wouldn't normally dig just out of curiosity as to what caused the odd response, etc. I've found even shallow, clean signal coins in places I'd hunted previously with the same detector. I could argue I knew the detector better or had the right settings this time, but the Occam's Razor reason is that I just hadn't gotten my coil over that target, and that's because my coverage isn't what I wanted, hoped, or thought I executed. I used to think when I found similar good&easy targets that it meant no detectorist had been there before. Now I know that conclusion takes much stronger evidence.
  5. A recent thread and one of the responses got me thinking on a related topic (related to the response, not the original post question). I quote part of Steve H.'s response (referring specifically to finding natural gold in the Contintental USA): The best gold was gone a decade ago, and the leftovers have been hit hard the last ten years. That got me thinking about coin and relic detecting. Good detectors for that purpose have been around at least as long as those for natural gold detecting. Although there are many more locations for coins and relics, and those on average are more accessible, there are certainly more detectorists searching them. So should we arrive at the same conclusion? One argument I don't buy (although it might apply to jewelry detecting, but even there modern problems exist and are growing) is that coins (in particular) are being reseeded. True, if all you are after is face value (spending money) coins. With the rare exception of very rare mint errors (double dies in particular), almost no coins have been minted for circulation in the last 65 years which carry a collector premium, and few coins minted for circulation contain sufficient bullion value to make melting them down worthwhile, even if you can get away with it.... So, no, there isn't a reseeding of coins of value. We C&R detectorists do have one major advantage over natural gold detectorists -- private 'permissions'. (Although there are private gold bearing properties and private gold claims on public properties that are accessible, those invariably involve considerable compensation to the property/claim owner for access and/or recovery.) How many unsearched private properties with promise for old coins and valuable relics are still accessible? Let's continue with unserached public properties such as public schools and public parks. How many of those still exist? Better asked, what percentage of those still exist? Final set of questions: as is true with gold bearing sites, the earlier detectorists didn't get it all, just the easiest to find and recover. How many old coins (and valuable relics) are contained in sites which have been detected? Do we have the tools today to identify and extract them? While I (hopefully) still have your attention, I'm mentioning a book which I don't think gets as much notice as many detecting books that do: How to Research for Treasure Hunting and Metal Detecting by Otto von Helsing (2013). It's ~200 pages of no-nonesense instruction on the topic. To drive home my 'no-nonesense' claim, here is something he says in his second paragraph (in the Introduction): The goal of this book is to teach the average person how to do good research to find promising leads for metal detecting. I don't care if you have gray hair on your head and hate computers or if you are 20-something and like to text while driving (In which case it's likely you won't make it to the gray-hair stage.) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm just getting started and don't expect it to be a lazy read, so I can't yet give a review. But I like his attitude.
  6. Personally, a 6" (nominal) concentric, 4-pin 'delta'. My goals for the Vaquero are dense trash, both heavy small iron (nails) and heavy small aluminum (pulltabs). I'm quite happy with the ML Equinox (11" DD coil especially) for larger, open areas. Maybe the Eqx 6" DD (which I already have) will do as well, but there sure are quite a few people who swear by concentrics, particularly small ones for dense trash. I have some places loaded with pulltabs that I'm pretty sure are hiding coins. I'm still (playing Don Quixote?) in search of the 'Holy Grail' combo that will find those old coins without me having to dig out the thousands (literally) of pulltabs. I've found enough old coins in those spots to tell me that no detectorist who has hunted these sites has yet done what I'd like to do.
  7. As a sidelight (not relevent to this thread title...), I'm curious to hear your experience with those as you accumulate them. In the 'catch-all brand detector' subforum, of course.
  8. In other words, you're a scientist. No reason to be apologetic there, IMO. Nice writeup, written like..., a scientist would.
  9. For those of us whose brains are stuck in the 'old' system of measure, that's 2 3/4 lb or 2 lb, 12 oz. Is it mainly the balance (toe heaviness, relatively speaking) of the XP's that's the culprit? I have similar experience contrasting my Fisher F75 and tiny (~4"x6" concentric) coil from my ML Eqx w/11" stock coil. I think (even with the factory shaft) the Eqx is a bit lighter but the F75 doesn't bother my back after hours of hunting whereas the Eqx often does. I haven't hunted enough recently with the larger coils on the F75 to make a statement there, but its reputation as possibly the best balanced detector ever made (not trying to start a brand loyalty war here...) was based upon a larger coil than the tiny one I use in heavy trash.
  10. Wow, it's a small world. I once had a (not so serious) hypothesis that my brain only had room for about 200 faces and once I filled it up, every new person I met looked like one of the 200. Another datapoint in the confirmation category now since that 'Brian' (not his real name ?) guy sure looks like someone I met at one of your (Gerry, Lunk, and friends) field training classes. And, what a coincidence, his name was 'Brian'! In fact, another rare coincidence, he looks like a poster here, and that guy is from South Dakota. Another nice writeup, Gerry. My only criticism (call it a jab/needle) is that I don't feel too sorry for you having to drive 1000 miles for gold. I drove twice that far to take your class (and, full disclosure, it was worth it).
  11. Glad you noticed I was referring to you, Lunk. I could have just said it directly, but there can be disadvantages to doing that. As always your perspective is valued here, so I am (and many others are) pleased you chimed in.
  12. Now I know why this site doesn't have a thumbs down end-of-post comment emoji. Sure coulda used one. Oh, but I guess there is the kind you can put in your own post. Here's to you and your Stinkin' Zincolns: ?
  13. My experience with undetected old homesites is that they run the full spectrum, from those with very few old coins to a couple with dozens, and everything in between. If I could only detect in one small area I would go for the clotheline every time. But I even got skunked under one of those (but only once). Excellent finds! Yours is one of the threads I just found -- still getting caught up with my reading. Savor that Walking Liberty Half!
  14. With two coils? (I'm assuming the two coils are the 5"x10" conc. and the 7"x11" DD. I don't think W.J. specified....)
  15. You can get a new Patriot for $400 (might be free shipping if you buy direct from Teknetics). Figure the second coil is worth (used) in the range of $50 to $75. So how much should you discount to cover the fact that there is no warranty plus some wear-and-tear (8.5 out of 10)? IMO, as long as you don't pay much (extra) for shipping, $300 sounds like a decent/fair deal. $350 is pushing past, IMO. I'm sure others here can give their opinions. I follow Ebay a lot but there are other sites (and even local clubs) where metal detectors are bought and sold. The best deals often come from those transactions. My numbers only reflect what I see on Ebay.
  16. Steve's spent a lot of time writing up the highlights of most detectors made in the last 20 years. He also has more detailed reviews which are linked in the overview database. If you haven't read the writeups on the two detectors in question, I suggest it. One significant difference between the F5 and F70 is frequency of operation: 7.69 kHz for the F5 and 13 kHz for the F70. That puts the F5 in the coin-detecting sweetspot (especially silver alloyed coins and copper alloyed coins, not so much for lower conductive coins) whereas the F70 is considered "general purpose", meaning it's good for finding coins but also other detecting such as natural gold and cache hunting. "General purpose" means it's a jack-of-all-trades but at each of those many applications, a specialty detector will usually beat it at a particular application. BTW, if you end up deciding to buy a new Fisher F70, your money is better utilized getting the Teknetics Patriot, which is the same detector except for the paint job and the coil (7"x11" DD on the Patriot; 5"x10" concentric on the F70). If buying used, neither of these (AFAIK) has a transferable warranty so except for the coil supplied (and of course the condition), there's no difference in value.
  17. It might not be long before it's just you and (maybe) the dog, and papers filing for divorce. When this question gets asked, the first reply is to give it a try with minimal risk before making such an irreversible decision. There are people here better qualified to answer than I, including at least one of the top experts at detecting for gold in the USA who spends half his year doing so, and investing way more than 4 hours per day. Why not full time? You can guess the answer. And note I said "one of the top..." meaning he's spent years improving his skills to get to where he is today. It's a fun hobby but a trying job, at best.
  18. DoD recommended when cherry picking silver, to set the discrimination high (he did say above nickels). What about discriminating out small aluminum when hunting in dense aluminum trash such as around picnic tables where there are oodles of pulltabs (old style and new style)? Does this kind of trashy area give the Tesoro+concentric an advantage over a ML Eqx 800 or similar modern digital detector? (I'm willing to miss the jewelry -- my typical old coin detecting concession.)
  19. You and dog must have stock in Tesoro. Oh, wait,.... I missed a used 5.75" concentric on Ebay a couple weeks ago (someone took the Buy-it-now price on an auction lot). There used to be quite a few out there, it seemed, but the source has dried up. SeriousDetecting doesn't have them anymore. I do have the 8"x9" conc. Maybe I need to give that another chance.
  20. I'm not real familiar with stock coils on most Tesoros. Is that a concentric you have on it, or a DD? Will you be able to swap coils between the Compadre and the Silver umax? I do know there are 4 pin ('delta') and 5 pin ('epsilon') coil versions and I'm sure other early versions which aren't compatible with either of those standards.
  21. I assume you're referring to me.... I didn't realize I was so important as to generate my own search party. Now you're going to give me a big head. Thanks, guys. I've been slow to post since starting to read a day or two after it came back up. And I'm getting pretty far behind in my reading, too. Personally I didn't mind the site being down for a couple weeks plus, just so I could focus on other things. (I can't seem to force myself away from the site when its up -- kind of addicting.) I have only detected a couple times since getting back from my western trip at the end of June. Between the rain, the heat+humidity, and those things causing the grass to grow before my eyes, the detecting conditions haven't been great. But worse is that I don't have a good site to hunt at the moment like I did last year. I have a potentially promising park but I've gotten mixed messages as to how old it is. I've found that detecting when I'm not fired up to do so isn't the best use of my time, nor is it good for my detecting psyche. Regarding numismatics, I broke down and bought the latest (2022, 75th Anniversary edition) Guidebook of US Coins (aka 'Redbook'). It's the sixth different edition in my collection, sixth I've bought myself (1965 was my first, likely from 12th birthday $), but it's been 21 years since I got my last one. It arrived 5 hours ago so some good bedtime reading tonight! Sorry I haven't commented on anybody's finds. I'll get back in high gear over the next few days.
  22. They didn't start out that way. The new Gold Bug family and the T2 & F75 were developed after Tom Walsh bought and merged the three orignal companies. I have a different hypothesis. First Texas appeared to have tried to go in a couple directions: keep the legacy lines for entry-level and mid-level customers and swing for the fences to develop high-end products for the aficianados. There doesn't appear to have been any middle ground (such as upgrading the inards of the existing products as Jeff talks about). Remember the CZX (or whatever it was called)? They had (past tense, is it still present tense?) what appeared to be a load of experienced engineers to carry this plan out. For some reason (which we'll probably never know, even if they do) that high-end path ran off the rails. And what we have is the result. Will they get the train back on the track before it's too late?? IMO they need more than a crack water PI. It's going to be tough to compete with Minelab in the dry-land PI space. Even a low-priced unit will likely just spur ML to lower the price on one or more of its products. Wasn't that what they did with the Vanquish (aka: low end Equinox) when it became clear that Garrett was going to produce an affordable, modern simultaneous multi-frequency IB/VLF?
  23. My answer: not very many, and way fewer today. You're old-school, Mike. (I consider that a compliment, BTW.) I find it interesting when people like F350platinum talk about brick-and-mortar specialized dealers. They are dying faster than the Brood-X cicadas (gone now) which came out of the ground here in the mid-Eastern USA earlier this summer. As an example, I was in Colorado in June, looking forward to visiting Gold'N Detectors in Golden (just up the foothills from Denver) which had supplied me in the past with small, hard-to-get items such as books (they had a huge collection to browse) and coil covers, literally many shelves of different brands and sizes. I walked in the door to find an antiseptic room, open in the middle (except for the money-handling station) and a few detectors hung on the walls. The previous owner had died and the owner before her had been running the store, but he was past retirement age.... Apparently the heirs sold it to a nearby (Colorado Springs) company that does most of their business online. I don't mean this mention to be a diss of that company but it ain't what it used to be and it sure wasn't anything I'm interested in. The person behind the desk was nice enough but I didn't get the impression he knew a lot about detectors. He seemed to realize quickly (probably because I was the 10 thousandth person to come in with that look on his/her face) that he wasn't going to make a sale. He made a couple suggestions which didn't help, not surprlsingly. Here's a question to think about: how long has Walmart had detectors on shelves? In the "old days" you had to either buy in a specialized store (or maybe a coin shop) or through mail order. We also had magazines that did reviews and had articles showing detectorists finding valuables with a particular detector -- silent advertising. I'm glad we still have Gerry, and he likes to talk (and give useful advice) over the phone, but how many Gerrys are out there? It's a long way from Indiana to Idaho, even if they're close to each other in my Rand McNally road atlas (another product on life-support?). First Texas has taken advantage of the changing sales climate. They aren't alone in that, for sure. I think kac asked a good question and I'm pretty sure we know the answer -- a huge percentage of detector sales (I'm tossing in my entry at 90%) are first time buyers, not readers of niche forums. If you want a profit you'd better be selling where those people are buying. While I'm on my soapbox, I'll throw out one more issue. This morning our tree expert came around to give us advice on a dying tree. He mentioned that he used to have 11 employees, he'd like to have 7, but all he has is 4 because he can't find people who can do the work. Most hires (which he tries hard to vet) either aren't reliable or can't handle the hard work. The USA has evolved into chair-sitters in more ways than one. Engineers? Well, they are a special class of chair-sitter but engineering takes hard work, lots of education and training, the right attitude, etc. I seem to recall First Texas Engineering Director Carl Moreland posting here that there's always an open chair there awaiting a good detector engineer. Criticizing companies from a distance seems to be open season here, and has been for as long as I've been a member. (Full discosure -- I'm a participant.) But one thing is true in 99.9% of those posts -- we don't really know what is going on inside these companies, and it might not be a fact that they are simply getting fat and lazy resting on their laurels as we often conclude.
  24. What, the truck stop didn't have snake guards to match those slippers? Well done turning lemons into lemonade. I suspect most "in your shoes" would have just figured it wasn't their day and high-tailed it home.
×
×
  • Create New...