Bill Watson's Gold Ring Vdi Chart, With Notes From Steve H

[Steve Herschbach]

From Gold Coast Treasure Hunters

“This chart shows the VDI (sometimes called TID, for Target ID) numbers for over 50 gold rings, which Bill pushed into a thick cardboard sheet. White’s VDIs are down the left, Minelab down the right. Weight in grams is across the bottom. Notice the nickel’s position in the center of the chart.”

Bill Watson's Gold Ring VDI Chart

The photo almost perfectly illustrates a study Fisher did decades ago on the distribution of rings and target ID. There are two distinct clusters, with a soft gap in the middle. In a nutshell, womens rings, often high value and with gems, fall below nickel and solidly in the foil range. Mens rings cluster above nickel in the tabs to screw cap range. The nickel range itself is actually weak on rings, as falling between the two classes in size.

Fisher used this information specifically to design the CZ series and decide how to lay out the target id tones and bins. They tested 255 rings for the CZ-70 and came up with some interesting percentages. I have seen these percentages reflected in the field.

2% of the rings were in the copper penny, dime, quarter range.

4% of the rings were in the zinc penny/screw cap range

49% of the rings were in the "pull tab" range above U.S. nickel

10% of the rings were in the nickel range (emphasis added)

36% of the rings were in the foil range below nickel

0% of the rings were in the iron range

If you stick with the 49% tab and 36% foil range, you will get 85% of the goods, especially the high value stuff, while missing a large percentage of "trash", and that in this case also means coins. I do consider digging coins a waste of time, especially at depth while fighting heavy surf.

I have mentioned the Fisher CZ detectors. Rumor has it that CZ stood for "Coin Zapper". The CZ detector are unique in having a shuffled discrimination scale that puts nickels up high with the other coins. Little attention is paid to the fact they also lumped the bulk of the ring zones together, while intentionally excluding the ring weak nickel range. In addition to visual target identification, the original CZ  has 3-tone, audio target ID. A low tone is for iron, a medium tone Is for pull tabs and foil and a high tone is for coins, including nickels. An overload signal, which sounds like a telephone, alerts you to large, shallow targets that are usually (but not always!) trash. The newer CZ-3D added a fourth tone, and was further refined as a coin detector, somewhat messing with the originals better jewelry hunting aspects. I think the older models, including the CZ-20/21 are actually better jewelry detectors.

Basically with a older CZ, low tone is iron, medium tone the ring range, and high tone the coin range. The newest model, the CZ-3D adds a fourth tone to the scheme designed to capture old coins in the zinc penny range, but for jewelry detecting the original CZ scheme is pretty simple and ingenious.

Fisher also offers this modified tone scheme in the F75 models. The good news is with many newer detectors that have custom tone id ranges, so you can duplicate this setup yourself. The main thing is to be aware, no matter what detector you are using, or where the possible ring "hot spots" are on the VDI scale depending on where you are hunting.

From Fisher CZ-70 Pro Owners Manual, page 24 (tones added):

More detailed information on gold and target id, various brands and models

[Skull diver]

Short sad story of a cursed goldhunter's life😄

[tvr]

On 1/31/2022 at 10:16 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

high tone is for coins, including nickels.

 

On 1/31/2022 at 10:16 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

10% of the rings were in the nickel range

The two quoted sections are why my CZ20 was calibrated for nickles to give a mid-tone audio.

[Joe Beechnut OBN]

3 hours ago, Skullgolddiver said:

Short sad story of a cursed goldhunter's life😄

Yes! Why would anyone want to be..... 

[Steve Herschbach]

17 hours ago, tvr said:

The two quoted sections are why my CZ20 was calibrated for nickles to give a mid-tone audio.

How in the world did you to get that to happen? I lobbied to have nickels put back in mid-tone in the CZ-20 for years, and was basically told it was impossible. The tone scheme made more sense for coin hunting than jewelry hunting. On the other hand, if your goal is to miss nothing however, may as well, use a PI and dig everything. The CZ is using the 80/20 rule, most bang for the dig.

[phrunt]

For the amount of targets I've dug I seem to struggle to find rings, I blamed it on nobody losing them until a local guy (not absolute local but an NZ guy) posted his ring finds on Facebook, he took the liberty of saying the VDI number of each of the rings in a nice little display.  He did so for a guide to people so they know what ID's to look for with the Equinox/Vanquish.

9ct are by far the most common rings in NZ and AU, I believe they're not common at all in the USA.

It still doesn't explain why I don't find many rings, I dig almost all targets between 9 and 22 as they're mostly our good coin numbers, I've put it down to I've mostly been hunting sports fields used for Rugby which is a sport that was dominated by males until more recently.

Fisher was onto something with the CZ, perhaps something manufacturers could take note of in the future for jewellery modes.

 

 

 

[geof_junk]

Simon most of my gold rings ( and Carols ) were found at the beach. One beach in Queensland I got over 50 rings from it while on holidays. My brother in-law (now deceased) got 300+ before I went up to QLD for a holiday. He got onto the spot after some one showed him hundreds of rings they had got when a cyclone had removed most of the sand. Most of the gold rings there were 18 or 22 caret and very old and at low tide and below (Easter is one of times of extreme tides). My take of gold rings were 99% from beaches, and those that I was asked to find that the owners lost. As being a gold prospector I rarely use any discrimination and the table of ID in this post shows that a lot of junk sit in this range.

   

[Erik Oostra]

2 hours ago, phrunt said:

It still doesn't explain why I don't find many rings, I dig almost all targets between 9 and 22 as they're mostly our good coin numbers

I think Geof is spot on saying that beaches are the way to go for finding rings.. Thin gold rings read anywhere between those target IDs you mention, small silver rings scream even louder.. 

2 hours ago, geof_junk said:

Most of the gold rings there were 18 or 22 caret and very old and at low tide and below (Easter is one of times of extreme tides). My take of gold rings were 99% from beaches, and those that I was asked to find that the owners lost.

This also applies to Magnetic Island, I also find the good stuff after cyclones.. 

[Erik Oostra]

2 hours ago, phrunt said:

He did so for a guide to people so they know what ID's to look for with the Equinox/Vanquish.

Thanks for spreading the joy with old matey's target IDs for the Equinox.. They really show how much the target IDs on smaller, thinner gold rings can vary.. 

[Joe Beechnut OBN]

Just my opinion but I think VDI numbers can be a curse on the wrong beach. If your hunting a beach with deep sand, or lots of wave action where gold can be deep,  any detector (with a VDI or tone ID) those deep gold will come up as Negatives, Nulls or as Iron. I don't think this is a problem at fresh drop beaches as much as at places where gold can sink fast, or get buried. It is for real and I've experienced this many times.

Here is a short video of a gold ring that was a faint, I checked it in disc and it nulled. Only reason I kept digging because I knew there was a chance it could be a good target. Once I've got a couple scoops I check again in Disc.. this time I get a med-high tone. That was the go for me to dig the target. You may have to turn the volume up to hear the first faint signal.