Small beach nook with special(ish) find.

[mikebourgeois]

I'm finding that detecting at beaches is fun but only if I stay out of the water or away from the wet sand. So in an effort to overcome the problem with false reports while detecting I was at a little beach nook just off the way from my place. (5 min walk) It's small... maybe a 30 foot stretch of sand/water built off the walkway on the waterfront. This place is littered with rebar and construction trash and also tons of garbage of the more mundane variety. But it's close and similar to the other beaches I want to work on so I figured I'd spend some time working on detecting in a trashy spot on the beach so I can learn what is false and what is fair but junk.

Just to get it out of the way... I found my first ever spoon... not the first of the year but my first of 3 years of on and off detecting. The sad bit is it was a crack spoon. Wife threw it out the moment I took it out of the pouch. She did let me take a picture of it... but said "god knows what is on it" and I can't exactly disagree with her.

Now... back to detecting school. I spent probably 1 1/2 hours on the beach both on the dry sand and on the wet sand/water. While on wet sand I found an almost constant reading of 74 with an iron tone. In the water I was hitting a 98 again with the iron tone. I was in Beach mode on my Makro Kruzer and I know it seems to love doing this. I changed my setting to 3 tone and most of the weird hits went away... there were a few repeatable falses which is strange but I guess I might be missing a really small something that slipped both my pinpointer and my eyes. I found that if I didn't take the bait of the iron tone and stuck to the middle and high tone hits that I had much better luck in actually finding something. This is lovely but it still means I'm missing potential rings in the 12 to 17 range or so. Still going to work on that... but right now I was happy that I was finding things even though my entire haul for the time out was a crack spoon, 15 foil wrappers, 3 pop tops and about 5 aluminum can bottoms with scorch marks in the bottom. (lost the deposit on those I'm pretty sure)

My other treasure was a quarter. Almost pristine and sitting covered in the dry sand. A little girl had been shadowing me when I was detecting... she was throwing stuff into the water and having a lovely time. Her mom was urging her to not bother the nice man with the detector but of course like kids all over she was blithely oblivious to anything but was on the tip of her tongue. When she was almost ready to go she asked me if I'd found any treasure... I had the quarter so I told her to ask her mom if it was ok for her to have it. Mom came over and asked why I'd give a quarter away... I told her "I detect cause it's fun... I meet all sorts of people and your daughter is just like mine... full of questions but very sweet and polite. She didn't ask for the money but rather asked if I'd found any treasure... I can always find another quarter but for a little girl of her age a quarter is a big deal." I'm not sure if she got my thoughts but she smiled and thanked me. So my fun didn't end with a troubled mom and a disappointed kiddo.

So work and reward... good end to the day. Tomorrow I'm off to prep the garden plot and then if there is enough time left I'm going to hit one of the parks in the highlands and see what has cropped up over the winter.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

A Handbook of Civil War Bullets and Cartridges - Grab it through Amazon!

[CASPER-2]

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Well done sir!

 

[Bottlecapbill]

Just a little something for you to try while hunting. I don't have any salt water experience, and salt water can be hell for a lot of machines. However I do have some really heavy black sand and high mineral beaches where false signals are constant. Even half the rocks are rusty in some spots. A little trick I use to eliminate false signals at my challenging spots is to scrape an inch or so of sand/gravel away with my foot then recheck the hole again. I find false signals often vanish and good hits get stronger. Combine that with swinging 90 degrees to double check for a good target and most of my false signals have been eliminated.

I've also found that using any of the two tone modes can help a lot as well since the volume of the targets can help distinguish between false and real signals. False having a lower volume, real having a distinctly higher volume. Give that a shot as well.

Last bug not least, you're selling your finds list short if you don't go IN the water. There's 10 times more good stuff in the water than on the shore line. Everything on the shore eventually gets dragged into the water during storms and natural erosion.

Keep up the good work and positive vibes.

 

[mikebourgeois]

I'll try scraping the sand surface... see what I come up with... hopefully another spoon at least with no unsavory providence going for it. Thanks.

 

[A2coins]

Great post

 

[Bottlecapbill]

Let me know if it helps so I can pass it on to other salt water hunters.