Any tips you could pass on about iron and the 800

[Truth]

I have found my fair share of wonderful things with the 800 at great depths but I want to know is there a setting or tips that works best with these square nails. Anything would be appreciated thank you

 

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[smallfoot]

Truth I can't vouch for the Nox because I don't run one, but I often wonder what makes them dang things ring so good too. I run my machine where it discs out much iron and still get hits on square nails that have me thinking non-ferrous..I dig most iffy signals anyway but still get surprised with their numbers.

 

[Truth]

Truth I can't vouch for the Nox because I don't run one, but I often wonder what makes them dang things ring so good too. I run my machine where it discs out much iron and still get hits on square nails that have me thinking non-ferrous..I dig most iffy signals anyway but still get surprised with their numbers.

It seems like all my good fines iffies and these solid hits that sound beautiful are square nails. It literally drives me crazy!!! And I dig so many plugs that I have found silver half Dahms in the center of square nails so now I have to make sure that all the nails are out or I might miss something. That’s why I feel like I get so lucky but it’s also the harder I work the luckier I get. Ugggh

 

[ColonelDan]

I'll not begin to tell you what to do but were I in your shoes, I'd set up a test garden in the type of soil I normally hunt with good targets interspersed with iron nails at various depths. Then I'd adjust the recovery, sensitivity and F2 iron bias to where I achieved the best target ID and separation....under those conditions with those test targets.

This isn't a cure-all by any means as conditions are certainly not uniform throughout any area of operations but it helps me become more familiar with what my EQX is trying to tell me under various conditions when faced with detecting pesky targets mixed with the good ones.

Just the view from my foxhole....

 

[Tommybuckets]

I have the same problem. Those colonial nails sound so good. I haven't found a trick but the front to back slide or the coil bob could help. My buddy swears by it but I just dig fast n furious. When it gets too thick i pull out the Deus with the HF coil n hit it at 40-80KHZ.

 

[cudamark]

Maybe try using the Gold mode in 40khz only as a test mode. You may have to dig a few targets, both good and bad to see how it might show a difference in your soil conditions. If it's a wet salt water area......never mind!

 

[VA relicman]

What I usually do is hit it from all four angles and see if the VDI and tone stay the same. If it stays close then ill dig it. On iron my vdi will jump around alot from low to high. Ill also cut on all metal and see if it gives me a fair amount of grunt. Haven't dug a nail in a while

 

[Truth]

I'll not begin to tell you what to do but were I in your shoes, I'd set up a test garden in the type of soil I normally hunt with good targets interspersed with iron nails at various depths. Then I'd adjust the recovery, sensitivity and F2 iron bias to where I achieved the best target ID and separation....under those conditions with those test targets.

This isn't a cure-all by any means as conditions are certainly not uniform throughout any area of operations but it helps me become more familiar with what my EQX is trying to tell me under various conditions when faced with detecting pesky targets mixed with the good ones.

Just the view from my foxhole....

That was just the answer I was looking for I really appreciate your time.

 

[Truth]

I appreciate you all giving me great advice that I needed and I know I have to slow down do a test garden and do my homework. I always hated homework and I guess this is no difference

 

[pa-dirt_nc-sand]

If you are itching to dig the iffy signals for that long shot deep silver, you have to dig a good deal of “drumsticks ” (Rusted square nails that look like a mini chicken drumstick.) These guys give a one way or 2 way bouncy hightone to iron signal, occasionally the same signal is a deep dandy, clip or coin, but usually poultry. Those perfectly preserved square nails that were annealed in a fire sound sooo good as well. At least you are digging in an old promising site!

 

[digger27]

I live and hunt in Birmingham Ala. that has areas with red, mineralized dirt and clay and also massive issues with iron of all kinds both big and small due to my geographic location and the history of so many major iron and steel plants that used to be here.
Also most sites I hunt, including public parks, used to be areas where old homes and even entire neighborhoods used to exist so everywhere I hunt seems like old, razed homesteads with all the crazy junk you usually find at sites like that and masking is my biggest challenge along with a million of those falsing, high tone, fairly solid sounding iron issues.
Here are a couple of tips I use to keep me from wasting time digging tons of iron junk that seems to help.

I turn the horseshoe on over higher tone iffies and if I get a constant iron growl along with the higher tone most times it usually is just iron.
If course there could be a high conductor down there hanging out with iron, too, but I have dug a ton of these types of signals and it usually turns out to be just iron.

I hit iffy targets from more than one direction, on lots of iron if the signal changes a lot that is usually iron junk.
Nails especially, signals I get going "down the pipe" compared to crossing them sideways are usually very different.

If I get some signals in the higher sections up in the 20's that seem fairly solid and repeating and hit from several directions before digging I stick my digger in the dirt and lift up slightly before I dig a hole and then rescan...I can't count how many of those 20's signals just disappear completely from all directions.
I guess if there is such a thing this "breaks the iron halo" and converts the signal to a much better, and real, actual iron only signal.
Just doing that one thing has saved me more time and wasted effort than you might believe.
I still dig iron, some of it just can't be avoided, but anything I can do to free up my time to be able to go after the better, and actual, good target signals definitely helps.

 

[cudamark]

In many cases, it's the other way around for me here on some of our beaches with black sand. I can get a good repeatable signal in the 20's, take a small scoop of sand, rescan, and either get an iron null, or, no signal at all. I love those! It means it's been there a long time......time enough for that black sand to attach itself to the non-ferrous item and try to fool the detector. I always dig those out, and most of the time they're a good target. Now, if it's a high 20's or 30's signal and mixed with an iron grunt, those are almost always big rusty iron. In an old area, I reluctantly dig those too. Occasionally, it will be a good target next to an iron one. I'd hate to miss a great old coin or piece of jewelry because I was too lazy to dig it.

 

[Truth]

I live and hunt in Birmingham Ala. that has areas with red, mineralized dirt and clay and also massive issues with iron of all kinds both big and small due to my geographic location and the history of so many major iron and steel plants that used to be here.
Also most sites I hunt, including public parks, used to be areas where old homes and even entire neighborhoods used to exist so everywhere I hunt seems like old, razed homesteads with all the crazy junk you usually find at sites like that and masking is my biggest challenge along with a million of those falsing, high tone, fairly solid sounding iron issues.
Here are a couple of tips I use to keep me from wasting time digging tons of iron junk that seems to help.

I turn the horseshoe on over higher tone iffies and if I get a constant iron growl along with the higher tone most times it usually is just iron.
If course there could be a high conductor down there hanging out with iron, too, but I have dug a ton of these types of signals and it usually turns out to be just iron.

I hit iffy targets from more than one direction, on lots of iron if the signal changes a lot that is usually iron junk.
Nails especially, signals I get going "down the pipe" compared to crossing them sideways are usually very different.

If I get some signals in the higher sections up in the 20's that seem fairly solid and repeating and hit from several directions before digging I stick my digger in the dirt and lift up slightly before I dig a hole and then rescan...I can't count how many of those 20's signals just disappear completely from all directions.
I guess if there is such a thing this "breaks the iron halo" and converts the signal to a much better, and real, actual iron only signal.
Just doing that one thing has saved me more time and wasted effort than you might believe.
I still dig iron, some of it just can't be avoided, but anything I can do to free up my time to be able to go after the better, and actual, good target signals definitely helps.

Thank you for giving me that advice.

 

[Toecutter]

I only dig squar nails when Im digging signals that sound good in one direction, If its a coin you will know it and thats what I v come to learn, I have yet dig a scratchy one way tone that has paid off, I can make a nail sound dig able if i sit there long enough playing around with it , almost seems like i can make any signal sound dig able if i mess with long enough and its always a square nail that does it, if i cant get a get a good consistent reading in 2 direction Ill pass but not always...

 

[digger27]

Thank you for giving me that advice.

You're welcome.
I lost almost all my patience years ago digging tons of holes with mostly junk, or wasting time and energy spinning my wheels to find garbage.
Funny that I ended up aiming for and mostly hunting some of the trashiest sites you have ever seen and then ultimately living in a place with weird mineralized devil dirt and more iron than you might think possible...even in lawns at private homes, I just can't seem to avoid it.

A long time ago I decided to hunt in a more "High Percentage", way, figure out how to avoid most of the trash, junk, garbage, and here, the tons of iron and still find the good stuff.
Nowadays I only dig about 20% of the trash and junk I get signals on and yet knowing full well I could be missing stuff I still seemed to have found way more than my share of great treasure.
These tips are just a few of the things I have learned to do out there to attempt to expend less energy, waste less time and find more treasure.
Hope they help.

 

[Eastender]

Since I am getting a new 800 delivered this week I find this thread beneficial. It will be interesting for me to transition away from my White's Spectra V3i where much of my detecting is done visually as opposed to tonally. The color screen shows the three freq simultaneously and bar graph displays red for iron. I've trusted this system for displaying iron. Even went back over my hunting grounds and dug up many iron targets on purpose to see what I was passing over. I'm not in areas with a lot of iron debris and the material culture in general is sparse. Puritan agrarian minimalists beginning in the mid-1600's. And in areas where the ruins of a home are from a known date I will dig some nails to supply time frames for types. During the colonial period nails were a form of currency. Being a builder, I find the nail technology interesting, especially the larger spikes and broad nails which were possibly used in ship building. I've seen styles which may be traced to the same blacksmith on homesteads hills apart. On two occasions I found interesting colonial pottery frags in the hole while digging up iron on purpose which I normally passed over. Anxious to see how the Spectra and 800 stack up.

 

[Truth]

You're welcome.
I lost almost all my patience years ago digging tons of holes with mostly junk, or wasting time and energy spinning my wheels to find garbage.
Funny that I ended up aiming for and mostly hunting some of the trashiest sites you have ever seen and then ultimately living in a place with weird mineralized devil dirt and more iron than you might think possible...even in lawns at private homes, I just can't seem to avoid it.

A long time ago I decided to hunt in a more "High Percentage", way, figure out how to avoid most of the trash, junk, garbage, and here, the tons of iron and still find the good stuff.
Nowadays I only dig about 20% of the trash and junk I get signals on and yet knowing full well I could be missing stuff I still seemed to have found way more than my share of great treasure.
These tips are just a few of the things I have learned to do out there to attempt to expend less energy, waste less time and find more treasure.
Hope they help.

Same here I’m a 50-year-old who had a blood clot in his pulmonary break and almost kill me so now I have to learn how to dig smartly and not chase every signal like I used to.

 

[digger27]

Same here I’m a 50-year-old who had a blood clot in his pulmonary break and almost kill me so now I have to learn how to dig smartly and not chase every signal like I used to.

At first when I started about 10 years ago I was an almost literal "dig it all", hunter, the "What ifs" would really bother me if I didn't dig most of what I rolled over but that got old quick...or it did after about a year or so doing it that way.
Eventually I decided I needed to dig a whole lot less but somehow still find more so that high performance, dig only the better more solid stuff, started to grow in my mind.
I knew the only way to be successful at this doing it this way is to learn all my detectors as well as I possibly could so I would be able to notice the better signals that more often than not are masked or changed to not so obvious targets because mineralization, trash, other kinds of garbage and especially even small pieces of iron which can do that easily.
In our business I believe there are normal, obvious solid signals and there are other "solid signals" that aren't so obvious but they actually are there if you learn to notice them with the right coil manipulation and experience.
I learned a basic F2 so well and became so successful than many couldn't believe what I was finding...some still don't.
Eventually I settled in digging targets that never jumped more than 3 numbers with that one and my clad, old coins and especially silver and gold jewelry volume soared while my garbage digging volume dropped.
I had a Vaq and did the same but when I got a Compadre I liked that even better and spent hours learning it...most of that transferred over to the Vaq so got better at both.
I got an F70 and with all those settings and so much more power the thing was hard to tame at first but I still found a ton of the easy stuff as I learned and as I dove deeper into experimenting with those settings and got better at observing both the screen and the tones and some very out of the box, and yet still repeating, behavior, the not so easy to find great targets showed up more and more.
Now I have a Nox, too, and it has taken me a long time to figure this thing out and exactly how it behaves in this strange land I hunt in but I have still been very successful from the start with it and I am getting even more so with every hunt because each one is a learning opportunity to me and as I get better I find more great treasure.

All of this took many hours to learn all this stuff so well and I am far from done using any detector but every minute, every hour I spent learning it all was a labor of love and I found tons of great stuff all along the way.
As I reached certain plateaus along those learning curves things got way easier, more understandable and I continued to find more and more in sites that supposedly were totally hunted out by myself and so many others.
They never were hunted out...what was needed was someone to come along and unlock the secrets of challenging and difficult dirt and conditions.
There is always an answer, I believe, a key to every situation to unlock any puzzle so now it is just my quest to find them no matter how long it takes.
That is one of the great attractions about this hobby for me, I love finding all I do but even more I love getting challenged and then finding a way to conquer it and achieve success...but I am weird in that way.


I don't think any newbies can do what I do the way I do it and be as successful as I have been but I do believe anyone can learn to do it this way if they choose to and spend the time and effort to committing to actually do it if that's what they want, and need, to do.
I had to learn to do it this way, I had no choice because my time hunting was getting smaller due to life stuff, my energy levels were shrinking as the years passed and my patience for digging so much junk went down to almost zero.
If I kept going the way I was, despite having some great success, eventually I would have been chased right out of the hobby if I was forced to continue on that same, wheel spining path I was on.
Funny thing is as I learned more I spent less time, energy and effort digging junk and dug suprisingly way more better targets as my skill set grew...once I learned what I needed to learn my great finds grew exponentially and now what I learned I will have forever.
But I will still keep learning...that never ends in this hobby as far as I am concerned, and I will happily share all that I know to help anyone that needs to get to the next level.
I learned a ton from others in these forums and my hours of experience so I think it is my duty to pass it on...The circle of life in this hobby.

Experience + knowledge of my detectors and target behavior gained over time = success.
It's as simple as that equation...for me.

I can see you have some good reasons to avoid as much trash as you can, also.
Hopefully you can use some of these tips and great advice from all these members to do that to your satisfaction and still be as successful as possible.

 

[Toecutter]

Same here I’m a 50-year-old who had a blood clot in his pulmonary break and almost kill me so now I have to learn how to dig smartly and not chase every signal like I used to.

I have a prosthetic left arm, If Im not digging smart Im done in a couple hours but I can dig for 8 hours if I dig smarter not harder lol

 

[Truth]

I have a prosthetic left arm, If Im not digging smart Im done in a couple hours but I can dig for 8 hours if I dig smarter not harder lol

Yeah that’s probably where I am right now I just have to learn patience and listen more