Mayo South Elgin
Sr. Member
Met up with Paul bunyan, aka Lowbatts, on South Street today. At one point I got a particularly strong signal but it was somehow different. I asked Tim to double check the signal and see what he thought. He got a slightly good signal also but thought there was iron in there. He starts digging and immediately gets a 3 inch tree root. Neither of us brought the solar powered Sawzall but Tim had his trusty tree emancipator or ax or adz or whatever its called and he proceeded to chop out the majority of the root. At this point I almost started feeling guilty he was doing all the work so when he handed me the tool to get the rest of the root out, I told him - no it's your find. Well he insisted no it was my find, which I took to mean he was tired of chopping roots. I chopped out the rest of the root and dug around a bit and found the iron piece - a long square nail - but on checking the hole, there was still a good signal there. Digging some more small roots out and going down another couple inches, it was now obvious that stories like this more often than not end up like this. Underneath that huge root was the gear thingey pictured in the large group photo. It may have been from an old music box or a weird clock. Anyways, a big THANK YOU Tim for all the hard labor!
As we proceeded in a westerly direction, I kept collecting mem cents here and there and wondered if it would ever end. I was getting tired of digging them. So I get another signal that I thought could be another mem or possibly a wheatie since I had dug a couple of those. I'm thinking, I should just skip this one and concentrate on only the high tones. I couldn't get myself to pass it up so I dug it. Out pops the Indian Head and it's in great shape as you can see in the photo. That's probably my best looking one so far - all I did to clean it was dish detergent and a soft toothbrush.
More mems, three different times I got fooled by great signals that were whole pop cans 10 to 12 inches down right near the new curbs. Another wheatie, miscellaneous junkage, and then finally my first silver on South. I cleaned it with the same dish detergent and toothbrush only. A nice Barber dime.
I posted the photo of the miscellaneous junk, and the mems and clad dimes and one lone Jefferson Nickel just to show everyone (that doesn't have a Minelab) that even though the Minelab has the ability to see good targets relatively close to junk targets, it doesn't eliminate having to dig the junk! And in sites with the potential for older stuff, I think you want to dig pretty much everything anyways.
The wheaties were 1917, 1920, 1940, 1945, 1946
As we proceeded in a westerly direction, I kept collecting mem cents here and there and wondered if it would ever end. I was getting tired of digging them. So I get another signal that I thought could be another mem or possibly a wheatie since I had dug a couple of those. I'm thinking, I should just skip this one and concentrate on only the high tones. I couldn't get myself to pass it up so I dug it. Out pops the Indian Head and it's in great shape as you can see in the photo. That's probably my best looking one so far - all I did to clean it was dish detergent and a soft toothbrush.
More mems, three different times I got fooled by great signals that were whole pop cans 10 to 12 inches down right near the new curbs. Another wheatie, miscellaneous junkage, and then finally my first silver on South. I cleaned it with the same dish detergent and toothbrush only. A nice Barber dime.
I posted the photo of the miscellaneous junk, and the mems and clad dimes and one lone Jefferson Nickel just to show everyone (that doesn't have a Minelab) that even though the Minelab has the ability to see good targets relatively close to junk targets, it doesn't eliminate having to dig the junk! And in sites with the potential for older stuff, I think you want to dig pretty much everything anyways.
The wheaties were 1917, 1920, 1940, 1945, 1946
