Mayo South Elgin
Sr. Member
Have you ever hunted really trashy areas on purpose?
Last week I thought I would try that, on the assumption that most other casual detectorists wouldn't stay and hunt in that spot because of the amount of trashy signals, and there might be some goodies mixed in with the junk.
So I checked out an old park and went right to a couple of trees that had a picnic bench within 10 feet of them. It was a goldmine of trash. I was getting machine gun rapid fire signals all in the range of screw caps, pull tabs, foil, can slaw etc. Every inch there were targets in all directions.
Instead of letting it annoy the hell out of me like it usually does, I decided to ignore the quantity of junk signals assaulting my ears and to just listen for the good tones. I had to move the coil fairly slow to get it to catch the good sounds in between all the junk and nulls. There were too many signals to rely on the display so I didn't bother looking at it until I could lock on to a good sound. Once I found what I thought was a repeatable good signal, I'd glance at the display. Pinpointing was a crap shoot in this area so I just did the best I could at keeping the good tone at the center of the coil from two directions.
This exercise helped me train my ears and my brain to just pay attention to the better signals.
I still wound up digging some pull tabs and pop tops when I was trying for nickels, and a few assorted screw caps but I managed to get 10 clad dimes, 2 clad quarters, 1 Jefferson nickel, and one 1913 wheat at 7 inches down near the base of one of the trees. Dirty clad not pictured because we've all seen it before.
The wheat was encapsulated in dirt, and my usual dish soap routine wasn't cutting it.
I have some new concentrated citrus oil cleaner that I tried on it and after sitting for about 4 days in it, I was able to clean off most of the crud with a toothpick.
Last week I thought I would try that, on the assumption that most other casual detectorists wouldn't stay and hunt in that spot because of the amount of trashy signals, and there might be some goodies mixed in with the junk.
So I checked out an old park and went right to a couple of trees that had a picnic bench within 10 feet of them. It was a goldmine of trash. I was getting machine gun rapid fire signals all in the range of screw caps, pull tabs, foil, can slaw etc. Every inch there were targets in all directions.
Instead of letting it annoy the hell out of me like it usually does, I decided to ignore the quantity of junk signals assaulting my ears and to just listen for the good tones. I had to move the coil fairly slow to get it to catch the good sounds in between all the junk and nulls. There were too many signals to rely on the display so I didn't bother looking at it until I could lock on to a good sound. Once I found what I thought was a repeatable good signal, I'd glance at the display. Pinpointing was a crap shoot in this area so I just did the best I could at keeping the good tone at the center of the coil from two directions.
This exercise helped me train my ears and my brain to just pay attention to the better signals.
I still wound up digging some pull tabs and pop tops when I was trying for nickels, and a few assorted screw caps but I managed to get 10 clad dimes, 2 clad quarters, 1 Jefferson nickel, and one 1913 wheat at 7 inches down near the base of one of the trees. Dirty clad not pictured because we've all seen it before.
The wheat was encapsulated in dirt, and my usual dish soap routine wasn't cutting it.
I have some new concentrated citrus oil cleaner that I tried on it and after sitting for about 4 days in it, I was able to clean off most of the crud with a toothpick.
