question on a detecting garden

[fliermartin]

Well i just got a metal detecting garden set up in my yard.wanted to get it in befor it got too cold to dig. My question is how long is it going to take to start getting normal signals. I understand it is going to take some time for the items i burried to build some halo but was wondering if others that set up thier own test gardens could let me know how long it needed to start giving normal signals. Tks for any input.

 

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[cudamark]

It takes years for it to be like a "virgin" park area. You can accelerate the process by adding a bit of fertilizer to the soil when you bury the targets.

 

[U.K. Brian]

How long is a piece of string ? My oldest test bed is around twenty years old now and could be said to be giving normal signals but even a week old bed has a purpose in that it can be used to compare one coil with another to see which works best. Two detectors can also be put up against each other and useful results obtained.
These tests have to be done one after the other as if you tested one machine one day and the other the next it could have rained in the night and invalidated the results.

Best test bed to create is one that contains only the same items (say the same silver coin) buried at increasing depths. You can then borrow a new design of your present machine which is supposed to be improved and find that though it might be a little deeper than your older model the original design model may correctly I.D. at 9 inches whilst the new version starts indicating the good item as ferrous at 8 inches.
Tap a inch of dowl directly over each target so you know exactly where the coin is and you can conduct further tests of coils by at what point the machine sounds off approaching the dowl marker. Do this with the targets you know are at various depths and you can work out the hot area under the coil from surface to maximum depth and will find out that those little drawings in detector books (concentric or DD) are often totally misleading.

 

[BC1969]

what I did for mine is soak items in salt water then bury and add salt brine to the dirt, want halo that's the fastest way to get it!
silver barely will halo over time, gold won't ever halo.

BC

 

[U.K. Brian]

No one should really want "halo". The extra depth is gained at the price of damage to the coin/relic.

 

[fliermartin]

thanks for the advice going to go make some brine tonight and soak the holes.

 

[blong10]

So silver doesn't really produce a halo effect

 

[U.K. Brian]

Silver can produce a patina over time which in fact makes the item harder to find. If a coin is an alloy, say part silver with a percentage of copper, then the two can react together and increase depth of detection for a time.