500% more???

[b3y0nd3r]

In an article "BENEATH THE MASK" by Tom Dankowski he states:

"If a 8" coil can 'see' a one gallon volume of dirt and the 11" coil (not 10.5") can 'see' 7 gallons of dirt at any given time, it is a fact that you are 7 times more likely to 'mask' a object with the larger coil, especially in trashy areas. It is so easy to get into trouble with the larger coil AND NEVER KNOW IT!"

Brilliant for sure, but what about other factors? What happens when you crank up or drop the gain/sensitivity? What happens when you increase/decrease your sweep speed? How about proximity of the coil to the ground? What about the ground itself? What if it is highly mineralized or very little mineralization?(those were rhetorical questions) There are a monstrous amount of factors that can increase/reduce masking.

I recently have acquired a super sensitive Impact. It was constantly hitting low conductor targets, they were tiny, but the response was that of a high conductor at certain angles. I knew they were not good targets, I wasn't fooled, but i dug them anyway. That prompted me to think that. too much gain/sensitivity, can mask targets too. How many of us set the gain/sensitivity at high and never change it throughout the entire hunt?

He also states that:

"When you discriminate iron with any detector (Minelab calls it "iron mask") you have achieved nearly nothing. (Simply, there will be no audio response reported in the headphones). The detectors electromagnetic signal is still disrupted by the iron"

If you think about what this really means, it means that you can't ignore something without detecting it first, and if you detected it, then you can't ignore it. There really is no way to rid iron(besides digging it). All you can do is work around it.

Further in the article he states:

"Nine (9) coins were found with the CZ. Thirty-nine (39) ADDITIONAL coins were (unmasked) found with special equipment. Forty-eight (48) coins in total. Looking at the ratio a bit differently; 9 of the 48 coins were detectable by a top-line coin detector. Thirtynine additional coins--- that's over 500 percent MORE coins,,,, were masked! Yes, unsuspectingly, this is THE norm!"

When I first read this, I did a triple take. 500% more coins were masked? I didn't believe that. Who could? Well, I was wrong.

A local park was being redone and the dug down about a foot. After securing permission, I took my CTX 3030 and went to work. I found mostly clad and junk, nothing old. I used the standard and the large 17" coil. After a few days I thought it was cleaned out then the foreman came over and said "we are removing two more inches tomorrow". I thought "two inches? Big deal." I went else where the next day and drove by the park with an hour of so daylight left. I stopped and thought, "what the hell, lets just see". All of the sudden there were targets everywhere. Wheats, indians, V's, Buffs, a large cent, a crotal bell(no silver). All just two inches that the CTX couldn't see.

So 500% more? You bet your azz!

Thanks for reading

 

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[bigscoop]

I think the title, "BENEATH THE MASK", shouldn't be just confined to those easier situations involving iron, VS say, aluminum, tin, copper, and/or other junk alloys, etc. Iron, by comparison, is much easier to deal with then these other very common masking agents. There are several machines that are ready made for dealing with iron, the real challenges starting when all of these other masking agents/contaminations, or combinations are, are encountered.

 

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[IDXMonster]

I think the title, "BENEATH THE MASK", shouldn't be just confined to those easier situations involving iron, VS say, aluminum, tin, copper, and/or other junk alloys, etc. Iron, by comparison, is much easier to deal with then these other very common masking agents. There are several machines that are ready made for dealing with iron, the real challenges starting when all of these other masking agents/contaminations, or combinations are, are encountered.

You ain't kidding. It's been discussed before that the real improvements will be made with aluminum scrap discrimination and sorting out all the Conductive trash. Whether that's actually scientifically possible to avoid ALL of that stuff,I doubt it...not with machines running the way they do now. Trying to qualify the target through the 3S rule is about all you can do to actually have a chance at some of these sites,they are so contaminated. The battle I always fight is...old coins around here are deeper...out of reach much of the time with the 6" coil even maxed out. So I cannot use that coil most of the time no matter what. Even if my ground had NO contamination it couldn't hit the coin. So I'm forced to use stock or larger,and I think that's why a lot of guys DO go larger...to have the ability to see the coins in the first place.

 

[bigscoop]

I just walked back in the door from a water hunt in one of these extremely trashy places, and this place is also crazy hard to hunt because the bottom can go from concrete hard clay to deep beds of stone and gravel in a heartbeat. It's nuts. But anyway, over the clay areas it's next to impossible to recover targets simply because the bottom is so hard and the surface of that bottom is so sticky, everything just wants to push ahead of the scoop once you do break ground. So naturally after spending time trying to isolate a target you often end up scooting it right into other targets just to start that process all over again. But.....what I have learned is that with the right machine "sound/tone" is everything, unless of course you scoot that target into other targets just like it..... Not a chance that you could hunt this place with anything over an 8", maybe with a concentric but you'd have to be really-realy good with it.

 

[b3y0nd3r]

At any rate...here's a video from today using a huge coil in iron. Needless to say I was happy with the results!https://youtu.be/ib_F2QTe5HA

Nice video for sure. But that is not what I was talking about. There were a carpet of nails basically on the surface(within two inches).

 

[IDXMonster]

Nice video for sure. But that is not what I was talking about. There were a carpet of nails basically on the surface(within two inches).

Yeah Bey I know what you're saying....if coins are 7-8" deep in THAT scenario it's gonna be a tough go. That's a situation that would likely render the 17" useless. I normally try to just stay the hell out of that stuff unless I get pulled in by a good find early on.
I'm going to do some more filming with the stock and 6" to see if I can capture anything useful. I do have a sinking feeling that while we sometimes think a place is "pretty clean" it might not be...but I'll need absolutely proof through actual finds to solidify that thought. Who knows,in 2 months I might be a small coil convert! Sure is lighter too!

 

[b3y0nd3r]

Yeah Bey I know what you're saying....if coins are 7-8" deep in THAT scenario it's gonna be a tough go. That's a situation that would likely render the 17" useless. I normally try to just stay the hell out of that stuff unless I get pulled in by a good find early on.
I'm going to do some more filming with the stock and 6" to see if I can capture anything useful. I do have a sinking feeling that while we sometimes think a place is "pretty clean" it might not be...but I'll need absolutely proof through actual finds to solidify that thought. Who knows,in 2 months I might be a small coil convert! Sure is lighter too!

Yea this is something you have to experience for yourself to get a better understanding of it. Don't get me wrong, I like big coils, just not for all situations.

 

[bigscoop]

It's interesting, the advantages in where we hunt also playing a part. In the water I typically don't have to worry so much about leaving unsightly surface blemishes so I can use my scoop to help rearrange the trash in order to get a cleaner view of potential targets. I just hunted a "very trashy" bottom the other evening with the stock 8" coil and most of the recoveries started out as just chirps, tics, or otherwise broken responses. But because I can use the scoop to move things around I can often create those cleaner windows required in order to grab a better response from suspected targets. Wouldn't it be great if we could this on land.