do you drag the MD on the ground?

[Mr.Jody]

Just thought I might ask, "Do you guys actually drag the coil on the ground or above the ground? I thought I better ask befor I wear the bottom off of mine...lol

 

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[BuckleBoy]

I mean honestly who wants to dig deeper than six inches ?

I think the opposite. Who wants to dig something only 6" deep? It's generally modern and not old enough to make me happy.

I don't know where You're diggin, but where I dig (the woods, yards, plowed fields...just about everywhere except the pastures) old finds ARE consistently in the less-than 6-inch range.


-Buckles

Just to your north. Indiana. The vast majority of old coins that I find are 6" or deeper. Yes, I do find quite a few 4" deep silver silver, wheats, indians, etc. But MOST are deep. There are very few targets left in the range of 6" or shallower. They have all been found.

In the parks, maybe... 

But then again I will Never hunt a park. 

I must live in coin heaven here.  All my LC's, Seateds, and even a 2c piece or two this year were under 6 inches deep.

Must've been the the '37 flood carrying away all of those pesky, shallow Silver Mercuries and floatin 'em down the O-Hi-O


-Buck

 

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[bazinga]

I mean honestly who wants to dig deeper than six inches ?

I think the opposite. Who wants to dig something only 6" deep? It's generally modern and not old enough to make me happy.

I don't know where You're diggin, but where I dig (the woods, yards, plowed fields...just about everywhere except the pastures) old finds ARE consistently in the less-than 6-inch range.


-Buckles

Just to your north. Indiana. The vast majority of old coins that I find are 6" or deeper. Yes, I do find quite a few 4" deep silver silver, wheats, indians, etc. But MOST are deep. There are very few targets left in the range of 6" or shallower. They have all been found.

In the parks, maybe...

But then again will Never hunt a park.

I must live in coin heaven here. All my LC's, Seateds, and even a 2c piece or two this year were under 6 inches deep.

Must've been the the '37 flood carrying away all of those pesky, shallow Silver Mercuries and floatin 'em down the O-Hi-O


-Buck

Not sure why you even responded to my post. But here goes my rebuttal...

Yes, hunting farm fields, woods, etc. is a completely different ball game. Finding seated laying on top of the ground is something I have done in the past, and do certainly enjoy. But when it comes to coins that have actually sank, then it takes some skill in using your machine and not just swinging till you hear a beep. You are awesome, I bow down to you. But hunting woods and farm fields doesn't take any talents at all. Any machine can be used in them and by somebody without any great skills.

 

[MD Dog]

Aren't there density issues about how deep a coin will settle. When I learned MDing some 14 years ago, the old timer who taught me said there's a limit to how deep any coin will settle, based upon it's relative density as compared to it's surrounding soil's density. A clad dime might sink deeper than say a silver dime of less density and no coin can sink of it's own weight deeper than 6 inches due to the density of even the most loamy soil being greater than that of a large coin at six inches. It's kinda like reaching neutral buoyancy in the water.

 

[MD Dog]

OK I see a fight coming I'll bail out now !

 

[SC_hunter]

Aren't there density issues about how deep a coin will settle. When I learned MDing some 14 years ago, the old timer who taught me said there's a limit to how deep any coin will settle, based upon it's relative density as compared to it's surrounding soil's density. A clad dime might sink deeper than say a silver dime of less density and no coin can sink of it's own weight deeper than 6 inches due to the density of even the most loamy soil being greater than that of a large coin at six inches. It's kinda like reaching neutral buoyancy in the water.

MD..I think you are right on that aspect of the sinking coin. But, most parks these days have had fill dirt hauled in and that tends to put the coins deeper.

 

[MD Dog]

How would you know about the fill dirt and why would they do that ?

 

[BuckleBoy]

Not sure why you even responded to my post. But here goes my rebuttal...

Yes, hunting farm fields, woods, etc. is a completely different ball game. Finding seated laying on top of the ground is something I have done in the past, and do certainly enjoy. But when it comes to coins that have actually sank, then it takes some skill in using your machine and not just swinging till you hear a beep. You are awesome, I bow down to you. But hunting woods and farm fields doesn't take any talents at all. Any machine can be used in them and by somebody without any great skills.

I beg to differ!  Bookwork AND Legwork BOTH take skill.  (This is something that many people don't think anything about--especially if they're the type that drive down a road until they see a farmhouse that looks good and knock on the door.)  The best sites Cannot be found by simply driving down the right road and seeing an old house or park.

Finding the site in the woods in the thick of summer--3/4 of a mile deep in the woods--and figuring out How to work out a site there does most certainly take skill.  Figuring out where the perameters of a site are takes skill.  Figuring out the orientation of the house (front/back, etc), finding the cellar hole, outhouse, and well... not to mention likely high-traffic areas to springs and roads to and from the site.  I could go on.  Hunting CW relics in the woods depends on How you swing, and how you deal with the brush, fallen trees, etc.  A lot of how one deals with the site contributes in some way to the finds--and these skills are specific to actual detector swinging technique (and they relate the most to the post above).  If you don't believe me, we can go out to a CW spot sometime and I'm more than happy to prove it to you.  You can pick the spot, or we'll go to one of mine.  

You're right about the plowed fields--in the sense that it doesn't take a whole lot of skill to beep-dig...but it takes a good bit of searchcoil control to get around the cornstalks and in the ruts and ridges of a plowed field, and not miss anything.  Knowing how your detector will react when it is *close to* but not over-top-of a target is Essential.  And all the things that get you to that specific part of that specific field take skill.  Research, deeds, the Tract Record, GPS and old maps...  I've been a ONE detector user for 15 of the past 16 years.  To say that I know it well is an understatement.  Folks generally own too many detectors and change them too frequently in their quest for the latest "new thing."  Regardless of how much skill you say it takes to beep-dig on a plowed field, I can and have dug minieballs out of pastures at over a foot with my detector which was made in 1992.    

 

[Mr.Jody]

Ok, so I'll keep dragging my coil on the ground.

 

[jeff of pa]

How would you know about the fill dirt and why would they do that ?

I now have 2 sites where wheats are at 2"

& Clad & Memorials all the way down from surface to 8"

Don't find too many wheats there anymore.
but when I do find them they are Shallow

but it's obvious fill

 

[bazinga]

Buckle....

I can't argue about finding a spot taking skill. That is something that I'm just not good at for a number of reasons. One is just lack of motivation. I've got a few spots lined up to check out once crops get harvested, but I can't imagine ever having the magnitude of hunting spots that you have.

You are also probably much better suited to using your machine at an iron infested site than I am. I've hunted a number of farm fields where getting 4" depth is a stretch due to so many square nails littering the ground at all depth levels. Your machine is probably much better suited for that kind of hunting and you could probably find more targets than my machine.

As for wooded spots... I would probably spend too much of my time untangling my probe wire and spider like coil from every stick and weed imaginable.

I might even make a detecting trip to KY this fall to see what kind of trouble I can get myself into. A buddy has made the invite. For all I know I will get rocked down there and come home empty handed.

 

[BuckleBoy]

As for wooded spots... I would probably spend too much of my time untangling my probe wire and spider like coil from every stick and weed imaginable.

Yeah, it's a problem.  My Fisher has a spider coil too.  Lost the wing nut off the coil last week in the woods. 

I might even make a detecting trip to KY this fall to see what kind of trouble I can get myself into. A buddy has made the invite. For all I know I will get rocked down there and come home empty handed.

I'm sure your buddy will show you the ropes.  Hopefully he's the kind of buddy that has a good spot picked out for you two.


Keep the coil close to the ground and dig the big iron out as you go, and you'll do o.k.  I used to only dig some of it--then found that it masked some great finds and would have to spend a whole day digging it out after I'd cherrypicked the rest of the site.  That sucked!  Now it's just an unsaid rule with the folks I hunt with that we dig the iron out as we go.


Best Wishes,


Buckles

 

[bazinga]

How would you know about the fill dirt and why would they do that ?

I now have 2 sites where wheats are at 2"

& Clad & Memorials all the way down from surface to 8"

Don't find too many wheats there anymore.
but when I do find them they are Shallow

but it's obvious fill

I found a brand new soccer field that is similar. The top 2" are modern items. At 3-4" I was finding 1860s IHs and other household items from that time period. Then at 8" I was finding modern pop cans, etc. Normally not a site I would detect, but I was bored one day and wanted to see if I couldn't find a ring out there.

 

[deepskyal]

I scrub and have also found coins bass ackwards. Older on top, newer deeper.

I've just watched 2 renovations in parks. Dig, pile the soil, install stuff...push the dirt back and haul the leftover away. Pushing the sod and soil back, lots gets turned upside down...mystery solved.

As far as fill...another park I was finding coins at exactly 4", old and new.....sitting on top of a gravel bed that is now covered in grass and has a shelter. Pretty obvious it was once the parking lot and the park got rearranged so the shelter could be put in a better spot. Top the gravel with some soil, toss some seed....

As far as coil covers...I noticed the plastic they use on some of the newer coils looks cheeper, more brittle. Is that my imagination? My old Whites, I never had a cover for the coil and used that thing for years. Never wore through! I just got a 5" coil for my DFX and it looks like a totally different kind of plastic. Maybe I should invest in a cover for it.

Al

 

[Ray S ECenFL]

Just my 2 cents about something posted here about how far down a coin will sink.

An object will sink till the density of the surrounding soil meets or exceeds the density of the sinking object.

Just thought you would like to know.

Ray S

 

[MD Dog]

That is what I said Ray, at least that is what I was taught. It's all about the density of the soil vs the coin.

If a park has older trees, then fill dirt would be obvious, since trees would sit in a depression. Fill dirt on top of older tree exposed roots will kill the tree.

 

[EasyMoney]

I have written this dozens of times but somehow people seem don't quite understand it, so here goes again anyway.

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER SCRUB the #$%^&%& ground with your coil!

UNLESS you are using an induction balance (IB) or old TR metal detector, And even then you have to be careful not to dislodge the coil windings. Don't do it with a BFO or a BB detector either. And if you don't know what a BB detector is - then you CERTAINLY should heed this advice.

Now why have I write this so many times? Well, it's because most people do not understand how a metal detector works, even though they may have been using them for the last 30 or 40 years.

I have posted little graphs, charts, etc, but still this goes misunderstood.

So here I go one more time;

When you operate your metal detector, internaly there is a set of parameters that allows you to operate below and above a certain null (null meaning "zero"). If you go above it you begin to operate into the positive. If you go below it you begin to operate into the negative. Anybody knows that operating this way loses depth. It's true with ALL detectors, PI's, magnetic imagers, VLF's, Multi-frequencies. magnetic spectrometers, etc, etc. If you were to be able to ground balance your detector right on the ground then you should also be able to scrub it on the ground too - and keep the same affect. WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

The surface of the ground often has more disruptions of magnetically and linearally/randomly distributed minerals of varying types than are found even just below the surface. This is not a joke it is a fact. Many of the surface minerals come from plant life, and many of them are acids (positive) , and many are salts (negative) too, some are even neutral. If you ground balance (AKA "rough discriminate") the detector to within the first 2 inches of the soil surface (1 inch soil, plus 1 inch of grass, etc) then you have ground-balanced the detector to it's max, and I mean it's MAX. If you GB it right on top of the ground though, and use it right on top of the ground - you then have additional interference ("noise") to deal with. This will cause you to lose a lot of depth + plus the normal functions of your discrimination control (AKA "fine-tune ground balance) will suffer too, because the phase shift has been too greatly distorted. . This is not a joke either, it's how your detectors operate. When ground balanced to 1-2" above ground anything past 1" then acts as a surface blanker too, and that in turn makes your detector quit it's heavy breathing by some margin.

Additionally, the null that your detector is working hard to maintain is NEVER (perfectly) balanced to the ground surface, not even for a nano-second, but instead is ground balanced to only somewhere near it periodically, as in maybe 1/1000 of a second off and on, and besides that, the circuitry is being overdriven to begin with - by the initial surface overload configuration of mass times matrix = resistance. This means simply put, that the detector actually gets less depth dragging it on the ground surface than if you ran it 1" or 2" off the ground. The magical number is this: If you hunt in bare dirt then 1" off the ground is optimim. If you hunt in short grass, as in a well-kept lawn then the depth of search should be 1" of dirt + 1" of grass, or, 2" of search away from the ground. And if you have manual ground balance you should balance it the same too. In other words STAY AWAY FROM THE SOIL. Even with automatic ground balance the same rules apply. Remember, that ALL detectors have at least a little automatic ground balance built into the circuitry, and of not they would never stay tuned, not in a hundred light years. It's just how it is.

When you fool with Mother nature, she gets even. When you fool with physics you might lose a lot more than a decent paycheck. Having an "opinion" about this does not cut it. Having the facts puts you ahead by one horse's length in a race. DO NOT scrub any of these modern detectors on the ground, unless you just want to wear out the coil cover fast and lose depth, are a meanie enjoying being rough on your detector, or maybe just want screw up your discrimination abilities too.

You can find the same thing in Jack Gifford's (Tesoro Metal Detector's) notes, and also George Payne's detector engineering notes - about optimum search height. Here is what Charlie Garrett says too. in item #12.

http://www.brent-krueger.com/garrett2.html

'Nuff said. Now I'm going to eat some chocolate chip cookies and drink some of this Arabian coffee.

EasyMoney

 

[The.Boomer]

Sorry to disagree with you easy, but colombian coffee is better !

 

[EasyMoney]

A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush Boomer. When it's hot and tastes good - it's tough to go wrong with it.

Now where were those cream-filled donuts of mine?

BTW, I would advise everybody to read Tesoro's detector operator advice. It's right on target, especially the sections on ground balance and operating frequency.

http://www.tesoro.com/info/faq/generaldetecting/

Easy $$$

 

[bazinga]

Easy,

When I scrub the ground, I make more finds and deeper finds than when I don't. And I will be detecting with others using the same machine and detecting like you say to detect. You can detect based upon the science of it all and I will detect in the manner that produces the most results. And the most results come from getting the coil as close as physically possible to the ground.

 

[BuckleBoy]

Well then, there you have it bscofield6, there goes that $120,000 I spent going to attend college at OSU to be an Electronics Engineer, plus my Federal employment as an Electronics Mechanic, and also my experience as a metal detector repairman for 10 years, plus my having worked for a well known Metal detector manufacturer in R&D Engineering - designing circuitboards. I'm wondering if I wasted my time and my money too? Maybe that explains why people who have Ace 250's claim they get 12-14" in the ground when their detectors only get 8" in the air.

It's interesting to know that out in the field people can do the absolute impossible at times, seemingly disregarding the well-known principals of science, mathematics, and physics. Will wonders ever cease?

Good for you.

Have a good 'un

EasyMoney

Science, Mathematics, and Physics? Who believes in those things anymore? They're all just THEORIES hatched by folks who think they're smart in order to make the rest of the world look Stupid. :P





P.S.--I got a Seated Dime at 22 inches once with the Ace 150.


P.P.S.--It is a commonly held Theory that it takes no skill to metal detect plowed fields.