Probably will be my biggest find ever!

[sarahj234]

So I'm a newb.. been reading lots of articles and books and practicing in the backyard. The house was built in the 60's, so I figure there's enough junk and pennies to practice on. One of the tips I have read is to look for unusual plants and look around them. We have two old lilac buses about eight feet apart in the backyard along the fence, so I figure I'll go give it a try around them. I have the detector set to discriminate out iron, but that's it. So I wave the detector and it goes BONKERS! Signals all over the board all saying surface. So I scrape a little dirt and nothing, wave the detector again, and BONKERS! I'm thinking interference from something (kinda near power lines), but the detector seems normal a few feet down the fence, so I dig down over the Bonkers spot, and six inches down I find a metal grill (fiance says it is expanded metal). After a half hour of digging, we have a 4' x 4' piece of expanded metal! I keep getting weird signals in the hole, what I would expect to be a nail 4-5 inches down, I dig and nada. Then the same signal a foot away, and nada! Would leftover rust in the hole give me false signals?

 

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[TheRockDoc]

I think it is picking up on remnants of the metals in the ground, I was out just today, which im a newbie too, and it seems like more often than not, after I rescue my target, I fill my hole and swing over it again just to be sure, it gives a blip or two but then nothing.... I know that when a metal has been in the ground for a while, it creates a halo effect, and so I think it has something to do with that.

good luck hunting, I found my 3rd ever silver today, a silver quarter1962. That makes for 2 silver quarters, and a silver dime. I am loving it.

 

[thrillathahunt]

What you have found is a piece of diamond wire mesh. It is used as backing for tile and stucco.

BIG find!

 

[joeyfresh]

There's an old beach on the eastern shore of virginia that has produced some old finds but it is also covered in that expanded metal. I think it was purposely put there to deter metal detecting

 

[sarahj234]

There's an old beach on the eastern shore of virginia that has produced some old finds but it is also covered in that expanded metal. I think it was purposely put there to deter metal detecting

I wondered about that. It was down about 6 inches, but I dug out all the dirt and I don't get any more reliable signals beneath it (I did dig out a tent stake from about eight inches down). They had a weird set up back there (They = prior residents). There are two metal pipes that are sunk in the ground about 6 feet apart (they are about three feet above the ground), that have wood stuck down in them (like a broomhandle). The tops of these posts look like they were hit with a hammer (flattened and mushroomed), and then a smaller post (about a foot above the ground), another six feet away. Each post is right next to a plant (two old lilacs and then a sagebrush bush). The expanded metal piece was buried in between two of them. We tried to dig up a post and see how they were sunk, but they are really deep. These kind run along the old fence (which was wood and fell down in a wind storm). Now there is chain link. I am not really sure what they had going on back there.

 

[goldentruth]

I am a Past Union Journeyman lath & Plasterer. The metal "Mesh" is called "Expanded Metal lath".
the Cheep stuff is steel and the better is Galvanized Furred Expanded metal lath. (Furred is bumps in it so it does not lay flat.
You can lay it on a 5 gal bucket and use it as a screen. I cut one top of a bucket and used bolts with washers and just shovel dirt in and a regular bucket catches the dirt and I end up with rocks and coins!
This works for me and saves time. Good luck/happy New Year 2012.

 

[CRUSADER]

Bonkers spot