Getting my butt kicked so far

[jeepGold]

I have about 50 hrs on my new to me Excalibur 1000. I've been hitting the beaches of Southern So Cal with another excal 1000 owner who has about 200 hrs. Although he finds a bit more than I do at this point I'm pretty much getting squat other than clad. I have done my homework and he told me how he's set up. I mimic him since he does rather well hunting in PP with a slightly audible threshold. Volume full tilt. Sensitivity less than 1/2 way.
I don't know if it's just the off season since so cal really hasn't been hit w/any storms but one and the beaches aren't as crowded. I went out by myself yesterday for a number of hrs & started talking w/another guy detecting on the beach w/an Excal II. He said that from Early/mid August til late Oct. he scored SIXTY rings of various metals/values. From then on he is hardly getting anything. Now either he's pulling my leg & using a fib to try to deter me away or it's down time for jewelry at the beach. We've been hitting low tides and going thigh deep as well. I run zig zags from the moist sand to thigh deep and back. Lots of beer twist tops/ aluminum can heads and penny's but no gold for me yet. My buddy has pulled 5 decent rings thus far( 3 were clipped together). SIGH. This Sunday we are stepping it up. Getting the wet suits out and going chest deep. Figure the majority of beach guys go about knee deep at best. Wish me luck. Any of you excal guys have helpful advice?

 

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[Irishgoldhound]

Good luck man! Beaches change literally every day adding more sand and keep targets hidden. Then one day it will take out so much sand that their is targets everywhere, like its a brand new beach.

 

[sponge]

U run the volume full blast. Is that the trick to picking up the whispers. Also u all have been getting some good surf. Good surf good cuts. East coast full of sand and more renorishment sand.

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[redcobra8u]

I've had the same luck in so cal since November. Everything is sanded in. I also think that high surf in August brought some nice cuts that produced some items that might have otherwise been found over the winter.

Good luck!

 

[streetglide]

I'm up in Santa Barbara and Im having the same bad luck you are having. The last 2 weeks the low tides have been negative, and I have never detected so far out in the water. I use a 10 inch excal. Most my finds have been very crusty coins and the trash that comes with it. Even the sand is not giving up any bling. If I find a dollar in usable coins it's a good hunt for this Time. Give it some time and things will change. Don't blame your detector It's the sign of the times .This summer I had some days when I got to the sand, turned on my excal walked about 10 steps got a good hit, scooped up a gold ring. Those days are long gone until summer.Good luck Joe.

 

[signal]

You have to pass your coil over the treasure to find it. My point is, settings is only half of the issue (and not even that). You have dry sand, wet sand, first drop off in the water, shallow water and deep water. Try the all! If one has nothing, try another. Try a different beach. When you get hits, and are finding stuff, stay as long as you can! Go after storms, go during low tides, even if it means 4am. Whatever your doing, try something different, and I am not talking settings.

As far as settings go, until you have more luck, run with the minimum threshold, and disc set to 1. Sensitivity should be as high as you can go without erratic behavior.

Don't lose patience, you will have good and bad days. Even when you dig clad or junk try to study and learn from it. Learn to read the beach, which means walking the beach, looking for pools, ripple troughs, troughs......it may even mean putting on some snorkel gear and looking under water.

 

[dewcon4414]

If you are hunting in PP ........ turn the sensitivity to just before AUTO. It doesnt false like in disc.... you may hear more minerals as you swing but you quickly learn to ignore it. You will see a vast improvement in depth. Ive found if you are hunting in sensitivity BELOW the 12 o'clock position you might as well be hunting in AUTO. Personally starting out you should be in disc to learn the tones. Dig everything that isnt iron or a shallow bottle cap. Gold has a wide range and digging those targets you learn the tones very fast. I dont know that i get that many rings in a 3 mo. period, but i have found there is some consistency to those highly productive months even here in Fl. Ive got a few years now water hunting..... i cant wrap my head around reading a beach. I can tell you where gold might be, but gold is where i find it....... i will say most beaches have spots that i always check just because they are consistent givers. I really applaude those that can look at a beach... hit it for an hour and come away with gold... because i certainly cant. Dont be a wanderer..... cover as much beach as you can effectively.

 

[SonnyFl]

Good advise Dew! Good advise.

 

[jeepGold]

I pull ANYTHING that has a repeatable tone in pp AND discrim...Even the whispers. I don't walk zig zags. I walk straight to the water, go about waste deep, step 2 large steps to the side and walk straight back up to the top of dry sand and repeat. Takes forever to cover any ground but I'd rather spend a week doing "X" amount of beach than having doubt as to "did I walk right past that?"
I work midnights and right now the tide 2's which are much lower than the tide 1's are late in the evening. Not enough time for me to work. Next couple weeks the lower tides will be in the morning around sunrise and that's when I'll hit the water. Last sunday was a -0.9 low tide in San Diego. We got out REALLY far but the finds (if any) were much farther in. Sorry no one else is getting anything but I guess that's a relief to me as well since I'm not alone.

 

[MTJosh]

Conditions in socal are awful currently. Winter erosion has not begun. Hopefully it does soon. With sanded conditions any gold found in wet or in water will be luck. If you are finding pull tabs can part chances of gold around is slim. My local beaches have gotten worse that past 2-3wks. More sand piled on top of the already ton of light sand. Lets hope some storm or at least consistent wave action move sand soon. Was sad this last batch of negative tides found me hunting the turf. Scouted monday again to only find a couple zinclons and more sand piled on. And with cold weather last week no one was at the beach for recent drops in the dry. Good luck when you get out.

 

[TheSleeper]

Jeep, please do not get discouraged.
It is easy to do and even some of us that have hunted for geeezzz close to 50 years get discouraged, but we have made the finds in the past that allow us to shrug off the dry spells knowing the fruits of our efforts will come.

There are actually over 5 different lanes on a beach:
The walker lane, where everyone walks without getting their feet wet.
The wet lane, where everyone walks that doesn't mind getting their pinkies wet, toe ring city.
The baby pee lane, where young mothers take their infants to pee(mother holding her infant, wedding rings slide off).
The kini can't get wet pee area, where the damsels go knee deep to pee without getting their kini wet.
The waist deep area, start of wonderland many different types of jewelry.
The chest deep lane, watches, necklaces (If you can hit them) rings.

You have to study a beach as it is ever changing.
Is it sanded in, or stripped (get you a permanent reference point so at a glance you can tell).
Sand bars, always check the ocean side, but on some the inland side will hold the treasure.
Cuts after a hard storm or tide action.
Please be careful of this, but rip currents can pocket many goodies in a few feet of space(all the treasure in the world isn't worth your life).

Personelly, on the excel, PP, volume max, barely audible threshold and dig everything that squeaks at you. You will get frustrated at the amount of junk you dig, till you start reaping the rewards the excel gives you.

PS. you can hunt the exact same area, exact same squire feet you hunted yesterday or the day before finding nothing, yet today find a ring or coin or what ever, the beach is like I said ever changing. She is never the same from one day to the next nor are the gifts she gives us.

PSS. in PP doesn't matter if it repeats, if u hear it, dig it. Sometimes a great target may only give you one chance to hear it, don't waste the chance.

 

[meMiner]

Man, everybody has great advise! Not one chucklehead out there recommending you give up and sell that machine to him. LOL

For sure, don't give up. The next signal might be the "good one". If you are finding pull tabs, your detector can find rings. If you are in a spot loaded with pull tabs, then that may be where the light stuff is concentrating and sometimes it is best to go a little further out. Otherwise, keep the spot in mind and next time you might discover the water seems a bit deeper and you are only finding clad there. Next time silver. Next time gold. Now, of course, that is how it is supposed to work, but does not always. It is more like "guidance" (wasn't that from Pirates of the Caribbean?). Anyway, keep at it and good luck.

I came back to this thread to edit and offer one more piece of advise that I learned a long time ago from a guy I considered an expert water hunter. He also did the shore to nose deep pattern. However, anytime he found something heavy (ring, fishing sinker, etc), he would walk a parallel to the shore both ways for a short distance in a rectangular box, including the spot he had already detected. I have found this to be a good strategy as it becomes an area that I really focus due to the high potential.

 

[sponge]

You should give up and sell me the detector. Lol

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[jeepGold]

LoL, sell it to you huh? I'm not quite ready to do that. Turning 41 next week and I can tell you though that swinging the excal even with a chest mount I'm starting to get carpal tunnel symptoms and now my shoulder is clicking.. I need to either slow it down to a few hr sessions or take some suppliments.... Aging sucks.
And Sponge, keep your eyes peeled if you want the Excalibur. I found mine on Craigslist and was in MINT condition. Even came with the bag, an extra battery pack and didn't have a scratch on the entire thing. I paid 800 w/no haggling.

 

[MrMikeJackie]

LoL, sell it to you huh? I'm not quite ready to do that. Turning 41 next week and I can tell you though that swinging the excal even with a chest mount I'm starting to get carpal tunnel symptoms and now my shoulder is clicking.. I need to either slow it down to a few hr sessions or take some suppliments.... Aging sucks.
And Sponge, keep your eyes peeled if you want the Excalibur. I found mine on Craigslist and was in MINT condition. Even came with the bag, an extra battery pack and didn't have a scratch on the entire thing. I paid 800 w/no haggling.

That will go away, keep going.

 

[signal]

LoL, sell it to you huh? I'm not quite ready to do that. Turning 41 next week and I can tell you though that swinging the excal even with a chest mount I'm starting to get carpal tunnel symptoms and now my shoulder is clicking.. I need to either slow it down to a few hr sessions or take some suppliments.... Aging sucks.
And Sponge, keep your eyes peeled if you want the Excalibur. I found mine on Craigslist and was in MINT condition. Even came with the bag, an extra battery pack and didn't have a scratch on the entire thing. I paid 800 w/no haggling.

Use a straight shaft

Use a harness with bungee support like a minelab pro-swing or similar type gadget

scrape the coil across the sand, in other words, don't try to carry all the weight, you can get deeper if it "on" the sand

Make sure your shaft heights are adjusted correctly, if the shaft is too long you will be putting more strain on your arm, you should not need the detector far in front of you, just straight down in front of you, will be less pressure on you

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

LoL, sell it to you huh? I'm not quite ready to do that. Turning 41 next week and I can tell you though that swinging the excal even with a chest mount I'm starting to get carpal tunnel symptoms and now my shoulder is clicking.. I need to either slow it down to a few hr sessions or take some suppliments.... Aging sucks.
And Sponge, keep your eyes peeled if you want the Excalibur. I found mine on Craigslist and was in MINT condition. Even came with the bag, an extra battery pack and didn't have a scratch on the entire thing. I paid 800 w/no haggling.

Use a harness, the difference is night and day.

Where do you have discrimination set at, you want it no higher than 1..... Sensitivity is almost never the same position on different beaches. Set sensitivity just till it is barely stable...

Learn to read the beaches, watch where people concentrate, look for signs of erosion, also low areas that seem to have heavy shells or rocks at low tides, heavy objects have a tendency to settle in same low places due to tides.

When your swinging coil be sure coil stays flat and parallel to ground through entire sweep, new hunters have tendency to swing coil like it is a golf club or grass sickle....It takes practice, you have to watch it till you learn to swing it with out thinking about it. Slow down, don't walk too fast, give detector time to read the beach..






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“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
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[bklein]

Last Sunday I searched Corona del Mar and found a zodiac gold ring with my sign. If it was my first ring i would have been super jazzed. It probably was my 4th.
I had a great time searching as the weather was awesome and water conditions allowed me to go where i never could before. Little did i know i should have been home mowing the lawn instead...
i also found 3 old coins from India! How did they get there? Thought they were gold at first. Had to dig deep for them too.
Thing is that i was the only guy out there detecting. "Smart" ones were mowing there lawns.
I had intended to be there about 3 hours but was there from 10am til sunset... Too much fun!
never got so many aluminum cans, pull tops, and cellphone parts!

 

[jeepGold]

I do use a harness. I have a chest harness. I started getting a numb wrist when I woke up in the mornings. The excal is still quite a bit heavier than my AT even w/ the harness. A fellow detectorist that I ran into @ the beach was using the water mount (lingo) where it mounts @ the back of the shaft behind your elbow. He swore by it & said it balances out much better. I tried it & although it helps the wrist, it hurts the shoulder because you're swinging all the weight.. I'm gonna go back to the harness. I think it's just residual from when I first got the machine & was swinging with the "s" shaft for 4 days in a row at 6 hrs ea day. Hopefully the injury will pass. Also my buddy who I hunt with hunts pretty fast. I'm gonna just slow down and hunt @ my pace, not his.
As for my settings I run threshold @ just audible to hear the whispers, sensitivities is @ about 2 o clock or just less, discrem is @ one, volume is full blast. Today I went out for about 2 hrs & pulled EVERYTHING I got a hit on in PP. I wasn't necessarily concerned w/what I found per se just wanted to practice w/the whispers & threshold difference. I pulled the faintest tones in PP & pulled a few pennies and big iron nails a@ about 2.5 ft down. Made me proud actually. Before I would find a target in PP then switch to discrim. If there wasn't a tone in discrim I'd move on. Now I'm going to hunt in PP exclusively. At least in the dry & up to about thigh deep in water. Anything deeper & with waves I don't think I'll have the willpower to pull anything &everything. It's pretty hard to dig when the waves fill the holes faster than you can dig them.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

S shaft is real hard on your arm. Might put more tension on the bungee part of harness. I can swing mine all day long using my harness..Bungee is set so coil is just above ground, all I'm doing is guiding it, not holding it.

Are you using a straight shaft?

When you get a null in pinpoint, resweep from a different angle, if it is still null, move on, no need to dig the iron.



Posted From My $50 Tablet....




“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
― James Madison
The Constitution of the United States of America