How Well Does Your Detector Handle Iron?

[Michigan Badger]

My Sovereign GT handles it maybe a little better than I'd like. Even set at the lowest point in discrimination mode the GT will reject most iron. Anything other than a larger piece of iron (shallow horseshoe, spoon, etc.) will simply null out.

Since I do like to dig the larger iron relics I find this strong iron rejection a bit agravating at times.

Minelabs are not ideal for iron relics. Fisher, Tesoro, and a few others, do much better.

Badger

 

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[teverly]

The explorer se in all metal and ferrous tones will find lots of iron.......

 

[Montana Jim]

My BHs both will completely disc. out iron, or, find it in the smallest amounts in an all metal mode. Using teh disc. know I can work it to any level in between... finding nails but not fenders...

Truthfully, old relic iron all reacts so differently after being buried it all reads erratice and jumpy depending on the settings.

Maybe I did'nt ubnderstand the question...

 

[Sandman]

Badger you know perfectly well that your GT has an Iron mask feature that you can turn off for relic hunting. Turn it off................. and enjoy digging deep holes. Happy Hunting..

 

[Michigan Badger]

Badger you know perfectly well that your GT has an Iron mask feature that you can turn off for relic hunting. Turn it off................. and enjoy digging deep holes. Happy Hunting..

Oh sure, I know this but I've found the GT is best at non ferrous metals. The all-metal mode works but pinpointing isn't good on iron and it's very confusing at high trash sites.

I've wondered why some who have used Minelabs claim poor pinpointing and a major learning curve and my guess now would be they were referring to hunting in all-metal mode at high trash sites.

The GT is a good iron machine but just not as good as Tesoro. Now for coins and jewelry I'd say Minelab all the way. Pinpointing is dead on if it's worth digging. But for iron relics Tesoro is supremely superior.

I really like my GT and will keep it but I think a Tesoro backup is in order here since I do also like iron relics.

 

[EasyMoney]

Here is a little trick I learned while doing a bit of troubleshooting on older Tesoros and Bounty Hunters, etc. After I discovered it many of the old timers started doing it to their own detectors:

When hunting in discriminate OR all-metal, you can duck tape a steel washer the size of a dime to the bottom (or top) of your coil. This reduces it's sensitivity period, and to iron too. It lowers the set point
of the parameters of the automatic gound balance null. This overdrives the auto return to threshold and also makes the detector not see as much iron because it is working overtime to cancel the little piece of iron you already put into it's detection area.

My experiments here at home have shown that if you try just a small piece of steel first (about the size of a half-dime or smaller) and slowly try a piece of steel a bit bigger and bigger, little by bit as in up to the size of a half dollar, you will find that eventually the detector will be overdriven so much that it just about chokes the thing down to only seeing 3-4" in the air! In fact, it will even stop working at all if you tape too big a piece of steel on the coil.

This does not hurt your detector to use something the size of a dime because there is not enough causation of resistence in the circuitry to heat anything up doing this anyway. After all, in very trashy areas you get it into that mode off and on anyway, but not constantly, although detectors with extremely fast retunes are affected by this trick less than others.. Trying it is easy, it doesn't hurt the detector, and the tape comes off real easily. The key is, that if it is constant, it is not much different than if you had a special extra "iron mask" switch on your detector running all that time. If your detector is too slow to recover it may not work as well, and it may not work at all.

 

[birdman]

The vaquero does well with small nails and what not but I still dig the deep ones that have the cacoon of rust on them but not near as many as my old CZ. I am pretty impressed with it thus far.

 

[EDDE]

Here is a little trick I learned while doing a bit of troubleshooting on older Tesoros and Bounty Hunters, etc. After I discovered it many of the old timers started doing it to their own detectors:

When hunting in discriminate OR all-metal, you can duck tape a steel washer the size of a dime to the bottom (or top) of your coil. This reduces it's sensitivity period, and to iron too. It lowers the set point
of the parameters of the automatic gound balance null. This overdrives the auto return to threshold and also makes the detector not see as much iron because it is working overtime to cancel the little piece of iron you already put into it's detection area.

My experiments here at home have shown that if you try just a small piece of steel first (about the size of a half-dime or smaller) and slowly try a piece of steel a bit bigger and bigger, little by bit as in up to the size of a half dollar, you will find that eventually the detector will be overdriven so much that it just about chokes the thing down to only seeing 3-4" in the air! In fact, it will even stop working at all if you tape too big a piece of steel on the coil.

This does not hurt your detector to use something the size of a dime because there is not enough causation of resistence in the circuitry to heat anything up doing this anyway. After all, in very trashy areas you get it into that mode off and on anyway, but not constantly, although detectors with extremely fast retunes are affected by this trick less than others.. Trying it is easy, it doesn't hurt the detector, and the tape comes off real easily. The key is, that if it is constant, it is not much different than if you had a special extra "iron mask" switch on your detector running all that time. If your detector is too slow to recover it may not work as well, and it may not work at all.

im going to try this one out this week if the rain stops 8)

 

[EasyMoney]

One other thing also seems to hold true..

If the detector is already a super iron discriminator it often seems to affect and help it much more than those that are worse discriminators. For example, it really works well on my Compasses but doesn't seem to work very well on my Tejon.

Maybe I shouldn't give the following info out, but I will anyway..

I have an old Compass RM420. I paid $25 for it. It didn't work at all when I got it. I discovered a hairline crack in it's circuitboard and made a shortcut to re-establish the connection. It also had a defective Ground balance pot. In testing it I found that the pot was no longer any good, so instead of replacing the pot with a standard I opted to install one of 5-5000 oms instead. This didn't quite bring it to where I wanted it to run so I ran (in parallel) a 5 ohm resistor alongside it. That allowed my pot to operate where I wanted it too and to have a wider range of ground balance control. In doing so I made the detector operate down into the negative, meaning that I could use it down below the null or medium, or bottom of ground balance and into the abyss way down south nearly into the gates of Hell.. This allowed me to hunt for irons and stoneys in a much wider parameter than normal. It also gave my detector the ability to lay a 6" X 6" X 1/2" piece of steel plate on the ground, cancel it, and put a nickel on top of it and it in turn would give me an audio signal. It gave me an even more super discriminator than I already had. I have never seen another Compass nor a Tesoro that had this ability, both of which have made discriminators that are probably the best ever made by anyone.

 

[Iron Patch]

.

Minelabs are not ideal for iron relics. Fisher, Tesoro, and a few others, do much better.

Badger

You're dead wrong on that statement. There's nothing better than an Explorer because it knocks out small iron extremely well but lets bigger break through well enough to know it's there. Of course settings and experience make a lot of difference.

You shouldn't group all detectors under one brand. A Sovereign is not an Explorer.

 

[Willy]

I'll second the iron handling prowess of Compass detectors. Last winter I spent a lot of time with both a Fisher Coinstrike and an X-100. The X-100, despite being an older detector, and a heavy pig to boot, kicked Coinstrike butt when it came to iron. Also, I don't care how slow a motion detector can sweep, a non-motion TR mode can't be beat in heavy trash. ..Willy.

 

[EDDE]

lots of great insight on this thread !

 

[EDDE]

Here is a little trick I learned while doing a bit of troubleshooting on older Tesoros and Bounty Hunters, etc. After I discovered it many of the old timers started doing it to their own detectors:

When hunting in discriminate OR all-metal, you can duck tape a steel washer the size of a dime to the bottom (or top) of your coil. This reduces it's sensitivity period, and to iron too. It lowers the set point
of the parameters of the automatic gound balance null. This overdrives the auto return to threshold and also makes the detector not see as much iron because it is working overtime to cancel the little piece of iron you already put into it's detection area.

My experiments here at home have shown that if you try just a small piece of steel first (about the size of a half-dime or smaller) and slowly try a piece of steel a bit bigger and bigger, little by bit as in up to the size of a half dollar, you will find that eventually the detector will be overdriven so much that it just about chokes the thing down to only seeing 3-4" in the air! In fact, it will even stop working at all if you tape too big a piece of steel on the coil.

This does not hurt your detector to use something the size of a dime because there is not enough causation of resistence in the circuitry to heat anything up doing this anyway. After all, in very trashy areas you get it into that mode off and on anyway, but not constantly, although detectors with extremely fast retunes are affected by this trick less than others.. Trying it is easy, it doesn't hurt the detector, and the tape comes off real easily. The key is, that if it is constant, it is not much different than if you had a special extra "iron mask" switch on your detector running all that time. If your detector is too slow to recover it may not work as well, and it may not work at all.

im going to try this one out this week if the rain stops 8)

i played around with this a little bit i did a half dime sized washer id give it a so so
didnt really do it long enough to say "it worked"

 

[EasyMoney]

Sorry Iron, but the "iron mask" on ANY Minelab does not work as well as the iron disc setting on a Fisher 1236-x2, 1270, cz-70, etc, and ESPECIALLY any standard issue Compass, and most Tesoros. I've heard some real whoppers about this subject from Minelab owners, but in real life I've seen a whole different picture. In fact, the "iron mask" on ANY MInelab goes to hell when it's swung too fast. Additionally, the "iron mask" on many Minelabs really sucks with large iron but they do well on small nails. In fact, they often cancel good targets along with bad ones unless you go as slow as a snail, because I've come right in behind them and discovered that they missed a target.. And I'm not just talking about Sovs either.

In the last 3 years I've found only 4 (count 'em) FOUR nails with my cz-70. And people with Explorers and Sovs find big nails and big iron much more often when they operate them near me. So do the ones I've operated by myself. I stand on my previous statement due to my own personal experience.

And yes Willy, sometimes the idea of another detector beating a Compass for handling iron makes me laugh. There is no comparison.

 

[Iron Patch]

Sorry Iron, but the "iron mask" on ANY Minelab does not work as well as the iron disc setting on a Fisher 1236-x2, 1270, cz-70, etc, and ESPECIALLY any standard issue Compass, and most Tesoros. I've heard some real whoppers about this subject from Minelab owners, but in real life I've seen a whole different picture. In fact, the "iron mask" on ANY MInelab goes to hell when it's swung too fast. Additionally, the "iron mask" on many Minelabs really sucks with large iron but they do well on small nails. In fact, they often cancel good targets along with bad ones unless you go as slow as a snail, because I've come right in behind them and discovered that they missed a target.. And I'm not just talking about Sovs either.

In the last 3 years I've found only 4 (count 'em) FOUR nails with my cz-70. And people with Explorers and Sovs find big nails and big iron much more often when they operate them near me. So do the ones I've operated by myself. I stand on my previous statement due to my own personal experience.

And yes Willy, sometimes the idea of another detector beating a Compass for handling iron makes me laugh. There is no comparison.

2 things...

1) Anyone digging lots off nails of old sites with an Explorer doesn't know the detector.

2) My post had nothing to do with your post, infact, I didn't even read it.

 

[EasyMoney]

Good point Iron, and obviously my mistake. However, I do find a relationship between the two statements and wanted to bring your attention to it, in error of course, but that's my fault. My apologies..

HH

 

[Iron Patch]

Good point Iron, and obviously my mistake. However, I do find a relationship between the two statements and wanted to bring your attention to it, in error of course, but that's my fault. My apologies..

HH

No apology necessary but my main point of the post was the Explorer and Sovereign are very different detectors when it comes to big iron. As compared to other brands it's not worth the time to debate it because everyone seems to be able to talk a good game for their own hunting.

If we were standing detector in hand at one of my Colonial sites loaded with iron, I would gladly continue this conversation because one of us might learn something. However, since we're not, and probably won't, we can just go on being happy with our choice of what we swing.

 

[EasyMoney]

Well said Iron..

And now it's time for a box of chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk.

BTW, if anybody ever doubted that a tiny coil gets coins where a larger or stock coil has been, my 3" coil came in behind my 8" this afternoon and found 7 coins in a 30' X 30' area that the larger one missed. I wish they made one for my Sov but I don't think so..

Anybody heard of one?

 

[FinderFrank]

Sure I defiantly dig more iron w/ my explorer Se ,Lots more, but I am not complaining because my silver and older finds have gone way up! I will admit I still have a lot to learnwith the minelab.

Frank

 

[Iron Patch]

Sure I defiantly dig more iron w/ my explorer Se ,Lots more, but I am not complaining because my silver and older finds have gone way up! I will admit I still have a lot to learnwith the minelab.

Frank

Over time you'll learn how the null interacts with targets and the little extra fullness to the sound of a good target compared to iron. Only time in swinging will do that for a user.

The older site you hunt the easier it is to deal with iron. I have no idea what your settings are but typically an iron signal will null from one direction with the exception of large iron. It's a win - win situation for me because the few solid iron hits I get are well worth digging at a Colonial site. I continued to learn little things for quite a while and now it's over 6 years on the Explorer. Time flies!