Hi everyone,
My name is David, and, as you can see in the title, I'm new to metal detecting / treasure hunting. A couple of days ago, my Garrett Ace 150 arrived in the mail. I assembled it, read the manual, did some bench tests, and took it outside (in the rain!).
To make a long story short, I loved it, and I can't wait to totally get the hang of it. I've been outside with it three times; each time I went to the playground by my house. The first two times I used it over the grass, and dug a few holes, and found a couple of modern-day pennies, among other random "junky" things. My first, and favourite find so far was a key on a rusty keyring. Maybe I should take it with me whenever I go out detecting... it can be my "key to success in treasure hunting"
After I went out for the second time, on Friday night, I realized that I was leaving the park in worse condition than when I got there. I used the detector over grass before I had gotten the hang of pinpointing, so I was digging much bigger holes than necessary. When I filled in the holes / plugs, it looked far from perfect. I felt really guilty about it (and became very discouraged about metal detecting for a while), and vowed to only use it over dirt and gravel until I was sure I could pinpoint accurately.
I went out for the third time today, and stuck to using it over the red shale / gravel around the playground equipment. I got better at pinpointing, and found three pennies, part of a toy car, and some wire... not much, but the location wasn't that great (for finding super cool things like coins from the 1800's).
For some reason, my Ace would beep as I passed it over an area on the shale, but then when I went to pass the detector over the area again, it wouldn't beep. I assumed that it was some kind of trash elimination thing on the detector, so I moved on. Does anyone know what this actually means?
On Friday night (my second time out with the detector), my Ace went "crazy" around a medium-sized depression in the grass. I've always wondered why there was that little depression in the park, so I dug. And I dug. And I dug some more. The detector was beeping all over the depression. After a while, it occurred to me that it was possible that the depression was there because someone had dug a large hole there in the past. I kept on digging, hoping / kind of expecting to find some big box filled to the brim with gold and jewels, and to be on the news, etc. After a long time digging, I found a small piece of wire about the thickness of a metal coat hanger. I put it off to the side, and detected around the hole / depression again. It acted the same as it did before I removed the wire.
After a very long time digging (in the snow, even!), I gave up and filled in the hole.
My question is: what was happening there? It was raining really hard (don't worry, I protected the control box with a makeshift rain cover), so that might have caused the detector to "false." But why did it only beep when I passed it over the depression? Maybe water had collected on the grass (the grass in the depression is longer than the grass in the rest of the park... probably because the mowers can't get into it), and that caused it to act so weird? Any ideas would be appreciated.
So, that's my story, so far. I can't wait to go detecting somewhere cool, and find my first artifact of real interest (although that key that I found was pretty cool!).
David
My name is David, and, as you can see in the title, I'm new to metal detecting / treasure hunting. A couple of days ago, my Garrett Ace 150 arrived in the mail. I assembled it, read the manual, did some bench tests, and took it outside (in the rain!).
To make a long story short, I loved it, and I can't wait to totally get the hang of it. I've been outside with it three times; each time I went to the playground by my house. The first two times I used it over the grass, and dug a few holes, and found a couple of modern-day pennies, among other random "junky" things. My first, and favourite find so far was a key on a rusty keyring. Maybe I should take it with me whenever I go out detecting... it can be my "key to success in treasure hunting"
After I went out for the second time, on Friday night, I realized that I was leaving the park in worse condition than when I got there. I used the detector over grass before I had gotten the hang of pinpointing, so I was digging much bigger holes than necessary. When I filled in the holes / plugs, it looked far from perfect. I felt really guilty about it (and became very discouraged about metal detecting for a while), and vowed to only use it over dirt and gravel until I was sure I could pinpoint accurately.
I went out for the third time today, and stuck to using it over the red shale / gravel around the playground equipment. I got better at pinpointing, and found three pennies, part of a toy car, and some wire... not much, but the location wasn't that great (for finding super cool things like coins from the 1800's).
For some reason, my Ace would beep as I passed it over an area on the shale, but then when I went to pass the detector over the area again, it wouldn't beep. I assumed that it was some kind of trash elimination thing on the detector, so I moved on. Does anyone know what this actually means?
On Friday night (my second time out with the detector), my Ace went "crazy" around a medium-sized depression in the grass. I've always wondered why there was that little depression in the park, so I dug. And I dug. And I dug some more. The detector was beeping all over the depression. After a while, it occurred to me that it was possible that the depression was there because someone had dug a large hole there in the past. I kept on digging, hoping / kind of expecting to find some big box filled to the brim with gold and jewels, and to be on the news, etc. After a long time digging, I found a small piece of wire about the thickness of a metal coat hanger. I put it off to the side, and detected around the hole / depression again. It acted the same as it did before I removed the wire.
After a very long time digging (in the snow, even!), I gave up and filled in the hole.
My question is: what was happening there? It was raining really hard (don't worry, I protected the control box with a makeshift rain cover), so that might have caused the detector to "false." But why did it only beep when I passed it over the depression? Maybe water had collected on the grass (the grass in the depression is longer than the grass in the rest of the park... probably because the mowers can't get into it), and that caused it to act so weird? Any ideas would be appreciated.
So, that's my story, so far. I can't wait to go detecting somewhere cool, and find my first artifact of real interest (although that key that I found was pretty cool!).
David
Thanks for the advice 
![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
