Parks?

[BareBones]

Hi guys, I had a couple questions I was hoping some folks could chime in about their park experiences.

Since I have not had the time to make the drive over to the beach, I have been hitting some of the parks closer to home. I've mostly been covering the sanded playgrounds and getting clad and garbage; nothing new for any of you I'm sure.

But tonight I decided to drive to some of the older parks that I played in as a youngster and much to my dismay, I find the play areas with covered canopies and wood chips in the play area instead of sand and all new equipment. What's up with that? Is it even worth my time to hunt these wood chip areas?

Second, I did two sanded volleyball courts and came up with a rusted bobby pin, bottle cap, coke can and a piece of wire. Is that normal? I mean I did not even find clad. I thought sure I'd find some broken piece of gold jewelry; OK, I hoped I would find......

Only thing I got was some exercise which I'm sure we all need.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Treasure of Victoria Peak - Grab it through Amazon!

[Tank69]

I still drool over that one Xray

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Minelab PRO-FIND 35 Waterproof Pinpointer Metal Detector for Experts with Tone ID & Adjustable Sensitivity - Grab it through Amazon!

[Xraywolf]

Yup, almost passed that one by too, bounced between foil and nickel, had a super sharp pinpoint, as you might imagine.
Was thinking "pull tab", so I was pleasantly surprised when this popped out.
Still didn't think much of it, I thought "fake" put it in my pocket and moved on.

Wasn't till I got home and cleaned it up a bit that I realized it was something special.
I called the school, told them I found some jewelry in the lot that somebody might be missing, didn't give any details but left my number ,,, Never heard back, so whoever lost this piece hopefully learned a lesson at least.

 

[BareBones]

Absolutely incredible!

I feel ashamed that I walked away from the wood chips without so much as swinging the detector once.

That Ace 250 is supposed to be here tomorrow or should I say today. I think I'll have a much nicer time with the sniper coil and it tuned down so I don't go so deep. My PI machine I swear will find alum. soda cans nearly on the border of China or it feels like I have to dig that far. I'm starting to get to the point if I don't find it in the first 10" the ground can keep it. We don't have ground like you folks up north. Lots of Coral rock here.

I'm kind of eagerly anticipating having a screen tell me what it is I'm about to dig.

Will the Ace 250 allow you to discriminate out iron, steel targets without loosing the good stuff?

 

[Xraywolf]

You can indeed discriminate.
It has various preset modes, all but "all metal" and "relic" will notch out iron - And for casual detecting, you won't miss any goodies using that.
I use "jewelry mode" at kiddy lots, and "coin mode" for coin shooting - Not much to be done after that cept adjusting the sensitivity now and then.

Custom mode is cool, allows you to notch out anything you please.
You can hunt for, say, just quarters & dimes if you wanted to.
Doesn't necessarily mean that every alert will now be a quarter or dime ,,, Some objects imitate both real good.
But it can be useful in trashy areas, where you are hoping to find some [relatively] deep silver.
"Cherry picking" is what they call it - You have a very good chance of missing something good, like a gold ring ... But your chances of finding silver dimes & quarters are now increased.

BTW, sniper coil is not optimized for tot lots and the like.
You have no need of its alleged extra depth, and its small size will mean more & more sweeping, probably 2 or 3x as much as you would with the larger coils.
If you are in no particular rush and don't mind an extra arm workout, thats fine ,,, But the larger coils are way more efficient for this type of hunting.

 

[BareBones]

BTW, sniper coil is not optimized for tot lots and the like.
You have no need of its alleged extra depth, and its small size will mean more & more sweeping, probably 2 or 3x as much as you would with the larger coils.
If you are in no particular rush and don't mind an extra arm workout, thats fine ,,, But the larger coils are way more efficient for this type of hunting.

Really?

I specifically bought the Treasure Hunter Special with the 4.5" sniper coil for hunting tot lots. I read a good many posts that people swore by them because they could get closer to the playground equipment without the detector sounding off.

I can't get withing 3 feet of any equipment without sounding off and forget about going directly under the swings.

I thought about getting the 10X14 DD eXcelerator coil to cover more ground outside of the tot lot. But the dealer I ordered my Ace from said he has had two people contact him about where to send them back for repair. He did not sell them either and said it would be better to wait for Garrett to test them out first. Good advice or not?

 

[Xraywolf]

Well, I don't have a sniper coil so cannot offer 1st hand observations.
Its purpose is to go deeper, and ease false hits in trashy areas, if I'm not mistaken.
Don't need either of those in tot lots, generally.

Sweep depth really starts becoming a factor when you want to cover alot of ground in shortest time possible, as I said, you will literally have to sweep 2-3x as much with a dinky coil like that, to me that alone is unacceptable.
And its not like I rush like gangbusters, trying to get out of there in the shortest possible amount of time.
I enjoy detecting, so I usually take my time ,,, But thats alot of extra sweeping, you are bound to get sloppy and not properly overlap your sweeps with such a small coil, hence you will miss more targets.

I can get within 2 inches of metal playground objects, large or small, with any coil.
The trick is to back off sensitivity a bit, and sweep real slow.
If you go fast, something in the circuitry will set it off, almost always.
The 250 does not like jerky movements in any circumstances, but especially in the presence of a large metal object.

Too, it may alert for the large object, but if theres a small object, like a ring or coin, it will alert for that too.
If it is the large metal object alone, the depth and target id will be consistent.
If there is also a small metal object, both will tend to fluctuate, as the smaller object struggles to make it presence known in such close proximity to the larger one.
So you'll get a series of beeps and fluctuating target info if something else besides the known metal object is lurking under the chips.
In short, you are getting many clues that something is there, and its up to you to read them properly and make the correct determination - And BTW, searching close by those large metal supports with the metal arms coming off them often yields finds, as kids like to hang upside down on the arms, and other detectors, I suppose, shy away from searching there, thinking the metal will foil their efforts to find goodies close by.

 

[Tank69]

another thing to keep in mind is kids love candy an gum .........99.99% of the time the foil an wrappers will sound off as aluminum an you know kids they pick up wrappers , at times they will drive you nuts but you cant cancel em because they register the same as gold does ,

another tip is remember allot of the jewelry you find will be small to fit kids , not all of it but allot of it is so even a faint tone can be a good one , I've hit small gold rings that sounded like a gum wraper not a strong hit like a ring .

 

[Xraywolf]

Good point Tank.

Earlier this summer I found a very slim gold bracelet, 24k, that didn't register at all.
Luckily I mostly detect tot lots at night, using a head mounted LED flashlight.
I caught the glint of gold in the beam, and snagged it up - But it was too thin to even trigger an alert.

I put it back down and swept very slow, then it registered.
Moderate to high speed passes did nothing - So the moral of the story is, sweep as slow as possible, and keep your eyes peeled in front of you - And, like you say, faint signals can very well be a small jewelry item.
Not everything you find is going to be a 17 gram gold ring, setting the detector off from inches away.
Most earrings are the same, unless you have sensitivity jacked up, you'll pass em by if you sweep too fast.

 

[BareBones]

My Ace came in this afternoon and I promptly put it together and headed to the park down the street. It was lightly raining so I hoped there would not be anyone there. Turns out I was wrong, but at least it was not crowded. I did not use the sniper coil, man that thing is tiny. I'm used to swinging a pretty good size coil on my PI machine so I figured first time out I would use the stock coil.

Well now I understand what people mean about learning a machine. Totally different animal then my Surf PI, tones, behavior and all. I only played for about an hour in the wood chips but after about 15 minutes I was starting to get the hang of finding targets.

My first inclination is to say I don't like the Ace, but in reality the only reason I feel that way is because it is different then what I'm more used to and comfortable with. I'm sure as I get more time with it I'll warm up to it.

There were lots of targets, too many targets. The wood chips were at least 6"+ deep with a fabric barrier underneath. Most of the targets I started to dig were under the fabric barrier so I just filled the hole in and moved on. I tried to lower the sensitivity and that did not seem to have the desired effect either.

I am disappointed with the depth reading as it would register targets as being 4-6" deep and they were below that fabric barrier which was much deeper. I know because I bought a composition shovel with a depth scale on it. I also saw a penny lying on the ground and it gave a reading of 6" deep.

I found one quarter and it did read as a quarter before I dug it. The pennies were within one notch of the penny range too. Alum pull tabs came up as nickles.

I found one silver charm, I don't remember what it read as though.

I did get a couple of dollar signals but they were below the cloth barrier again. What do you think they could have been?

Anyway here is what I found. I got this in about an hour.

 

[Tank69]

wtg told you theres stuff in em .

#1. I myself prefer using the sniper coil on my 250 seems to deal with the trash a lil better than the stock coil.

#2. sometimes the depth is a lil wacky.

#3. I hated I meen HATED my 250 when I got it , nuthin like what I was used to but once you get into it an start reading all the tips an hints on the site here it settles down with you an its a decent little machine.

#4. I have found an this is just me , that most signals that boing around are junk an most solid signals are your good stuff, when I hit a signal that boings I try it from a different angle it either boings around still or becomes a good signal.



congrats on your hour finds

 

[BareBones]

I snuck out of the house at 11:30 pm and tried another park with the sniper coil. I think I do like the sniper coil better, it is much faster to pinpoint.

Every time I get that bong sound it is clad nearly 100% of the time. I did not look at the depth too much since I was hunting in the dark with a flash light, but the target ID seemed a little more accurate with the sniper coil on all the clad.

I did find a lot of foil wrappers.

The gold pink bust charm was the first signal I got. This was the park I walked away from the other day. It was bigger then I thought and had wood chips, rubber matts, shredded tires and a real small sand area. I got back home by 1:00 am.....

I think I got the wheat penny by an old tree that I walked by.

Thanks for the tips and heads up, I never would have even taken the time to look if it were not for you guys.

 

[Xraywolf]

I've heard alot of folks say they didn't like it at first, I liked it from the git go.
Then again, it was my 1st detector, so had nothing to compare it with.
I was finding stuff in a back lot the 1st day, before I even knew what pinpointing was, and my [then] 9 year old daughter found a Kennedy half at about 3 inches, almost knocked her socks off.

I actually upgraded to a Minelab Quattro a couple years back.
Didn't like it one bit, and sold it at a $250 loss and went right back to the 250.
In fairness, I didn't give the ML much of a chance, all I can say is that pinpointing with those double D coils is an exercise in futility ,, And it made so many different whistles, beeps and chirps it reminded me of one of those nature call boxes, and almost put me to sleep.

I usually use about half sensitivity at tot lots.
In the field, I'll jack it up all the way to max, if I can.
A very few playgrounds seem to have lots of underground metal of some sort and play havoc with the circuitry, you'll run into those every now and then.

Keep in mind that any reading is only an electronic best guess ... It is surprisingly accurate at times, but its not to be taken too seriously.
Penny on the surface reading 6 inches, somethings up with that. Must have been some other metal around ,,, Unless you were swinging the coil mighty high.
Some people do, and hardly realize it, I like to just skim the ground, as consistently low as possible, without making actual contact.
Only other option is a defective unit, I'd test it some more if I was you.

Dollar signals can be almost anything, rarely ever a dollar, unfortunately.
But you never know until you dig.

One trick, if you get a hit like that, is to lift the coil a few inches, if you still get a signal, a couple inches more.
If its still signaling at 5 inches in the air, you can be certain the object is larger, perhaps far larger, than a coin.
If its only coins you're after, keep moving ,,, But no telling what it could be.
A shredded can ? A gun ? Old car part ? Jar full of old coins ?
Could be any of the above, and then some ,,, But if you are only after small objects like coins and rings, the coil lift will tell you if its small or not - And of course, you can also define its general size using the pinpointer.
An actual silver dollar, say 2 inches deep, you'd probably get a reading 2 or 3 inches in the air, much higher than that, you'd lose it, and in that fashion know that it is not a buried sewer lid or something huge.

 

[scrubber]

Totlot woodchips is a great place to use a pinpointer. After the initial signal from my big machine, I plunge the pinpointer into the chips and move it around until it beeps. Then I hold it in place while moving chips with my other hand. I find the item very quickly that way. The pinpointer can also be very usefull close to the metal swing supports, etc.

BTW, my best find by far to date came from a woodchipped totlot (not the ring in my avatar).

One poster said he likes to keep the detector just touching the ground. So do I. That's called scrubbing and that's where my TNet username came from.

scrubber

 

[Tank69]

wow I never thought of trying my pin pointer right up next to the supports , thanks for the info scrubber

 

[scrubber]

wow I never thought of trying my pin pointer right up next to the supports , thanks for the info scrubber

Yeah, I kinda move the close chips away from the metal while running the pinpointer through them. I've found some stuff others have missed that way.

 

[Xraywolf]

I also am a big fan of pinpointers at tot lots.
Some of the stuff blends in so well, you can be staring right at it and barely see it, the PP sniffs it right out.

Never really used it to probe the base of supports, mine would likely alert about 3 or 4 inches away from any mass of metal, I can get in that close with my coil.

 

[BareBones]

The pennies are tough to spot in the wood even with a pinpointer. I have had the probe right on the penny and could not even see it until I started to feel for it and pulled it out.

That's why I'm interested in a new or better pinpointer. My Harbor Freight one works pretty good, damn good if you consider what it cost, but my only complaint with it is I find myself using the probe to dig around in the hole and any pressure on the probe end causes it to sound off.

It's been raining here and been pretty much miserable all day so I did not get a chance to go out dirt fishing today.

 

[Xraywolf]

Heres the pinpointer I use

Great little unit, had it through some fairly rough field work going on 3 years, still going strong.
Very well made, runs forever on a 9 volt, adjustable sensitivity and a built in LED light that comes in handy
for lighting dark holes.
Audio & visual alert - No vibration though.
Lightweight and small, not much bigger than a deck of cards.
Some may view its snubby little nose as a down side, I like it, because the one I used before, Wizard vibe probe [shaped like a gun] ,,, Was a great unit, loved it ,,, But its long PVC neck snapped at the drop of the hat.
I went through 3 of them in less than 2 years before giving up and trying this.
Love it, and have no need to try anything else.
Only thing that I didn't like about it was that there is no way to clip it on to anything.
I use one of those retractable key chains when hunting, just clip it on a pocket.
So I installed a little screw in O ring screw right in the corner, works like a charm.

I would highly advise anyone to consider this before buying one for 2 or 3 X the price, and are not even as good as this one.

Fairly priced, in my opinion, at around $50 shipped, these are only available from Europe.
Mine took less than 1 week to arrive.
Don't mean to sound like a Sherlock salesman here, or steal any thunder from local forum sponsors, none of whom carry this unit - But I was sold on this little baby a long time ago, and am passing on my high opinion of this great little gadget.

http://tinyurl.com/moox7q

BTW, "Harbor Freight" & "works pretty good" are almost always oxymorons, as you are probably aware.

 

[BareBones]

BTW, "Harbor Freight" & "works pretty good" are almost always oxymorons, as you are probably aware.

Come on Harbor Freight is not that bad, but I hear what you are saying.

 

[Xraywolf]

BTW, "Harbor Freight" & "works pretty good" are almost always oxymorons, as you are probably aware.

Come on Harbor Freight is not that bad, but I hear what you are saying.

They are worse than bad, I've had everything from power tools, sanding disks to carpenter pencils fly apart during the 1st use ,, I've vowed "never again", but I drift in there occasionally for an air tool accessory or some odd truck part.
I usually go incognito, as I'd be shamed to no end if any of my co workers saw me going in there.