ziphius, it sounds logical: "dig all iron! afterall ...'you never know if it's a tinsel thin chain'...., afterall 'it might be masking something', etc.. etc...." Logical sincere conclusions. But REALITY is a different thing.
Here is my take after 30 yrs. of beach hunting central CA beaches: It would only work if you were on 1) touristy clean beaches where iron isn't a big problem to begin with, and 2) if you were on beaches where everyone else had the same logic, and everyone else dug iron too, etc....
Because otherwise, if you are on a) beaches that have industrial history (next to wharves, allow campfires, etc...) and b) beaches where you are the only one, or the first one, to think you're going to dig iron, then you will be a pitied soul indeed.
I have seen this happen again and again: someone in my area reads the beach pulse advertisements that they are specifically suited to the beach, go much deeper than discriminators, punch through black sand, get the teensiest of fine tinsel chains, etc... Sounds logical! But when they show up on a nail-riddled beach after a storm, and are digging 50 nails to each conductive target, they look over at the guys with discriminators effortlessly digging non-stop conductive targets. They run home, ditch the pulse machine, and buy a discriminator (like the Excaliber or whatever).
The only beaches around me that a person can use a pulse on, *might* be 1 or 2 of the very touristy upscale beaches, that haven't had much recent industrial history, and don't allow beach bonfires (which tend to introduce nails, d/t burned pallets). Other than that, pulse machines (or persons thinking they'll use the all-metal mode of a their regular machine, in order to get a bit more depth) are quickly left in the dust.
I've heard that in southern CA, where tons of people have been using pulse machines for many years, patiently cleaning out the nails, that it's not quite so bad as this. Same for Hawaii, where perhaps nasty black sand, and the absence of industrial iron junk might make "digging iron" (with a pulse or in-all-metal mode) appropriate. But for a lot of other beaches, you will find that you would go pscyho trying to dig all the iron.
I tend to go out after storms, when erosion has made depth a non-factor. The name of the game in some thick conditions is speed: the more you can get before the next high tide chases you out, the better. Therefore the more iron I can pass, the better.
