Biggest mistake

[finderskeepers]

New Tejon arriving tomorrow.Other than giving the UPS guy a big bear hug...whats the biggest potential " machine specific "mistake I need to be careful of?

 

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[Hobojo]

Selling it!

 

[finderskeepers]

LOL...I think im good on that one. Doing this whole mental gymnastics about....should I go to some of my key places (relic sites) right away or give it a month or 2??
I am gonna hit and old park on Sat for some cherry picking or every target digging/learning session. Either way is fine

 

[GreenMeanie]

Not digging every target at the beginning to see what the machine is telling you.

 

[finderskeepers]

Not digging every target at the beginning to see what the machine is telling you.

I'm prepared for that (at least I've convinced myself of that for the moment)

I've got a 400 acre 100+ year old park to work over...plenty of spots to switch up if I start suffering tone/trash insanity.

 

[guardez]

welcome brother to the tesoro family. my best advice would be to be patient and learn what the machine is telling you.
when i first got my deleon i was very impatient and ready to sell it. an old hand with a tesoro aztec gave me this advice.
just give it time. in fact just a few days ago it was giving first a good signal and then bad. i knew what was going on, a
wheat penny on top of an iron washer. this only happens with time and patience. so just take it slow and learn.
good luck and i hope you find a kettle full of gold coins.

Steve Guardez from southeast Missouri.

 

[Mike70]

One thing I have learned from my new Sand Shark is when it sounds off, its a target, and its metal, so dig it !

 

[SouthFLdigger]

Tejon is a great machine,like others say hold on to it learn it well. Like all machines it has its quirks, if i lived further north where actual relics exist, the Tejon would no doubt be part of my arsenal.

 

[finderskeepers]

Wish the manual had mentioned GB adjustments should only be made 1/10,000th of an inch at a time...only took me an hour to figure that out another plus...musta got the helium filled model by mistake...it was like swinging a feather duster compared to my other 2 rigs.
Hope to get out to 1800's site this weekend.

 

[finderskeepers]

Decided I'm not ready for old homesites yet, and went back to the park. I'm ashamed to admit... I actually contemplated stomping the new Tesoro into the ground (only for 1 second, thankfully). GD GB!!!

I spent the first 1/2 hour trying to ground balance the machine, and could not do it to save my life. I recalled my last time out (1st time use) that when you were close, you needed to make micro adjustments to the knob. So, same location today...significantly positive response...no problem, start adjusting, and adjusting, and adjusting to no real affect. Ok, no problem, maybe I bumped the knob in transport I'll start over.Found the middle point between upper and lower limits...started with very small adjustments again with no noticeable changes...started making larger adjustments (1/4 turns)...to no affect...so, of course, I went with bigger adjustments and when that didn't produce the miraculous result I was looking for...I did what any sane person would do...I started blindly and wildly turning the knob left and right, first a micro turn(nope) then 1 & 1/2(nope) then back 2 turns(nope) and forward again precisely 1. 97365 turns back toward where I just was(nope) and from some crazy reason...that didn't work either. So I stomped back to the car.

This little Tejon was getting a time out! I was convinced spending an hour alone in the back seat would bring it to it's senses. Oh, and just to be sure the lesson was learned, I brought his brother, the DFX from the car...I was secretly hoping he would peer out from the window and see all the fun that he was missing as we played in the grass. As luck would have it, there weren't many targets that held promise without needing to dig and I found my mind wondering a bit. Then like a bolt of lightning, it hit me...it MUST be EMI of some sort. Why else would the coil make a pronounced response when I brought it up to waist height from the ground??

With the guilt of this new revelation weighing heavily, I quickly packed up the DFX and brought him back. I hastily placed him beside his brother and avoiding eye contact with the little Tejon, slipped into the drivers seat. To temper some of the awkwarness, I announced rather loudly, that we were going to another park. I hoped that this news would smother some of the sadness and frustration I could feel swirling in the seat behind me. That worked...for about 9 minutes.

That was the point I had to pull into that rest area. The one with no obvious signs of EMI, no buried electrical, no cell towers nearby. I would just let him run in the grass for a few minutes to shake of some of the negative energy of this misadventure. I wanted him to enjoy pure freedom, without interference or restriction.To be sure...I left the cellphone in the car and the key fob (push button start on car...car knows when keys are close enough to start...must have some kind of transmitter??) behind and walked a few hundred feet to the lush grass in the corner. OK, little guy, here we are...go, be you, do your thing!! I was so thrilled at the thought of redemption for both of us. My euphoria was very shortlived as the scene played out nearly identical to the one just an hour or so before.There was one slight difference this time though. Now, my frustration began to morph into determination. I went into methodical robot mode.

I inspected the coil(fine), wiggled the cable at the coil(fine), unscrewed the cable and reattached( restarted, no change), pulled the batteries ( restarted, no change) disconnected the coil and attached another (both are brand new), (restarted, no change)...WTH is going on I moaned aloud!! And that's when I heard it...just a faint little whisper, but unmistakable..."you're doing it wrong". WHAT impossible, I've read hundreds of threads, I bought the book, I can't be doing anything wrong!!!

I still can't be sure who's voice it was, that forlorn little Tejon just sitting on the ground looking wholly unloved and dejected...was it forest fairies just within the treeline a few yards to my right, or was it that buried quarter nearby scared of the thought of spending eternity all alone?? Regardless, it had a certain ring to it and I had to accept it to be truth. I can't even begin to imagine how someone like myself with ZERO experience on this machine could be SO DAMN SURE that setting to the middle of the adjustment and working outward was "THE" way to this nirvana called "ground balanced". So Just to prove them(?) wrong, I was gonna do it different!

Went all the way positive (I think? My soul was shaken, how can I remember positive or negative) made a about 1/3 turn adjustment...BAAAAAMMM, a change...now dazed and confused, I somehow managed to execute 2 flawless micro adjustments, and the angels started to sing! I was at one, with the earth...that sweet hum of contentment wafted up through the coil and my little Tejon and connected to me through the headphones.

Now I know some of you are thinking " Wait, you need to have GB adjusted slightly positive or you are losing depth"...guess what? There appears to be a quite a chorus of others, saying just the opposite, LOL. So, in the absence of any links to sources to anything that even remotely resembles "scientific proof", I'll let the woods/ground fairies and my little Tejon buddy figure that out in due time.

EDIT: since this is the "biggest mistake thread" I'm a little disappointed to see that none of you managed to point out that me thinking I might know everything I need by doing "some reading", might be my biggest mistake. You guys are awesome, so I'm willing to overlook this and will try harder to learn from you all!

 

[Hobojo]

Love that post. Funny. Keep trying. Threshold humming slightly , few inches off the ground , pump up and down with the coil making the adjustments to the GB +or - till you get the nice steady tone on the pump, MICRO adjustments . Ive been setting my Outlaw a little negative and its not happy that way. So gonna keep monkeying with it.
And then theres that whole Power Balancing thing good luck with that.

 

[tabman]

New Tejon arriving tomorrow.Other than giving the UPS guy a big bear hug...whats the biggest potential " machine specific "mistake I need to be careful of?

Not purchasing and reading ebooks 'Mastering The Tesoro Vaquero and Tejon'.

Not getting a 5.3 inch concentric coil for really trashy areas and to use at sites that are loaded with nails.



tabman

 

[finderskeepers]

Yes Hobojo...I just have to remember it is a brand new machine and I am a brand new user. It was amazing how thoroughly convinced I was that the knob could not possibly have needed more than a little tweak from the prior outing. I'm not sure where that notion came from, but man it was blocking my brain completely. I think I need to practice and perfect my walking, before I try running with "power balance"...but some day

 

[finderskeepers]

Thanks Tabman. I did get the book and am about 1/2 way through it. I wish there was a real book that I could bring places with me
I actually opted for the 5 3/4 widescan.I know the value of having a smaller coil, especially in trash. I go to parks less often than I'm out in the woods at old homesites. I've been fortunate to find several with minimal trash. I know I may have given up a small amount of depth over the concentric, but feel like the coverage pattern when poking in nooks and crannies and sweeping between and around all the low bush bluberries, made more sense for me.

BTW...your video is not working. It displayed correctly, but message "this video is private" appears when I click to play.

 

[tabman]

BTW...your video is not working. It displayed correctly, but message "this video is private" appears when I click to play.

I forgot to switch the video from private to public. It should be up and running shortly.

tabman

 

[finderskeepers]

Excellent video! The recovery speed is amazing on this machine. I had the 12 x 10 on, ran over a spot with 3 different tones. I had no idea of what it was telling me, but knew 2 of the tones sounded "good". Same signal pattern when I swept from 2 other directions. Pinpointed, dug a plug and found...a lincoln @ 6", a quarter in the plug @3" and a screwcap @ 5" about 1/2" to the right of the wall of my hole. Hard to say for sure, but I feel like that quarter and penny were less than a quarter's width apart in vertical alignment.

Is that quickness a potential liability on deep coins or ones that are on edge?

 

[tabman]

Finderskeepers, you will find that not only does the Tejon have a super fast recovery speed, it also has more depth than most people want to dig. Furthermore, it works great at finding coins on edge. Where the Tejon really shines for me is on low conductors like nickels and GOLD RINGS. Relic hunters love Tejons because they go super deep and hit hard on lead bullets and small Civil War buttons etc.

tabman

 

[finderskeepers]

Thanks Tabman. Thats all music to my ears! Funny you mentioned lead...I did find a 2 1/2"" square of it about 5" deep. The Tejon was absolutely screaming the signal.