Cant detect gold chains??? Minelab XS users

[NWHunter61]

Hey everyone! Using the Minelas XS default detect settings, I cannot detect gold chain...any size, any weight. I know when to dig, as gold chain takes out the threshold tone and it goes silent, but I guess I just don't understand why a gold ring gets a very distinct fingerprint and chain gives no tone or fingerprint...
Any comments or ideas? Thanks, everyone!
Murph

 

[Tom_in_CA]

The answer is that the detector .... instead of "seeing" the cumulative weight of the gold in the chain "sees" all the little links as separate targets, so to speak. Therefore teensny tinsel fine gold chains are difficult to see for ANY detector. True, there are some that see small gold better than others (like .... dedicated nugget detectors, and certain 2-filters, or whatever). But the detectors that hone in on that stuff, are usually not the power-house for depth, silver, etc... There's trade-offs between machines. So on the one hand, the XS is a great coin and relic hunter (depth, speed, TID, etc...) but on the other hand, no it won't get teensy thin chains or teeny platinunum earing studs, etc... But if you have a machine, like a beach pulse for instance, that excells in finding those things, believe me the XS will "kick it's b*tt in plenty of other arenas.

If you wad up the gold chain tightly (which is entirely possible to find like this when a chain has been tumbling around in the surf for years), then you will get a better signal off of it, verses if the chain is laid out length-wise.

Here's a little something to think about, that anyone can test for themselves: Take the ring portion of a round pull tab. Test it on your detector and make note of the TID you get (about nickel or whatever ..... mid to high 20s on the Whites scale, for instance). Now snip the pull-tab ring so that it's no longer a complete circle, and the snipped ends aren't touching each other. Now air-test the broken pulltab and you will notice that the TID will drop (to the low 20s or teens or whatever). Notice though that the amount of aluminum has not changed before or after you snipped the tab! It's still exactly the same weight of aluminum. So too does this example hold up for gold: The amount of gold weight in a solid round ring might be the exact same weight of gold in a chain made of many separate links. But each will give a different kind of reading.

BTW, the XS can pick up gold chains. Just not tinsel thin ones. You can still get beefier gold bracelets, chains, etc... But if you are hunting an area where you suspect tinsel thin gold chains (beaches), you might want to consider having a second machine that sees them better. But those machines will come with their drawbacks, so there's a lot to consider.

 

[NWHunter61]

Thanks for the input, Tom...and I will experiment with that tonight. While it all makes perfect sense, my problem lies in the fact that these aren't the skimpy little chains I am not picking up...they are heavy chains. In a pile or streched out, I get the same thing. Threshold tone dissapears, but no readings whatsoever on the detector. Also, one of the chains I am working with, while it is still a link type, is very tight...like a "snake" type link, only not a round chain...it is flat. I guess best described as if you lay it flat and kind of lay it in a circular curve, you can see no light or space between the links. Another thing I have not tried is to lay the chain on the ground flat and form a connected circle...

 

[bazinga]

You say the threshold tone nulls out. What kind of discrimination are you running?

 

[NWHunter61]

Tom and Bsco~
Thank you both for your responses...I appreciate your efforts to help in the matter. Tom..you are right in that when the chain is balled up,I get a very distinct tone and fingerprint. When the chain is dropped into a coil (a circular formation with a closed end) it does not seem to matter...it still does not recognize it as a valuable. Bsco...admittingly, I am running the default settings for the minelab. I have only just begun to change the settings for particular hunts, but never deviate from the default settings when hunting "in the wild". The default is all discussed in pages 40-45 of the xs manual I believe. Since posting this question, the responses I have received I posted this question in two places...here and in general discussions) lead me to believe that detecting chain that is in the elongated form(streched out) is very hard and that in order to get a signature for it I have to teach the detector...a daunting task to say the least since it all depends on size and weight of the chain. I think it is strange that I have found 6 rings and no chains, when it would seem that a chain is way more likley to be lost than a ring? Maybe a detector that only does gold is the answer, but hunting the same area twice doesn't seem very practical to me....

 

[NWHunter61]

Sorry fellas...I meant it was also posted in the "metal detecting" section of the "metal detecting" forum....the subject seemed to drop really fast in this forum, so I posted it there also where I thought it might get a little more attention...

 

[Tom_in_CA]

bscofield6 beat me to the punch by asking what kind of disc you are running. If you are getting a "null" then that means that the detector is actually detecting it. However it is putting it down into whatever pattern you have disc'd out. Like, it's so fine and little that it's gone down into the negative iron area of your blacked out screen.

Try this: Hunt in ferrous mode, and open up your screen completely open (nothing blacked out). In this way, iron will have a low grunt tone, and all conductive metals will have a positive tone. So a target like your fine teensy chain, which waffles on the edge, you might have a better chance of hearing try to get above that low iron tone. You merely pass iron tones if you don't want to detect iron. But if you're in an area where you suspect small teensy chains might come in that low, you can dig iron tones, especially if they are small and faint (verses larger obvious nails and such). Believe me there's a lot of pulse guys who dig a lot of nails, since they have no disc. whatsoever. So digging iron in your quest for teensy thin gold would not be out of the question, if that is your goal to find. Ie.: in other words, machines that excell in finding such items, would by nature have weaknesses like finding iron (or harder time nixing, etc...) anyhow.

Also make sure you're not hunting in auto sens. Make sure you're in manual sens. The reason is, that by hunting in auto sens., you're allowing the machine to smooth over fringe flutters and such, because it's trying to even out minerals. I'm convinced that it can take fringe signals (either on the fringe of depth, or on the fringe waffling between iron and conductor) and treat them as a flutter to ignore & smooth out. So hunt in manual, and just adjust lower or higher as ground conditions merit. Put up with a few stutters now and then, that you can merely repeat your passes over to see if they repeat or not. Your fine gold chain may be in that nether-land that auto chooses to treat as background flutter to detune out.