Deep square cut iron nails sound like deep silver. Solution?

[Tony (Michigan)]

Hey gang,
I have an Explorer XS and SE. I live on an old farm that was originally settled around 1820.
The folks who bought the farm in 1920, tore down the old house and scavenged the wood beams etc. As you can
imagine, the nails they pulled out went in the yard.

My problem is my detector normally gives a low tone for iron and high tone for silver. But I get fooled by the
sound of these deep nails because they often, sometimes, sound like a deep silver coin.

Is there something you do to figure if it's iron without having to dig it up?

Thanks for any help. I've been detecting this farm for 20 years off and on and only found 2 Mercs and one Washington silver and some wheats.
There has to be old coins hiding under the nails.

 

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[sonofadigger]

Unfortunately all detectors do this and in my experience the minelabs love deep iron nails...fools me everytime...usuallyif it's a repeatable signal I just dig it

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[Ammoman]

I think it is for this reason most of us have more than one metal detector. I find my Tesoro beep and dig discriminates pretty darn well in areas like that.

 

[SD51]

Tony, I know what you mean about those deep square nails. I hunt a spot where an 1850's school house once stood. The instructions for tearing down the school must have included, "Throw all nails on the ground". As an experiment, take a 20' by 20' section and dig every possible signal. You just might uncover some coins hiding next to all those nails.

 

[Carolina Tom]

Most of us deal with this at one point or another.

You might not like this answer, but you need to dig all repeatable signals... especially at older places. The good targets are hiding in the iron (hopefully), and the only way to find them is to remove the masking iron signal.

The Deus will shift frequency and "help" to ID iron, however, the guys that dig the best stuff, dig it all!

I got an SLQ earlier in the year that at least (10) people missed. It did NOT sound like a good target, but after I pulled a few nails out of the hole... clean high tone!

Best of luck to you sir!

 

[relic nut]

Tom gives good advice, and I agree that you need to dig the iron to open up the site. Here is something that I've done that works SOMETIMES. The high tone from iron is often the halo effect, and if you stomp hard on the ground with your foot it will break the halo and the signal will turn to iron. If I'm in a good site that should have history I'll dig it all, but you can try this and see what happens. But in the end, it's like playing basketball..... You'll miss every shot you don't take.

HH, RN

 

[ChampFerguson/TN]

if I owned an 1820s farm, I'd remove every signal on the place. Theres bound to be lots of goodies that the iron is obscuring.
And if you do that you will learn a Lot about your detector.

 

[PowerDubs]

I've dug a gazillion square nails out of my yard, and I bet I haven't pulled 10% of them...


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[Tony (Michigan)]

I think it is for this reason most of us have more than one metal detector. I find my Tesoro beep and dig discriminates pretty darn well in areas like that.

Hi Ammoman, what Tesoro model do you use that works so well in iron nail infested yards?

 

[Tony (Michigan)]

Thanks to all of you who took the time to help me with this issue.

Last night, I turned down the sensitivity on my Explorer SE all the way down to 5 with a gain of 10.
I wanted to see if I could find coins above the old iron. Found a wheatback about a foot from the sidewalk using my 8" coil.
There was iron all around but it sounded pretty repeatable. In pinpoint I could hear nails on each side
about 3" or so from the coin. It wasn't that deep. I've been over this area at the end of the sidewalk
many times but with my sensitivity way up. I think the nails were overwhelming the detector and was
not hearing the penny due to the nails next to it.

If I dug all the nails and trash starting in 1990, it'd probably be pretty clean by now. :-)

 

[Tpmetal]

yeah i find i don't have that problem much with my mx sport unless its a really short chubby nail. BUT even though i can tell i still dig them, because sometimes something good pops up.

 

[LI Tom]

You can learn to tell between iron and a deep coin,the iron having a higher ,harsher high tone.Also in Smartscreen the cursor will peg to the extreme top right corner and not move or bounce like silver can do.

 

[KirkS]

I have found I prefer to hunt with my SE in digital mode, and I've been paying very close attention to what numbers bring up what target. I am at the point where I don't dig many (if any) pull tabs, because they will always hit a 10-07 or 11-07. Every time I've dug those numbers it was a pull tab, so I don't dig them except as data info (dig them to verify it is what I think it is). But if it's a 09-07, 12-07, 10-8, 11-08, etc., I dig it. Those tend to be incomplete pulltabs.

Point I'm trying to make is if you can with 99% certainty get a digital reading on all the nails you have dug, you can then skip digging them. But, when you do get a signal for them, slow your swing down a huge amount, and swing from different angles. Doing that may give you info about other potential targets in close proximity to the nail. Now if your test nails are coming in all over the place number-wise, then this won't work. I find the digital (numbers) easier to memorize then locations on a huge grid of pixels.

If the nails aren't too terribly deep, I might consider just cleaning them out if time allowed. If your time at the location is limited where you won't be able to keep coming back indefinitely, then you'd want to cherry pick. Have you found any older things yet? What depth were they at? Any coins? That info, along with the huge amount of info the SE (and I'm guessing the XS as well) gives you, should allow you to ignore most of the nails, You'll probably still dig some bent or really small (or large) ones, but that should greatly reduce.

Also, a small coil would be great for this situation. I have and like the NEL 6x8, but also have the SunRay X-5, but haven't used it yet. Trouble there is if the good targets have depth, you may not see them with a small coil.