Folks, Detecting small gold.......

[bill from lachine]

Folks,

Since I detect only urban green spaces don't find a big pile of gold.....but I get my fair share....the hardest part of the equation is sifting through all the trash to find it.....I suspect it's pretty much the same case for the beach hunters.

That said finding the small stuff is more of a challenge...these items weigh in between .70 and 1.50 grams.....in my experience the only way you find the small stuff is to go slow and do the overlaps....probably rings true for the beach hunters also....but I'll leave it to them to chime in with their opinions.

Regards + HH

Bill

 

[Muddyhandz]

Good post Bill. I would wager that there's only a handful of detectorists that would ever dig that broken ring (top left) at a green space!

I agree, low and slow. Tight search patterns, maximum sensitivity, and minimal discrimination.

I was going to post a bunch of beach gold missed by the crowds and found on the off-season like open chains, open earrings, broken or split rings, etc. but I decided to post this silver instead........




I figured that experienced beach hunters would know that if one was to find stud earrings like that, they surely would not miss anything else!

For every one of those studs, I found 4 or more backings and other non-ferrous fragments.

On land, I could only stomach digging those kind of signals at an old relic hunting site but at a modern park, I would end up vomiting from all the modern trash!

It depends on your dedication.

You can have all the skillz and a great detector but if your heart's not into it.......

Just think about all the cool little pieces of history one could find embedded in the iron when relic hunting.

Same principal but a different story!

Cheers,
Dave.

 

[bill from lachine]

Dave,

I happen to have a bit of a hard head....lol.....so if it's out there I'll find it eventually.....but the low and slow approach in my mind is valid regardless of site or our hunting specialties....in your case relic hunting, green space or beach hunting it improves our odds of finding not only the small stuff but also the deeper targets regardless of size.

Regards + HH

Bill

 

[Frankn]

Here's a little tip for the beach guys that use PI's. I use a Surfmaster PI that is about 10+ years old. I have found out that for some reason that it picks up better on the right to left swing on fine gold. That is the left coil side leading is more sensitive to fine gold. I found a fine gold chain with a small cross on the beach, but it only picked up in the right to left swing. Hope this helps someone. Frank

 

[bill from lachine]

Frankn,

Strange how that happens....was it just a one off situation or had you picked off other small chains the same way?

Just asking because I know when I get a very iffy signal....I'll keep swinging from different angles to try and get a
better one as sometimes it's the orientation of the targets that is harder to pick up from one direction versus another.

Regards + HH

Bill

 

[Frankn]

I tried it from several directions. It appears that my PI is more sensitive when the left side of the coil approaches the target. The compass direction of the approach makes no difference. In this case, I only got the signal when the left side of the coil hit the target area first. Next time I am at the beach, I am going to experiment with the pulse delay and see if the situation is the same. I am a fast scanner, but the scan speed made no difference. Frank

 

[bill from lachine]

Frankn,

Thanks for the response.....not very techie so some of these fine points escape me....lol.

We have a guy on the Canadian forum who builds his own machines, does mods and seems to understand all this stuff....it amazes me....never had the knack for this sort of stuff......I have a hard enough time finding my house keys.

Regards + HH

Bill

 

[Tom_in_CA]

reply

Folks,

Since I detect only urban green spaces don't find a big pile of gold.....but I get my fair share....the hardest part of the equation is sifting through all the trash to find it.....I suspect it's pretty much the same case for the beach hunters.

That said finding the small stuff is more of a challenge...these items weigh in between .70 and 1.50 grams.....in my experience the only way you find the small stuff is to go slow and do the overlaps....probably rings true for the beach hunters also....but I'll leave it to them to chime in with their opinions.

Regards + HH

Bill

Bill, the stuff shown in your pix (as small as .5-ish gram things) can even be found with a power house deepseeker, like the explorer. Sure certain 2-filter machines, and especially a beach-pulse machine, will find them even easier though.

So the ability to find gold in junky turf" is HARDLY an issue of a machine's ability to find lower conductors, or small items. Because most discriminating machine could find those items in your pix (albeit they'd have to chase flaky weak signals). So if a person wants to find more gold in junky turf, all he needs to do is turn down his disc, and listen carefully. Odds are, he'd find the parks plum FULL of low conductors So having a machine that does "better in low conductors" is hardly the recipe for finding more gold, since there is NO LACK of "low conductors" to choose from, already.

And of course, his ratios of gold to aluminum at most junky urban blighted inner city parks (1000 to 1) would quickly tell him this is utter folly. He might try upscale & cleaner athletic fields, where there is no usage as "picnicking" (read "tabs and foil" d/t food) and not in blighted neighborhoods, and he can lower the junk ratio.

But really though, if gold jewelry is someone's goal, then why are they hunting junky turf, to begin with? They're much better off simply going to sandy swimming beaches. The ratios are best there, and the digging is easiest. And chase the old silver coins in the turf

 

[bill from lachine]

Tom,

No arguments from me.....in my case I detect mostly picked over urban green spaces and as these sites have been hit pretty hard I dig foil on up....and manage a fair amount of gold for my efforts both small and large....this is all done on foot....no cost of gas, etc....backpack and lunch and off I go.....here's a few larger gold I've found sifting through the mid and low tone junk......

Regards + HH

Bill