Hunting amongst the trash

[Jon Hill]

Hi,

Just thought I'd ask a question on here as I think you in the US must be the experts at detecting on trashy sites. I have a site contaminated with tin foil but full of medieval pottery here in the UK.

Can anyone suggest a method, detector, or a way of recovering finds quickly, to make this field worth detecting?

I'm pretty sure it contains hammered silver coins but I will have to dig a lot of foil to get to them.

Thanks in advance,

Jon

 

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[Dick from IA]

A 4" to 5" coil will definitely help, Jon. If you don't have one, see if your detector manufacturer furnishes one.

Smaller work pattern of a 4" coil permits its' signal to work between the trash, whereas an 8" coil takes in too large of an area and gives varied readings.

Good luck with the pottery hunting 8)

DFIU (Dick from IA)

 

[bk]

I'd be interested to know what all the foil is from. Are the pieces the same size?
If you have a detector that will I.D. the target, try to determine where the foil is "reading" and dig everything else.

 

[stoney56]

Hi,

Just thought I'd ask a question on here as I think you in the US must be the experts at detecting on trashy sites.

I think that's a compliment but not sure. LOL As for all the foil, could it be from chaff dumped to avoid radar detection at some point? BK had a point of checking where the foil reads and silver should read somewhat higher on the meter. DFIU also makes a good point of using a sniper coil to get between the junk and help cut down on a lot of mineralization causing the meter from giving a truer reading. IMO, if a coin gives say a 90 on a meter but there is some mineralization or trash that normally reads 50 and are both close together, it may balance out with a signal closer to 70. Again just a hunch.

 

[Jon Hill]

Hi,

Yes it is a complement. I was under the impression the reason your detectors have such powerful discriminator circuits is due to the fact a high proportion of your seraches are on trashy sites ie beaches and parks. We tend to use discrim off as far as possible here in the UK and try to just knock out iron.

The foil comes from pie cases, the farm was a pig farm and the farmer fed his pigs on food from local prisons and schools etc. A lot of the food was still in pie cases when it got to the farm the pigs ate the pies leaving the empty pie case on the floor of the pen. When the farmer mucked out the pie cases went into the spreader along with the muck. So when he spread the muck on his fields he was speading shredded pie cases along with it, hence fields contaminated with loads of foil.

Thanks,

Jon

 

[bk]

Well Jon, that makes sense. Too bad the farmer didn't use paper plates.

 

[BIG61AL]

That sounds like a real challenge.....keep us inform on how you go about searching.