Hunting Platinum..??

[Clev]

I will be searching for a Platinum wedding ring tomorrow using a White's Spectrum XLT (older model)
I have never used this machine before nor have I ever hunted for anything Platinum..

Any advice you could give me would be GREAT!!

Thanks

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

Dig anything that reads gold or pulltab.

 

[Clev]

Dig anything that reads gold or pulltab.

should I just use the standard preset "Coin & Jewely" setting

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

You'll have to wait for an XLT owner to chime in for that. Generally I avoid presets and rely on sound and digital display to show me everything and then decide myself what to pass on based on tone and repeatability. If the ring has a stone it may read differently depending on sweep direction.

If it has been lost recently tone the detector down and look for surface hits and ignore anthing over 2" deep..

 

[JmCraz8]

Good luck I hope you find it!

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Clev, it's been a long time since I've used an xlt, but I seem to recall that the coin-&-jewelry program does have the disc. edit #'s set up to find all low conductors. Go figure, if it's saying it's for "jewelry", then .... duh .... it must inc. those #'s. But just to be sure: go through the menu to view what #'s it's accepting in that program. Make sure you're accepting all your positive #'s (00 to 95). Make sure that program didn't edit out the salt #'s (00 to 03-ish). In fact, if the platinum ring is teensy/dainty enough, edit in down to about negative 10 as well. Some teensy dainty ladies platinum rings might bounce into the negative #s, so best to edit those in (disregard if the ring is a heavier men's though). And down to negative 10 is still high enough to knock out small iron.

 

[Davers]

ID try the coin & jewlery preset mode 1st if you do not know how to do the special ajustments if no luck try the relic preset mode ive found small and med size gold and platinum rings in that mode and it usually sings off well on pull tabs old stlyle vid# 20-35-maybe40 on thick newer ones ,the vdi in relic gives me a 10 or so on 22 long and short shell cases. If lost recently it should pick it up fairly easy & you should not have to dig at all sod grass can hide things very well ,if u know the gen. area search from all directions and angles . I would love to help if you were close by . Good luck

 

[Frankn]

Use the coins and jewelry. It will come up close to gold and will sound. Set in this mode, an ID will show up for all metals, but only coins and jewelry will produce a tone. I don't know the conditions where you are looking, but if you swing over it, it will sound off. Frank

 

[Clev]

No luck today to but going back tomorrow.

 

[CleenSweep]

Can you negate/notch all other than what plat. Might come up as? For instance, with my Garrett AT Pro you can isolate specific target ID numbers while excluding all others...if u have some target metal to use to begin with....ie, you swipe a gold ring at "x", then negate everything else so as to only have similar gold rings sound....seems would allow u not to waste too much time digging tabs.....(My wedding band is 30gm .960 Plat with 8 stones, and pulls a strong tone at just 4 on the VDI....FYI.)
I have a whites V3I too, but haven't delved to deep into the expert menus yet...they must have exclusionary modes though your mileage may vary.... Good luck....

 

[Davers]

No luck today to but going back tomorrow.

While everyone will have an opinion , Personally ive been using a 10yr old spet xlt exclusively for the past 6 yrs and have used the fact-preset modes all the time as that is what im used to and hunt in relic mode 90% of the time cause thats w/ im hunting 90% of the time I use the other preset modes ,coin/ coins& jewelry when coin shooting or hitting trashy sites. I FIGURED the folks at whites had to know what they were doing when programing them. I actually learned more about what the xlt will do ,custom/changing settings while researching a dfx ,but as said the presets have always worked well for me & needed to be tuned only in high iron ground and the preset modes are just what I know well ,so I just dont want to change anything.,,Any way in my experience in relic mode my xlt will pick up old mustard & ketchup packs & small foil gum/ candy w/a vdi jumpy from -95 all the way to +14 or so and will sound pretty solid. So depending on the area size and how long ago the ring was lost thats how I WOULD look for the ring ,while digging or checking all signals. As said everyone has their own/best technique. one other note,when looking for iost keys ,rings the area where the people said they lost the item was rarely where I found it sometimes 10 or more feet away. Remember hunt slowly & around and close by the search area ..Good luck ................................p.s. I hope you have a good supply of P Mags

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Can you negate/notch all other than what plat. Might come up as? For instance, with my Garrett AT Pro you can isolate specific target ID numbers while excluding all others...if u have some target metal to use to begin with....ie, you swipe a gold ring at "x", then negate everything else so as to only have similar gold rings sound....seems would allow u not to waste too much time digging tabs.....(My wedding band is 30gm .960 Plat with 8 stones, and pulls a strong tone at just 4 on the VDI....FYI.)
I have a whites V3I too, but haven't delved to deep into the expert menus yet...they must have exclusionary modes though your mileage may vary.... Good luck....

cleansweep, the trouble with this notion is, that it assumes that platinum has some certain numbers that it "might come up as". That's where the trouble starts, is that there IS NO certain numbers that platinum comes up as. Well ...... kinda. Here's the deal: It depends on the size of the object, NOT the "type metal".

For example, take aluminum for instance: most md'rs will tell you that aluminum (foil and tabs for instance), are "low conductors", right? HOWEVER, if you take an entire aluminum can, and wave it in front of your coil, what does it read out as? A penny or quarter or something, right? (ie.: a high conductor). But notice the composition of the metal in each case (a tab verses an entire can) has not changed. In each case, the item is still the same material: aluminum. So what changed then? The SIZE. So too is the logic the same for platinum or gold, etc.... If the ring was a big honkin man's ring (college ring sized, for instance), I bet it could read up as high as zinc penny, even though platinum. But if it is a dainty ladies solitaire, it might read down in the low foil range.

So the OP is going to have to have an idea of the size ring he is looking for. Once he does, then yes, he can "play the odds" and edit out #'s that it's not likely to read at. However, even then, that presents a risk: Because as we all know, in actual field conditions, there can be stray bounces that any target takes. So if you're first swing over the target happens to be one of those "stray bounces" on the TID scale, you would risk having it disc'd out. So if hunting for something like a gold ring (which might not even give a consistent locked-on TID anyhow, if it's not perfectly round), the searcher should open up his disc, and then evaluate each signal on a case-by-case merits, letting his ears do the work, watching the cursor, etc... Then sure, he can skip the "obvious pennies" or the "obvious nails", etc...

 

[Davers]

He ,Tom makes a good point "SIZE DOES MATTER" seriously tho.

 

[CleenSweep]

Hadn't even thought of that, Tom...
New to MDing completely, just remembered and made a mental note of that disc feature in the AT Pro and thought it'd be something worth mentioning. Still, glad u mentioned all that for MY future use...