“Iron Sifting” advice

[pa-dirt_nc-sand]

I’m working on learning Field2 5 tone pretty much stock, no additional disc, as my relic mode. Each time out learning a bit more.

Today’s quick hunt was at an old farm house cellar hole that dates from the 1800’s to around 1950. No modern trash, yippee! I have pounded this site with my old beep and dig detector in the Fall/Winter when the weeds were down. Had to be selective today and only hunt under some big trees where the weeds were manageable.



I was trying to isolate any tone above iron that sounded small. There is a ton of iron here as there were 3 or 4 barn type structures and a home, but it seems as if the Turnpike just toppled them, filled the cellars and smoothed out the debris. Each swing there were multiple tones above iron, but really hard to isolate any. Dropped power down to 19 and got some high tones, but as you can see by the pic they were really big targets. (My old detector may have given me an overload signal on these.)

I’m really hoping this Fall/Winter to hit sites like this very slowly trying to pull out small targets, such as buttons and coins. I’d hate to start discriminating out a lot like I do in Park1 (trashy parks), but not sure how to deal with the rusty iron with my short hunts.

Should I lower power even more? Should I crank the iron bias up? Thx!

 

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[vferrari]

I would definitely experiment with lowering down further, perhaps to 15 or 16 to see what pops out. I personally avoid using any iron bias whatsoever because, as a filter, it has been shown to keep nonferrous in the proximity of iron masked. Also, if you are sifting, I would recommend running with no disc (horseshoe button) if you can take it to see if the disc is contributing to further making and dig any repeatable non-ferrous tone.

 

[CharlesUpstateNY]

I have hunted many a NY 1700's cellar hole. Take a garden rake with you after the snow melts and rake off the several inches of dead tree/plant/leaf debris you will gain a few inches of depth. If there's a lot of nails (typical of NY cellar holes) don't be afraid to lift your coil off the ground to aid pinpointing. The whole coil is hot, but the center of the coil is hottest. The outer rim of the coil left and right is weakest. By lifting the coil a few inches you take the outer rim out of play and its easier to get centered over your target by just using the center of the coil. I will sometimes kick the back of my coil up flat against the lower rod, then use the front tip/center of my coil as a pinpointer.

Ultimately though, on sites with a heavy layer of rusty nails mixed or on top of good targets I have had the best luck just going to a smaller coil. There's a strip of 1800's park in one NY city, first it was a park, then houses were built on that strip in the 1800's, now its a park again and there's tons of rusty nails there. I was not able to find a single coin on that strip with a 10 inch coil, multiple attempts and skunked. Took a 8 inch coil in there one day, really measured it was more like 7 inches, coins poured out of the nails. Dug like 12 of them the first 2 hours.