BioProfessor
Silver Member
Know it's there but I know my machine can't "see" it- help!!
I need some help here. I am not a cache hunter and have never found one so I am as much of a newbie as you can be. I'm sort of lost.
A person in the area has asked me to help him locate a cache of silver coins - about 500-1000 - that were in a bag and placed in a can about 150% the size of a 1lb coffee can. He buried the can about a 12-15" deep close to 20 years ago. Now he can't remember where he buried it. So it is "somewhere out there."
I spent about 10-12 hours searching the area he says is the most likely place for the can. Nothing.
So today I take a can about the size of a 1lb coffee can, fill it with rolls of pennies, and bury it in the yard at about the same depth the can with the silver coins is supposed to be. Now I have a reference. Sort of.
I take my DFX with a 6x9DD coil to see what it tells me. It won't ground balance. Soil is by the estuary and has a pretty good salt load. So I have to use the DFX in the preset mode. I sweep over my buried can and get no signal. Go through all the programs, up the preamp, and adjust all I can to make it "see" the can of pennies. Nothing. So in these soil conditions, the DFX won't go deep enough to see it.
I take my Etrac and put on the WOT coil. Use all modes. Nothing. Try changing the adjustments. No difference. I put on the factory coil. Running the Minelab Relic factory program, I get a good solid tone when I sweep the target but there is not enough information coming back to the machine for it to give me a reading or a plot. If I use the PinPoint mode, I am able to tell it is a large target and the depth indicator will give me a guess at depth. The problem is that the area has quite a bit of trash and since I don't get any information from the signal - Fe/CO numbers or a plot on the graph - there are LOTS of signals that sound like this one and "look" like this one. I can use the PinPoint mode to give me a guess at the size of the object but many of the objects there are pretty large so that won't distinguish a the can of coins from other relatively large trash targets. So I'm stuck.
I am thinking about getting a 2-box machine to do the search. I have no experience with them or even know anybody that has used one.
So my question is - If you were asked to recover a can of a 1000 or so silver coins buried in soil wet with sea water, what machine and technique would you use.
Thanks for any and all advice.
Daryl
I need some help here. I am not a cache hunter and have never found one so I am as much of a newbie as you can be. I'm sort of lost.
A person in the area has asked me to help him locate a cache of silver coins - about 500-1000 - that were in a bag and placed in a can about 150% the size of a 1lb coffee can. He buried the can about a 12-15" deep close to 20 years ago. Now he can't remember where he buried it. So it is "somewhere out there."
I spent about 10-12 hours searching the area he says is the most likely place for the can. Nothing.
So today I take a can about the size of a 1lb coffee can, fill it with rolls of pennies, and bury it in the yard at about the same depth the can with the silver coins is supposed to be. Now I have a reference. Sort of.
I take my DFX with a 6x9DD coil to see what it tells me. It won't ground balance. Soil is by the estuary and has a pretty good salt load. So I have to use the DFX in the preset mode. I sweep over my buried can and get no signal. Go through all the programs, up the preamp, and adjust all I can to make it "see" the can of pennies. Nothing. So in these soil conditions, the DFX won't go deep enough to see it.
I take my Etrac and put on the WOT coil. Use all modes. Nothing. Try changing the adjustments. No difference. I put on the factory coil. Running the Minelab Relic factory program, I get a good solid tone when I sweep the target but there is not enough information coming back to the machine for it to give me a reading or a plot. If I use the PinPoint mode, I am able to tell it is a large target and the depth indicator will give me a guess at depth. The problem is that the area has quite a bit of trash and since I don't get any information from the signal - Fe/CO numbers or a plot on the graph - there are LOTS of signals that sound like this one and "look" like this one. I can use the PinPoint mode to give me a guess at the size of the object but many of the objects there are pretty large so that won't distinguish a the can of coins from other relatively large trash targets. So I'm stuck.
I am thinking about getting a 2-box machine to do the search. I have no experience with them or even know anybody that has used one.
So my question is - If you were asked to recover a can of a 1000 or so silver coins buried in soil wet with sea water, what machine and technique would you use.
Thanks for any and all advice.
Daryl
