Hello, im new to Metal Detecting, just acquired 2 medium level detectors from a local salvation army, a Whites Eagle 2 SL and Bounty Hunter discovery 2200. the Bounty Hunter works well so far from just doing tests, the other needs a charge before I can do anything. Well my questions is, is it possible to add electric current to the ground to cause objects to appear better, albeit that might mean they are much deeper, but could it work. Im saying using a batter and long electrodes and shoving them deep into the ground like they do to bring earth worms to the surface. Like I said its an odd question but genuine. Im wondering if it would just interfere or provide more connection.
There has actually been a marketed device to do just what you're saying. I forget the name of it, but it was back in the early 1990s, if I recall. It worked on the following principle: It's a known fact that you can get deeper in certain types of soils when they're moist, verses when they're dry, right? Because of the conductivities of the minerals, the moisture (afterall, water is a conductor, albeit a poor one). So someone had the bright idea to experiment with those type apparatusses where you shock the ground (with an old magneto or car battery or whatever) to cause worms to come to the surface (for fishing bait). And sure enough the attempt did heighten the sensitivity of the objects, signals, etc....
So he made and marketed this device where ....... all it essentially was ...... was a bunch of foot long metal pegs. And you were to put them in the ground at various intervals. Then you hooked them all up to your car battery (or a loose car battery, if you cared to lug one around, and take a chance that you'd merely drain it, haha). Then you were to sit back for a few hours. Supposedly you could then detect deeper.
I tried the setup in a particular moist-turfed park, that had given up coins back to the 1800s. We'd detected this park since the late 1970s. It was one of those "picture perfect" kind of parks, where the age of the coins is perfectly stratified by depth. Ie.: 1940s silver was at 6". 1920's losses were at 7". 1900-10's losses were at 8", and so forth on down the depth spectrum. So as you can see, it was "all we could do" to tap into the pre 1900s era. Yet the park dated to the 1870s. So we just KNEW there was deeper silver out of our reach.
This seemed to be the perfect spot to try this device at, right? The surface had been stripped of all clad, the park wasn't too junky, and we had perfect reason to suspect deeper coins. So I set up the device exactly as instructed, at a particular favorite zone of this park. And then waited a few hours. Then turned on the detector. I got no deeper coins. But what I DID discover, was that teensy little things that sometimes fool you into thinking it might be a deeper coins, CAME ALIVE. You know, like those little eraser pencil top things now sounded bold and sharp
And other such flittly little things. But no, no deeper coins. Who knows? Perhaps there just simply wasn't any deeper there?
But I wasn't too impressed. Perhaps for things like nugget hunting (where you want to make the ground hotter for pin-head sized stuff) it might be worthwhile. But it's a pain to set up, wait around, have to lug a heavy car battery around (unless you can drive up to the spot), etc...
Just kidding, learning your machine may get your results.
