MD Sensitivity

[Kick]

I went to my dad's house today to do some metal detecting. For some background, dad's house was rebuilt in 1909 after a house fire. To date, I've found about 140 coins in his front yard alone. Most of these are newer, 1970 or newer, only a few wheats as far as older coins.

Now I've picked over his front yard really well but I thought I'd go after it again since I've read a little bit about iron masking. I had every intention of digging everything but after an hour with nothing but foil and bottle caps and other trash, I thought I'd experiment for a little while.

I set my ace250 on jewelry and after playing with the sensitivity I ended up with only 2 bars on the sensitivity. I started finding coins again, mostly pennies and nickles.

I now wonder with the sensitivity set low like that, if the iron objects located near the coins no longer masked them.

Thoughts?

 

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[fng68]

Hey Kick,

I read once too high Sens is like high beams on in the fog.

Makes sense to me.

Good Luck,

Ron

 

[fng68]

Hey Again Kick,

I almost forgot rest of my point.

Being a set Ground Balance, which is ok for most places. But some places with serious mineralization affect target ID and depth.

So your best course is to lower your sens to compensate for eratic behavior. Some days less is more.

Good Luck

 

[The.Boomer]

The only truly effective way to hunt this site would be to go all metal and dig all signals. I realize this will mean plenty of ghost targets, but without tearing these iron rust matrixes apart they'll continue to mask older targets. remove the trash and along the way you'll find the good stuff. Believe it or not a trashy site is a very good sign that there's good older targets buried just below and above the masking trash.

 

[Sandman]

Boomer is right about the sens and the masking effect. Sometimes you just need to do a lot of work on preparation of a site to get to the good stuff. The use of a sniper coil will help cherry pick between the trash, but won't help with coins under a nail. The use of a Sov GT would help, but again thats more money spent.

 

[TerryC]

140 coins in the front yard alone! Some wheats. You're doing alright. Keep at it. The detector is doing its job. Now you do yours! Get down into the dirt. Under the sod. The goodies are there (you're finding wheats) now figure a way to get them. Wanna get radical...and Dad will let you? Buy a sod cutter. It's a funny shovel-like digger with an "S" shaped shaft. Cut and move the sod. Then put it back. That is radical. Just keep at it. If you are recording the locations of good finds, use that info on other yards. Several good books will help you zero in on the hot spots. TTC

 

[Kick]

I'm a believer about digging everything now but I need to do it in chapters so to speak. Dad would probably pin my hide to the wall if I dug everything. His entire front yard would be a hole I believe.

I haven't even touched the area where the old dairy barn and smokehouse were. We pushed the barn down with a dozer about 5 years ago and scraped the ground down about 8 to 10 inches. There's also an old "tenant" house back in the woods. It's a 1 room house where a family lived. I believe it was well after the days of slavery since there are some remnants of an electrical hookup on it.

I was just amazed at the difference the lower sensitivity setting made. I thought I had hunted my yard out (for the most part). Now I'm itching to go back and try this in my yard and see what it's still hiding.