nails

[zags08]

Hi all! I am new to the site and to the hobby, now that that's out of the way I can begin. This weekend I went on my first hunt. I am located in Central Long island. I hunted hiking and biking paths in a local tract of woods by my house. My area is known for both native american and colonial history. along the path I found countless nails. Does anyone know what that could led to? Is it still worth hunting this site? Any info would be great.
Best,
Mike

 

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[Mr_Mojo_Risin]

Welcome, Mike - Are you finding square nails or the more current round ones? If square, could be
the site of a colonial village or something. I would keep on it `til you find something cool! Maybe do some online research or with the local libraries and historical societies for old maps and info on the area. Keep us posted!!

 

[jeff of pa]

the Nails didn't grow there.
Although sometimes I wonder.

apparently Everyone Carried Nails and
Dropped them along their Path to find
their way Back

seriously Though
If they Dropped Nails they may
have dropped Valuables.

Good Luck !

 

[Shortstack]

Welcome to the forum, Mike.

If you could find out if a lot of "fill" material was brought in to build those pathways, it may have been brought in from a dump site where "cut" material is piled up for use in other places.
If that is not probable, then range out a little on both sides of the paths and look for indications of old foundations. Even an old barn site would be worth finding. And as Mojo asked; are there flat nails being found? If so, then by all means look into the areas on both sides of the trail. Back in the day, nails were very expensive because they were handmade and if a building was torn down, all nails were recovered for use in other buildings. Looking for the source of those flat nails would be worth doing. Just think of the old farm dumpsite you might find. In your part of the country, that could be very rewarding; although, any recovery operations might have to be done by clandestined means.

 

[Seamuss]

And I have been buying all my nails at the hardware store.

I should have been picking them up while detecting and saved a trip to the store.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Don't you have a discriminator? Why don't you just disc. them out?

 

[Monty]

Rusted nails often have a "halo" effect. The iron oxide or rust will cause even discriminated iron to light up often. But it might help some. Monty

 

[zags08]

what is a discriminator? I am very new to this hobby. My detector is a discovery 1100 from Radio Shack.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

On your discovery 1100, it's called "target identification". That's a fancy word for your "discrimination" function. You can knock out nails if you want. Either by tone alone (just ignore that reading), or perhaps it has a control to edit out the unwanted targets? Be aware though, that you will have a masking effect. Like ...... if a nail were covering a coin, the machine will tend to see the top target, and not see "through" it to your desired target. Some machines are better at averaging targets, to give you a better chance in junky sites. Not sure how your machine is in that regards.