Test bed help

[paul1410]

I am planning to make a test bed in the spring. I hunt mostly for coins. What should I bury, how deep, how far apart, what to use to mark locations, etc. I'm interested in any ideas, tips or experiences anyone would like to share on this subject. Thanks.

 

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[Monty]

For a starter test bed I would put the items at least a foot apart so as not to bleed over when testing your machine. After trying several markers, I settled on some very long wooden golf tees that I spray painted florescent orange. When I mow over them I just press them down flat with the ground and the blade misses them. Then I can pull them back up a bit so as to be able to see them. I haven't been able to find a better way to identify what is buried so I use a notebook with a drawing of the different spots and what is buried and how deep. Most of my coins, etc I put down about 4" but a few on one end are set at 6" and below if you happen to have a very deep seeking machine. It is important to first go over the area where you put your test plot and remove any metal that may be in the ground. I didn't do this the first time and found a lot of old nails and pieces of aluminum cans, etc that just happened to be in the ground. Very confusing. Good luck! Monty

 

[dogpound]

don't forget to add some normal junk you'll find like a pulltab, bottle cap, nail and soda can so ya know what these sound and ring up as so ya know to avoid them out in the field.

 

[U.K. Brian]

I now put the items much further apart (2 feet) as there's so many large coils now that retain sensitivity or detect sideways wider than the apparent coil size.

Put a variety of good and bad items in by all means but also put in a row of the same type of coin at 5,6,7,8 to 12 inches. I use pure copper that are about one inch wide. You can then do a real test of detectors that offer standard (Tesoro beep and dig) type discrimination and tone discrimination. With my T2 for instance, standard discrimination gives a gain in depth of one to two inches over the Teknetics tone option. The coin will still be detected but the tone audio indicates the good target as iron.

I have the test beds a few feet out from a hedge bottom where the markers are. Keep a note/draw a plan of whats what. When you get a new coil or detector test it out in its different modes and note that down so you can repeat the test every few months. This will indicate if something is starting to fail before you get to the end of a year and wonder why though your copper count is similar to the year before your silver finds are way down.

 

[paul1410]

Hey guys, thanks for the replies. A lot of good info here and much to ponder.

Already, with these ideas, I think the bed will need to be twice the size I originally planned.

hh
paul

 

[Roland58]

I saw a video recently that showed a piece of PVC pipe buried in the ground at an angle, somewhere between 30° and 45°, and you can make it as deep as you feel like digging. Then, they had another, much smaller piece of PVC that they used to put the test target on the end and insert it into the hole. You can mark depth on the smaller pipe so you know at a glance how deep your detector is having to "look." This seemed like a great idea to me and the larger PVC can be cut at an angle on the surface end to fit flush and not get in the way of mowing etc.

The only thing this would not help with is putting object close together to determine how well your machine discriminates or recognizes two or more targets. I guess you could put more than one target on the smaller pipe using some tape or

 

[paul1410]

Great idea Roland.
The flexibility this offers is nearly unlimited.

Thanks for sharing.

paul