Aintpaint
Newbie
I bought a used Radio Shack Discovery 3000 (see BH Sharpshooter II) on eBay a couple years ago for the purpose of locating iron nails in horse paddocks and arenas. Most horse stables/properties are located on old agricultural land loaded with trash in the ground. Nails are the worst, and can kill/permanently lame a horse if it penetrates the hoof (infection is the actual killer).
I've been casually searching for nails, on and off, for the last couple years. I've found countless hundreds in the loose sand, and know there are also hundreds more locked in the hard clay matrix below. I've even used "magnet-on-a-stick" to pull hundreds more out. Finally, loose nails are fewer and farther finds for me. However, they occasionally re-appear. I had to pull one from my horse's head once after he rolled! Straight-up and in-between his ears!
While I've been largely successful in minimizing this threat, I've come to appreciate that my detector is not optimum for this task. I ignore non-threats (coins, pull-tabs, anything too deep), but the task is VERY tedious to perform with a metal detector in all-metal mode, and even more tedious in any motion mode. I was quite surprised at how effective "magnet-on-a-stick" was in clearing iron out of an arena. Follow-up checks using the metal detector turned-up very little after a pass with the magnet. The magnet also pulls out huge amounts of rust-dust, presumably from horse shoes wearing-down over the years.
It would seem that the bulk of commercial metal detectors are designed for the purpose of treasure/coin hunting. This isn't working very efficiently for me. The all-metal mode is also the pin-pointing mode, and can only scan small areas at a time, and is annoyingly over-sensitive. It can take 24 man-hours, or more, to methodically search a typical arena. Even still, the area around the metal fencing cannot be effectively searched. Magnet-on-a-stick (bought it at Lowes) is actually more efficient, in terms of coverage, but I still don't trust it to be completely thorough.
So, while I haven't seen a detector suited to the task I've been performing, maybe some of you have? Basic requirements would be large-object iron detection, not too deep, and wide area coverage to perform the task efficiently, yet quickly pinpoint to an area of maybe 4" diameter. When I get a "hit" I use a deep-fry strainer to scoop the sand, and viola! the artifact appears in the strainer. I don't like wasting time searching for small non-threatening items because I need to search acreage, not square-feet. I also don't dig in the hard clay substrate, it's as hard as concrete, and whatever is in there is NOT a threat. I did find an 1899 Indian head penny once. That was cool.
Nails can be tricky to pinpoint. They seem to throw a signal from either end of the nail, but not so much in the middle. With some experience, you start to recognize a nail's signature and orientation in the ground.
I did spend some play-time with the detector, recently, in motion modes and found several pennies (and a couple nails). It's the first time I actually tried to do that. However, the ground is so trashy it's difficult to find just a single target. My detector works very well when you put coins on the ground. It reliably locates and identifies them. It's fun, but the time really flies when you doing it.
Long winded post, I know, but kudos to you for reading the whole thing!
Ron
I've been casually searching for nails, on and off, for the last couple years. I've found countless hundreds in the loose sand, and know there are also hundreds more locked in the hard clay matrix below. I've even used "magnet-on-a-stick" to pull hundreds more out. Finally, loose nails are fewer and farther finds for me. However, they occasionally re-appear. I had to pull one from my horse's head once after he rolled! Straight-up and in-between his ears!
While I've been largely successful in minimizing this threat, I've come to appreciate that my detector is not optimum for this task. I ignore non-threats (coins, pull-tabs, anything too deep), but the task is VERY tedious to perform with a metal detector in all-metal mode, and even more tedious in any motion mode. I was quite surprised at how effective "magnet-on-a-stick" was in clearing iron out of an arena. Follow-up checks using the metal detector turned-up very little after a pass with the magnet. The magnet also pulls out huge amounts of rust-dust, presumably from horse shoes wearing-down over the years.
It would seem that the bulk of commercial metal detectors are designed for the purpose of treasure/coin hunting. This isn't working very efficiently for me. The all-metal mode is also the pin-pointing mode, and can only scan small areas at a time, and is annoyingly over-sensitive. It can take 24 man-hours, or more, to methodically search a typical arena. Even still, the area around the metal fencing cannot be effectively searched. Magnet-on-a-stick (bought it at Lowes) is actually more efficient, in terms of coverage, but I still don't trust it to be completely thorough.
So, while I haven't seen a detector suited to the task I've been performing, maybe some of you have? Basic requirements would be large-object iron detection, not too deep, and wide area coverage to perform the task efficiently, yet quickly pinpoint to an area of maybe 4" diameter. When I get a "hit" I use a deep-fry strainer to scoop the sand, and viola! the artifact appears in the strainer. I don't like wasting time searching for small non-threatening items because I need to search acreage, not square-feet. I also don't dig in the hard clay substrate, it's as hard as concrete, and whatever is in there is NOT a threat. I did find an 1899 Indian head penny once. That was cool.
Nails can be tricky to pinpoint. They seem to throw a signal from either end of the nail, but not so much in the middle. With some experience, you start to recognize a nail's signature and orientation in the ground.
I did spend some play-time with the detector, recently, in motion modes and found several pennies (and a couple nails). It's the first time I actually tried to do that. However, the ground is so trashy it's difficult to find just a single target. My detector works very well when you put coins on the ground. It reliably locates and identifies them. It's fun, but the time really flies when you doing it.
Long winded post, I know, but kudos to you for reading the whole thing!
Ron
