What am I doing wrong?

[Claire98909]

I'm STILL digging up rusty nails despite using the discriminate function on my Bounty Hunter Tracker IV! I'm primarily interested in coinshooting, and the instructions say the settings for coinshooting are discriminate switch to the left (full discriminate) and the discriminate knob to the 3:00 position (3/4 of a turn). According to the instructions with these settings I should only pick up, I believe, silver, copper, and brass and trash items should be discarded. Yet I'm still picking up junk like rusty nails and pieces of foil!

Somebody help, this is driving me nuts!

 

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[Loco-Digger]

The method I am going to discuss will assist you in mainly finding coins. Take an older beaver tail pull tab and place it on the ground. Swing your detector over it as you raise the discrimination. Once you get the detector to not hit on the beaver tail. mark your detector and you now have your setting which will mainly find pennies, dimes, quarters and larger coins. You will not detect a nickle since it rings in at a lower level than a beaver tail. You will still dig some aluminum cans, but no nails, foil, GOLD, or iron.

GL& HH

 

[Loco-Digger]

If you're not interested in finding Indian Head pennies you can use a zinc lincoln penny and swing your detector over it as you increase your discrimination. Once you have adjusted the discrimination until the detector does not beep on the zinc penny, you will now mainly find copper coins, silver jewelry, silver coins, and clad. You may still dig some aluminum can slaw. Practice on all the coins you'd like to find. get used to the sound you hear for each coin. I can even give you a tip on knowing how deep the coin is in the ground.

 

[Slingshot]

Are the nails square, as in blacksmith forged? Those can be hard to discriminate out as opposed to modern round nails. Lay one of the nails you have dug on the ground and see if you can tune it out with your discriminator adjustment. !!! Let us know what happens.

 

[flatbutton]

You are doing nothing wrong! Your'e finding metal. So far It's been trash, but we all find trash. I can guarantee you that if anyone that detects tells you they don't, they are lying. Don't give up, when you dig that first good target, It's like sweet victory!

 

[releventchair]

Nails bent in a curve,which many pulled ones are,or a nail with its head towards the surface are round metal objects.
When digging such objects with others that seem to be coins, the detector is giving us the benefit of the doubt.
If it passed all such objects we would miss the good ones too,but more often.
A rusted object has a surrounding dust/or halo that makes it appear rounder in circumference to many detector machines.
Always recheck area including exactly where you made a recovery. One time for sure I recovered a silver mercury dime under multiple nails.
The detector wanted to call iron but there was a tiny blip of a higher signal with it too. Lucky for me because after digging everything a while I would have dismissed the heavy iron the detector was trying to confirm.

 

[Pennypacker]

Also bent nails will trick the discrimination and ring up higher then a straight nail.

 

[Enginefitter]

I found my first GOLD class ring that rang up as foil, as loco-digger said, you will discriminate the GOLD out buddy, be careful with discriminating.
Many, many years ago I accepted that I am going to dig trash.
Re-read releventchair post.

Engine

 

[Pointman]

If you're not interested in finding Indian Head pennies you can use a zinc lincoln penny and swing your detector over it as you increase your discrimination. Once you have adjusted the discrimination until the detector does not beep on the zinc penny, you will now mainly find copper coins, silver jewelry, silver coins, and clad. You may still dig some aluminum can slaw. Practice on all the coins you'd like to find. get used to the sound you hear for each coin. I can even give you a tip on knowing how deep the coin is in the ground.

This is one reason if you are interested in digging Indian Head pennies, you have to dig a few zincs. If I am in an old spot, and getting zinc readings fairly deep, I always dig them, although I have found IHs within 2 inches deep also. Sometimes junk aluminium will also fall in the same reading ranges as zincs and IHs.

Key to eliminating iron is knowing your detector and setting the discrimination up correctly, essentially, KNOW your machine to stop digging bottle caps and nails.

 

[Randyg12]

Your post brings back memories when I bought my first detector in the late 70's or early 80's. I got so frustrated that after a couple of months my detector went into the back of the closet to be rarely seen again. Back then you never saw any one detecting and I was even kind of embarrassed to even be seen using it. Now add to that I had no internet to ask questions and I didn't know there were metal detecting clubs out there. I had ordered my detector from a White's magazine ad so I didn't have a local dealer to go too. All I was digging was trash and I'd stumble across a few coins. I grew very frustrated and quit the hobby.

I didn't start the hobby again until 1999 but I was older and wiser and above all I was willing to put the time in to learn my machine. I shudder to think of all the good targets I missed out on if I had been patient, took the time to learn the language of my machine and above all I missed out on a lot of fun.

When I started again in 1999 I was terrible at finding targets in the grass/dirt so I started out by hitting the sand in the tot lots until I started to understand my tones/numbers. About 3 or 4 times a week I'd grab my sand scoop and my detector and head for the park, but the main thing was that I was getting out and practicing. I came across a guy that detected and he got me into dirt fishing and once the silver coins and wheats started filling my pouch I was hooked for life.

You've already gotten some good advice from this post. Just get out and practice, dig a ton of targets. Learn from the trash and good targets you dig. When you come across a target listen closely, swing over the target from another angle, does the tone/numbers change, are the tones consistent or do the tones break up. Can you tell how deep it is? Can you tell if the target is large or small? Raise/lower your sensitivity, what happens to your tones/numbers on your target? You gain all this knowledge by getting out and digging targets. Join a club and detect with someone that does well. Ask them when they find a good target to let you listen to it. Use good detecting techniques; keep the coil low to the ground, don't raise your coil at the end of your swings, and don't rush.

I'm getting carried away here so I'll stop preaching The bottom line is take it one day at a time, be patient, and have fun learning your machine. It going to take sometime before you get your detecting ears tuned to your machine, but once the light comes on and you start adding keepers to your pouch instead of trash you will come to enjoy a hobby that is a great stress buster and you'll meet some great people along the way. Practice, practice, and practice some more but learn from each hunt. HH

 

[Quick draw mcgraw]

Thanks I'm a newbie too.need to hear it.we think the machine is going to magically manifest treasure.work,luck and perseverance are what's needed

 

[clv]

usually with a coin its a single strong beep, rusts nails will give a beep-beep most times unless your are swinging too fast and that double beep will just sound as a slightly longer beep.

 

[Honeyman]

I've got a silver uMax that I'm learning to use. What I've done is set the discriminator to get a little worble on a nickle. Then I search in all metal mode. When I get a target I flip it to discriminate and see if I still get a tone. If I do, I dig it. What worries me are all the posts I read that say a target read like a pull tab, but ended up being gold jewelry. I don't want to leave the good stuff behind. Is there a better way to be confident I'm not leaving the gold behind?