1714 2 Escudo Mounted in a Ring.I showed this photo once before, but it has been a while and there are a lot of new readers that probably haven't seen it.
I was reading where someone said that metal detecting is luck. There is always some aspect of luck involved, but more than luck, it involves a lot of skill and perseverance.
Any single find might be the product of luck, but to find interesting things consistently over a long period of time is more a matter of skill. I know of stories of people that found a gold coin on their first outing. That is definitely luck. But I also know people that over a period of years consistently, on a week-by-week basis come up with good finds, while others don't find much. Knowledge and skill and the willingness to work make a lot of the difference.
One other thing that will have a large effect on what you find, is where you hunt, which is usually somewhere close to where you live. Some places have a lot of modern jewelry, some places shipwreck items, others gold nuggets in the rivers, etc. That is perhaps one of the what determinants of what you'll find other than your skill level. But not matter where you live, you have to learn how to do that type of hunting. There is a learning curve no matter where you hunt or what you hunt.
Skill doesn't guarantee success on any given attempt, but it improves the probability of success over time.
Yesterday I said I might talk about scanning patterns for water hunting. I think I'll do that today.
In calm water where you can see the bottom, that might not be much more difficult than on the beach, but since you can't see your footsteps, it is a little more challenging.
While working a grid pattern is fine, it assumes that every spot in the grid area is equally as likely to contain a find. That is not always the case. In fact, it seldom is the case unless you are hunting recent drops, which is ok in a heavily used beach.
But if you want to find the concentrations of objects that have accumulated over time, they will not be randomly scattered. There will be some places that are definitely better and others. When the sand is moving, not only is it accumulating somewhere but it is also coming from somewhere.
As I mentioned yesterday, there are some signs that you generally will see that will point to a good spot. Once you find a potentially good spot, you want to find and work the area holding the best items.
Generally speaking the heaviest and best items will be somewhere near the center of the spot, with the lighter objects near the border of the spot. Work away from pennies and aluminum, and work towards quarters, sinkers, and gold.
I've talked about hunting coin lines and holes on the wet beach. It is not much different in the water. Once you find the first good target, check around it for other targets. Try to determine in which directions the spot extends.
One pattern I often used is to mark the spot of the first target and circle around it a few times working farther out from the hole each time. Of course, if you hit another target, you look for the relationship between targets in order to begin to define the hole, if there is one. Repeat the process until you start to see the pattern of heavier and lighter targets and then do your best to work the center of the hole first and then work out from there if you have the time.
If the water is a bit rough and you can't see the bottom, try to use your hole as a marker. Find it with your foot or scoop so you know were you are in relationship to the hole. You will find that if you learn to pick up your feet at the right time when a wave comes by, it will move you a small distance and then return you to the same spot where you were. You can verify that by sticking your foot back in the hole.
If it is rough, you want to dig a hole quickly, not bothering with accuracy or anything before you are moved away from the target. That first hole will simply serve the function of marking the spot and helping you to relocate it.
Well, those are a few things I've found helpful in the past. Maybe they'll help you too.
Check your finds and your pocket change for valuable errors. Here is a list of ten error coins that can be found in circulation.
http://coins.about.com/od/uscoins/tp/errorvarieties.htm
There is a shipwreck treasure map that is on ebay ending some time tomorrow.
Forecast and Conditions. The wind is out of the south today and it is rainy. Some of the treasure beaches are really sanded in. A few spots are not as bad - those that have been cut in the past and never filled in. Overall conditions are poor. I'll stick with my 1 beach conditions rating.
The swell is about three feet today. Around the weekend it should be more like five foot seas. We'll probably still need to see the wind switch directions before we see much improvement in the beach.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
