Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Cut Found on Treasure Coast Beach This Afternoon. |
This is the same cut that I showed a couple of days ago. It has grown - more longer than tall. It is around two feet high on average and goes something like three hundred yards or so. As I said the other day, despite the erosion on this beach, most other beaches that I've seen in the past few days are not cut at all.
There is a good heavy shell line near this cut down close to the water.
Recently I've posted a really old artifact, a few fossils, and some modern gold finds, and the current blog polls asks about gold finds.
Bernie C. sent me a great email giving his experiences with different detectors and coin counts. I'll share that below. Thanks Bernie.
I've been having some technical difficulties lately. My Excal developed a problem with the headphone wire connection. I took another detector out to the beach today, and when I got it out of the car, the lower stem for the coil was broke. I turned around and went home to fix it. Fortunately I had some old detector poles around and was able to use one of those to replace the broken one, which I think broke mostly because of the effect of our Florida heat on the plastic. That is a reminder to not leave your detector in a hot car or in extreme heat.
Well, when I cannibalized an old detector rod, and I do mean old, I took it off and started to put it on the newer detector, and it turned out to have the name of the detector company of the detector I was repairing on it, and was basically the same lower stem as the one that broke. That was surprising because the old detector was not the same brand. In fact it was a custom made detector. Nonetheless, it turned out to be the same stem.
That doesn't mean that it didn't give me some problems. You know how poles from old units that were used in salt water will freeze up if you don't loosen them up occasionally. It took me a while to get things loosened up. Lots of Liquid Wrench was used. Anyhow I got the stem replaced and was back in business.
Now here is what Bernie reported.
...Here's an coin update for this year that has to do with the type of machine is used for
detecting.
I was using 3 different detectors. My White's IDX Pro ( which is a
coin magnet) too bad this machine was discontinued. This is the machine
I used last year that produced $550 in clad for the year.
I used a Garrett Sea Hunter MKII for the first part of 2013 until I
decided to sell the machine to make an upgrade. The first 4 months of
coin finds for the year was conciderably less than 2012. Only 63.08.
The thing I did notice between the two above machines is trash
discrimination. The White's has a screen readout that shows what is
being detected where the Garrett you have to dig everything. The disc
on the Garrett is useless. If you do try to discriminate you lose
about 60% of your depth. The Garrett is a very deep scanning machine.
I often would dig targets at 20+ inches. And this machine is in love
with iron.
I just purchased a Minelab Excaliber II and I think this machine is
the best of both machines mentioned above. After playing with the
machine in the yard for about 2 weeks planting targets and getting the
different tones in my head I set out to do some hunting to see what I
could find. Well after searching for 5 consecutive days around the
Treasure Coast dispite all that new sand, here is the clad total for
the week. $42.83 in clad, 3 silver quarters, an almost brand new mens
watch, approx 6 lbs in lead sinkers,some misc bling, a really nice
leatherman knife and a fair amount of trash. I would have liked to see
some gold in the scoop, but there's aways next week.
Thanks a lot for the report Bernie. The three silver coins probably shows that you were getting things that other people were missing. Most of the coin beaches around here are heavily detected.
I once had a Garrett PI detector, probably about twenty years ago. It was one of my least favorite ever. It loved iron too. I think I dug well over a foot and a half on a sand bar in the water one day, and it was a class ring, but it was not gold or even silver. I sold that detector after using it very little.
I've mentioned a variety of different types of targets today. What you target will determine what type of detector you might select. I might chose a different detector for different targets and also different detectors for different locations or situations.
I've mentioned this before, but some detectors are good in dry sand but not wet sand or vice versa. I most often select what I call a power machine with few if any fancy functions. What is best for you might be different. I know that some people can't tolerate digging any junk, but if you are in the best type of place to find gold, most of the time, there won't be much junk in the area to bother with anyhow. I said "most of the time." Of course some gold will be found in other types of places.
I also have one old detector that is a poor coin detector, but is a good precious metals detector. I have great faith that it won't pass up gold or platinum or even silver, yet it is not an especially good coin machine.
Get to know your detector, how you like to detect, what you want to target, and conditions where you want to detect, and select your detector based upon all of that. You might chose a good all around detector, if you do a variety of types of hunting and don't want to spend much money.
If anyone else wants to give your experiences and your reactions to different detectors, just send them in.
Dont' forget to answer the blog poll question.
On the Treasure Coast tomorrow it will be pretty much like today on the beaches. Still 3 - 4 foot surf and southeast winds. No change in conditions.
Despite cut that I showed above, I'm not upgrading beach detecting conditions for finding cobs yet.
The surf will be decreasing down to around 1 - 2 feet again by Thursday if the surfing web sites are correct.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
