12/23/18 Report - New Silver Coin Sight Find. A Few Metal Detecting Tips. Bigger Surf Coming.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Nice Silver Sight Find by One of This Blog's Readers.

I just received the following email.

Yesterday the wife and I went to a local wildlife management area in Volusia county to do some scouting for hunting. While there I stopped in a nice spot where crushed limestone had just been replenished to fill in a large void in the road from last years hurricanes. The wife looks down and says "Hey there's a quarter!" Laying on top of new soft limerick that had just been rained on popped out this coin. All the hours I spend swinging a detector and she finds this sitting on the surface. No idea how it got in the limerock  fill but there it was. 

Best wishes.

Thanks for sharing. Nice find.

It's always nice to find a silver coin, especially an unexpected sight find.  

Wind or rain can be enough to uncover coins and other objects.  I'd often do some eye-balling on beaches after a good wind.  Coins and other things would be exposed.

When one is found, more than likely there are more.  I often say, Birds of a feather flock together.  I'd check the area with a detector, and I'd also try to find out where the fill came from.  That might be a good place to hunt too.

You can quickly scan way more ground visually than you can with a ten inch or whatever coil.

Dale J. said thanks along with a list of  several tips he got from reading this blog.  The first one on the list was about signals that disappear when digging a hole.  Very often when a target seems to disappear, it has moved in the hole, either slipping deeper in the hole or sticking to the side of the hole standing on end so the signal disappears.  In either case, keep digging.  Dig out the bottom and sides of the hole, and most often you'll find the target again.

There is also another reason that signals sometimes disappear.  That one has to do with ground mineralization.  Digging can disturb the ground mineralization and create false signals or make it more difficult for the detector to detect the target.  That happens a lot in a black sand.  A detector can adjust to a layer of black sand that transitions slowly, but when you cut a hole in it, the sharp edge can cause falsing and loss of the target signal.  Again, keep digging and spread the dug sand out.

For black sand or wet salt mineralization, sweep along with the mineralization rather than across it.  Along the water's edge, that means sweeping parallel to the water line.

He also said he liked yesterday's Christmas post.  I sometimes do posts that I like, but I don't know if anybody else will like them.   Not everybody will like every post.  My readers include everybody from the arm chair treasure hunter to the professional, so some posts will appeal more to one group or another.  Sometimes I just post what I like or feel like saying.  It is always nice to hear what the readers like.

I think some posts are good but don't get enough attention, and some posts get a lot of attention, and I don't know why.   

If a post gets posted on some big national web site it always gets read by a lot of people.  For example, CNN Travel published a link to my blog one time and so the blog got a ton of hits then.  

I'll probably do a post on the top blog posts at the end of the year.  I noticed one post that had very few readers even though I think it is something everybody, including myself, can benefit by remembering.  It was about how to determine the optimal sweep speed.   

I think a lot of people sweep too fast for optimal depth.  Of course, you don't need optimal depth for a lot of targets, and you can move along quickly.  So is the trade-off worth it.  Hard to say.  Sometimes yes, and sometimes no.

If you are using a motion or discrimination mode, you can also sweep too slow.  I think it is a good idea to determine your optimal sweep speed for maximum sensitivity, whether you use it or not.

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Did you see the beautiful full moon last night.  Really nice.

The tides are big and it still looks like we'll get a nice increase in surf after Christmas.

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net

8/25/14 Report - Surf Increasing Already This Morning As Christobal Heads North. Some Cuts on Treasure Coast. Reasons and How to Conduct A Pre Hunt Detector Test.

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Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.BlogSpot.com.

Tropical Storm Christbal will stay to the East of us and the rest of the United States.  It looks like it will be a fish storm now, but it looks like the Treasure Coast will still get a four or five foot surf by Wednesday.  The surf has begun to increase (Monday morning).

Monday morning there were also some one-foot cuts along the Treasure Coast.  Unfortunately those scattered cuts are in sand that has piled up in the past few weeks.  That will not change my beach conditions rating yet - still poor.  It, however, might cause a change in conditions if things keep going in the same direction.

There is also a second disturbance coming off of Africa.

Source of maps: www.nhc.noaa.gov

Looks like the Atlantic is becoming more lively.

Both of the above weather maps are from www.nhc.noo.gov.


Sometimes detectors will fool you.   One will have a grand reputation for depth and excellance but will be outperformed by a cheaper detector or a detector with a poor reputation.   The thing is that there are a lot of factors that will affect the performance and depth that a detector gets on a specific target.  That is a big reason why I explained how to really test a detector yesterday.

You have to be specific about the type of target and the environment.  You also have to be specific about the operating characteristics of the detector.  The detectors performance will also be affected by your settings and how you use it.

One important factor is your sweep speed.  Sweeping either too fast or too slow can cause loss of depth and good targets.  So how do you know how fast to sweep?

I've discussed this in the past but it is worth mentioning again.  Put the type of target on the ground (preferable the type of ground where you expect to hunt) and sweep your coil over the object.  Listen to the signal.   Sweep over it again, this time slower.  Did the signal get louder or less loud?  If it got louder, that tells you that you were sweeping too fast to begin with.  Vary the sweep speed over the object until you get the loudest most distinct signal.  Maintain a constant distance between the coil and object on each attempt.

That is how you can find the near optimal sweep speed for you detector in the environment you plan to work.   The optimal sweep speed can be different for dry land and for wet salt sand, for example.  The best idea is to do your tests where you plan to hunt.

I like the practice of testing my detector each time before I begin a hunt.  It takes only a few seconds to get your sweep speed right.   Try to develop muscle memory for the best sweep speed for each detector.

I think it is natural to get in a hurry and go to fast.

Also test your settings.  Adjust your settings to produce the loudest signal on the type of object you want to find.

Target specificity is important.  Don't test your detector on an object you don't much care about.  Don't use a zinc penny for the test unless that is what you most want to find.

Testing your settings before you get far into your hunt can save a lot of wasted time.  It is easy enough for knobs to get turned between hunts.  It is a big waste of time to spend your first half hour with maximum discrimination simply because you failed to check the settings.  Yes you can simply look at the knobs, but a lot can be accomplished quickly by simply doing a test on an appropriate test object before your hunt.   I can remember times in the distant past when I started my hunt and spent quite a few minutes before discovering an incorrect setting and had to go back and cover the same ground with the corrected settings.  If you have a lot of electromagnetic or radio interference, you might choose to lower the sensitivity setting.

One type of location that can be tough to detect well is around electric lines, underground cables or radio transmissions.  Some detectors will be much more affected by those things than others.  A detector that is not the best in one environment can be the best choice in another.

Coils are different too.  A Dual Surf PI has a larger coil than an Excalibur, but the Excalibur coil gives you more depth under the entire coil than the PI.  The area of maximum depth is only obtained under a relatively small part of the PI coil.  That means that you should overlap sweeps more when using the PI.  You can quickly test coil coverage while doing a sweep speed test.

While doing a sweep speed test, move the coil front to back between sweeps.  You might notice that some parts of the coil give a much louder signal than others.  Check to see where your maximum sensitivity is located under the coil.  You will learn how broad your maximum detection area is and where under the coil it is located.

Just the other day, I tested a Surf PI, Excalibur and ACE 250 on an inland area having a lot of electrical interference.   I used a thin gold ring as my test target.  The Excal gave a good loud signal over the ring.  The 250 did almost as well.  The PI barely gave a signal under those conditions, and only when the ring was located under a small part of the coil and when the coil was moved at a near perfect sweep speed.  The results were remarkable enough that it surprised me.

That is just one example.  Do not over-generalize from that simple test.  In some environments the PI can perform better than the other detectors.  My point is that different detectors will perform differently in different environments, on different types of objects, but the response will also depend upon your settings and sweep speed.

On most tests I will optimize my settings for the loudest and most distinct signal.  In the above test, I  made a variety of adjustments, particularly on the PI to see if I could improve the results.

Once again I want to emphasize the value of testing your detector or detectors properly.  You'll get best results when you spend a lot of time testing so that you really know your detector.


Watch for the higher surf the next couple of days.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net