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.

---

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

8/12/17 Report - Detector Signals Produced by Three Different Complex Targets and The Effect of Position.

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

Source: nhc.noaa.gov

It looks like the weather shown on the map above will become a cyclone in the next few days, but will probably stay out to sea and go north of us.  At this point I don't expect the Treasure Coast to get much from it.

---

I had to correct yesterday's post.  My description of the signals produced by the watches in the video was incorrect.  I described the wrong video.  That must have been confusing.  Sorry about that. I corrected it last night.  If you read that post before I made the corrections, you might want to go back to read it again.

Today I'll describe a third video on detecting watches.  I'm sure some of you will think I've already done too much of that, but I'm illustrating a variety of important points.  There are some things that are very difficult to correctly identify unless you dig them.  It isn't limited to watches.

Complex and irregularly shaped targets are not as easy to identify as coins or rings.  I've also shown in the past that when a ring is buried so that it is standing on end, it will produce a very different signal than the same ring laying flat in the ground. I posted a video on YouTube about two years ago that shows that.  The position of a watch will affect the signal too.  The signal is more unpredictable due to the irregular shape of watches, the variety of materials that can be used in a watch, how the watch is laying, as well as how the detector is used.

In the next video I used the same three watches and put them on the ground so that the face is facing up instead of being perpendicular to the ground as they were in the previous two videos.

Here is the link for that video.

https://youtu.be/lqZ9XJiKy7o

You probably noticed that the first watch (Polo Club) produced mostly a low tone signal.

The second watch was very inconsistent: sometimes producing no signal, sometimes a Bell tone and sometimes a lower tone signal.

The third watch ( large high-end Seiko ) consistently produced a Bell Tone, no matter which direction the coil was moved.  The ID meter gave a meter ID that was in the coin range.

The lower tone (produced by both the first watch and sometimes by the second watch) was accompanied reading of something between a pull tab and penny on the ID meter.

If you were only digging targets that produced the Bell Tone, you would have dug the third watch, maybe dug the second watch, but probably left the first watch in the ground.

Target ID is not always simple.  Of course different detectors give you more or less information, but no metal detector can identify everything correctly, and as a result you can easily miss something very good.  It is important to really know your detector and how it responds to different types of targets.

Targets such as coins are easier to identify than complex or irregularly shaped targets such as watches.  You can often get more information about a buried target by changing the angle of your sweep and comparing the signals obtained by sweeping in two different directions.

One thing I hope you see is that there are some very good targets that might not sound good or read as good on a meter.  At helps to really get to know your detector.  I highly stress the value of experimenting with test targets.  Most targets will not be as complex as watches, however they might be more complex than you think.  Various things, even those as simple and common as coins, can give signals different from what you might expect.

For example, coins sometimes seem to disappear when you are digging.  They can slip deeper into a hole or  stick to the side of the hole.  A coin sticking to the side of a hole so that it presents the narrow edge of the coin to the coil will be much more difficult to detect and can seem to disappear.

As you probably know, I do a lot of different kinds of posts on a variety of topics.  I'll undoubtedly be back on some other topic before long.

I hope you find the videos useful.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

11/25/14 Report - Metal Detecting Target Distribution Patterns and Search Strategies - One Excellent Example. Sedwick Auction Results Online.

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



Simplified Illustration of What I Found On One Treasure Coast Beach Saturday.

I mentioned that I found a lot of coins Sunday.  I hunted the slope of the beach from the face of the cut down to the water line.  First I scanned part of the beach for maybe three hundred yards.

The above illustration is not totally accurate but gives a good picture of what it looked like.  First, the coins were found in one area running from close to the toe of the cut down to near the water line well before low tide.  The coins did not appear to go all the way to the water line though.

In the above illustration black dots represent coins.  There are not as many black dots as coins found in the coin hole area that spread about fifty yards along the beach.  The coins were on average about five yards apart. This was not a densely packed coin hole.

The grey dots out to the right represent aluminum targets that were found about a hundred yards or so to the north.  They were up against the toe of the dune in a white shell packed sand which was distinctly different from the sand the coins were found in.

Although there were more coins found than shown, the illustration shows he correct number of dots for the other types of targets dug on that day.

To the South of the coins no targets of any kind were found for a hundred yards or so.

Red dots represent lead finds, and orange represents gold.

I only spent between one and two hours checking this stretch of beach.  I did not cover every inch of the beach.  Some areas were detected much more thoroughly than others.

I first used a very lose search pattern to identify different areas that I would more intensely search.  I try to find the most promising areas where I should spend most of my time.

I quickly hit a few of the coins in the coin hole as I walked along the beach, then nothing as I went north until I hit the aluminum junk area.

I've explained before some of the scan patterns that I use to identify hot spots. The zig zag pattern is one of those.  That is not what I used Saturday.  I simply followed the contour of the beach near the face of the cut at first.  Since I quickly discovered a few coins up near the cut, on the return I went down closer to the water to get an idea of how wide the coin bearing area might be.

Here is an important point.  Look at the illustration.  The black dots represent coins, the grey dots aluminum, the red represents led finds, and the orange iron.  What do you notice about the distribution?   The targets of different metals were grouped without exception.  This was a well developed distribution pattern. 

The coins were not real old, but were not recent drops.  They were all, except one, colored and crusty.

If I was using discrimination, I might not have detected the aluminum or iron targets.  I would have had a less complete picture of what was going on.

The two round lead sinkers helped to identify the lower boundary of the coin hole.

I certainly did not need discrimination in the coin hole because there was no junk in with the coins. The aluminum told me that the area to the north was probably not a good place to waste time, so that information was helpful too.  There is simply too much beach to cover equally and completely, so you need to focus your time and efforts on the most promising spots.

The distribution of targets led me to the most likely location to find gold.  Of course, sometimes the areas aren't so well defined, but in this case the targets were not new and had been well classified and distributed by type.

This illustration shows a number of things and explains why I use some of the techniques that I often talk about.  I can't get into all of them now.

Here is one thing I will advise.  Sample different areas of a beach to try to identify the area where you want to focus your efforts.  Don't use discrimination, especially at first, until you get some idea of any distribution pattern. 

Distribution patterns are not random below the high tide line.  This particular example is a very well developed pattern and makes an excellent illustration.

I probably spent about eighty percent or more of my time in the area of the coin hole.  It was located quickly.

-------------------

You can go back and look at the completed Sedwick Coins auction catalog on the icollector site to see what prices were realized by the various lots.

Here is the link.

http://auction.sedwickcoins.com/Treasure-and-World-Coin-Auction-16_as34049

Sedwick also sent me an email to say that new items were added to their online store.

-----------------

Don't expect any Thanksgiving storm this year.  The surf Thursday will be calm.  

They are predicting a bump in the surf out another week, but the long range predictions are not very accurate.


Happy Hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net

10/12/14 Report - New Storm Likely To Develop Soon. Video Demonstration of Effect of Metal Detector Coil Sweep Angle and Object Position.

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

Gold Ring Used in Today's Demonstration.

There is some big weather news, but first I have something else for you.

Today I have a very good video demonstration for you that clearly shows some things that I've talked about in the past but also illustrates additional important information.   The video shows how the sweep angle and position of various objects can affect a metal detector signal.  Using that new information will help you better understand how your detector works and what type of object you are detecting.

For this demonstration I used the Ace 250 because it is well suited for this purpose.  I used All Metals mode.

Other detectors will give similar but different results.

I used three test objects: a screw, a thin rectangular copper tag, and a thin gold ring.

First I put them all flat on the ground.   I swept my coil over the first two in one direction and then at roughly ninety degrees.

I did not bother to change sweep directions on the ring when it was laying flat because it is nearly round and the sweep direction would not make any difference.

The video shows the different signals you get when you sweep over an oblong object such as a screw in one direction and then again at a 90 degree angle.

The next part of the experiment involved standing the rectangular copper tag and the gold ring upright.

When the tag was put on end, it gave a signal like iron instead of the coin-like signal it gave when laying flat.

The ring when standing on end, gave a broken signal when sweeping in one direction and a solid signal when sweeping the other.  That was very much like the signals given by the screw laying flat.   When the ring was standing up, it presented an oblong surface to the coil and gave a signal like what you would expect from an oblong object.

You can tell quite a bit about objects from the signals.

Here is the link to the demonstration video.   Pay close attention to the signal and tone over each object.  Notice how the signal changes when the sweep angle changes on some objects and how the signal changes when some objects are stood up.

http://youtu.be/1L96xy9nRZo

The most important things that I'm showing today is that the sweep angle will affect the signal, as does the position of the object in the ground.

If the copper tag was pushed into the ground at a forty five degree angle instead of straight up and down, it would give an even more variable signal.  And if it is bent, the signal is even more variable.

The most simple case is a round object, such as a coin, laying flat.

In the past I've talked about how you can identify oblong objects such as nails with detectors such as the Minelab Excalibur.  Sweeping in one direction you'll get a broken signal, while sweeping at ninety degrees will give you a solid signal.  You could see a similar thing with the screw in this video and also with the ring standing up using the Ace 250.

Although the Excal and Ace are different in many respects, they both identify long thin nail-like objects with a broken tone in one direction and a solid tone in the other direction.

I can always identify a nail or similar object with the Excalibur in all metals mode.   The Ace reacts similarly.



Source: www.nhc.noaa.gov

You should now better understand why the signals of some objects are so variable and some of the factors that can cause that.

The signal can tell you a lot if you really understand your detector.


On the weather front, Fay is heading out into the Atlantic and away from the Treasure Coast, but what I've been calling Disturbance 1, now has a 90% chance of becoming a cyclone, and it looks like it will be moving towards us.

As I've been telling you, we often get some good hunting in October or November.

That is something to watch.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net

8/29/14 Report - Detector Test Using Silver Cobs in High EMI Environment. A Couple Tips For Detecting Junky Sites.

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

Four Treasure Coast 1715 Fleet Beach Cobs.  Three Half-Reales and One 1-Reale.

There are times when it is a good idea to try something new.  If you try something new there is a good chance that you will strike out, but you very well might learn something valuable in the process.

When you try a new site, the first visit might not be much more than a scouting trip or site preparation.   Too many people give up on a new site too quickly.  They do a little detecting and decide that there is nothing there or that the site is too junky.  Before giving up, they should analyze the situation, test different areas, and find out where things used to be and what might be there.

Sometimes on your first visit you'll be accomplishing a lot if you simply remove the surface trash.  That can be true on either a beach or inland site.

For trashy sites you might want to use a magnetic rake.  They are made for post-construction clean-ups, but you can use them for pre-detecting cleaning.  They come in a variety of types.  Below is a link that shows a few of those types.

http://www.moheco.com/magrake_magnetic_rakes.htm

Using a magnetic rake can really help you prepare a trashy site.  Trash can mask a lot of good targets so it is good to get rid of a lot of it.

And it is always a good idea to have a magnet like the one shown in the following video when you have to deal with nails and things like that.  I sometimes tape a magnet like this one to the handle end of my scoop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ2XQiljBF4

This procedure works very well.  You can waste a lot of time searching for a small screw or bit or iron. 

After pinpointing an iron item, pick it up with the magnet.  As you can tell if you carefully listen to the video, you can hear when an iron object gets picked up by the magnet. 

I've been noticing a lot of good potential land detecting sites lately. Keep your eyes open as you drive. 



I did some new tests.  I used the four silver cobs shown at the top of the post.  Left to right they weight about 0.4 grams, 0.5 grams, 0.6 grams and 2.0 grams.  All four are very much under weight for their denomination.  That is not unusual for beach cobs.

The first part of the test was conducted with the Ace 250, an inexpensive detector with target ID.  I've talked about that detector in the past.

The setting was a front yard where there is considerable electromagnetic interference from power lines, underground cables, etc.

I simply put the four cobs on the ground (didn't bury them) spaced apart about a foot.

When using the Ace all four cobs were easily detected, mostly being identified as nickels.  Two cobs jumped a little on the target ID - one one way and the other the other way. 

Here is where it starts to get interesting.  You would assume that the silver in all four cobs is of similar purity.  I know that might not be exactly the case, but I would not expect them to vary a lot.

But I got a hint of something interesting in this part of the test.  The heaviest cobs did not always give the best signal.  And the cobs presenting the most surface area did not always give the best signal. 

Using the Ace, the third cob from the right occasionally jumped into the pull tab range, while the second cob occasionally jumped from the nickel to foil ID range.

I repeated this process many times with different sweep speeds, slightly varying the height of the coil, and changing the centering of the coil.  Same results.  The smallest and largest of the two cobs without exception were identified as nickels.  Only the other two differed, one towards the upper end of the range and the other towards the lower.

I did not take this too seriously yet.  I then tested the same cobs with two other detectors.  In another post I'll discuss how that added to the evidence found in this part of the test.

What I did conclude from this first test is that it is not always the larger target or the target presenting the most surface area that creates the loudest signal.  Bigger is not always louder, even when the metal is the same (or nearly so).  These conclusions were supported using two other very different detectors.  Like I said, more on that some other time.

Another thing I concluded is that ( and not taking depth into account) the Ace worked as well as the Dual Surf PI and Excalibur for detecting these small surface cobs in this environment.  The Ace, which was operated with the default settings (not maximum sensitivity) was not as much affected by EMI and did as well as the other two detectors.

One thing I want to reiterate is the importance of testing detectors on specific targets and under specific circumstances.   Here you have a case where an inexpensive detector that some call a toy worked as well or better than much more expensive detectors. 

The results might change if the cobs were buried at depth and for a time.  I don't know that yet.



On the Treasure Coast today we had a 2 - 3 foot surf.  Tomorrow the surf is predicted to be down around one foot.

We only have one tropical wave right now, and it is down below the islands and apparently headed towards Central America.

That is all for now.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net

6/414 Report - Half Cent, More Glitz, TV Treasure Hunt, Queen's Coach & Three Characteristics of Metal Detector Signals

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

Find and photo by Steve S.

Steve S. is from Iowa, but like many detectorists, visits the Treasure Coast where he does some metal detecting.

Here is how he found this half cent.

He said, Went out last Sunday to a nearby village and detected a residence built in the 1840s. This 1829 Half Cent was all that I found. Nice shape for Iowa.

That is a very nice find.  In uncirculated condition it would be worth well over two hundred dollars.

Congratulations Steve!

Photo of find by Steve S.

Half cents are rare finds.




Here is a web site that discusses and gives values of half cents.

http://www.coinstudy.com/half-cent-values.html





NBC's Today Show has been having a daily treasure hunt.  They hide an envelope containing prizes in the city of the day and then give clues to where the envelope can be found.

http://www.today.com/allday/al-roker-launches-todays-treasure-hunt-inspired-hidden-cash-craze-2D79739309



The Queen of England got a new coach.  It is Covered in around 400 books of gold leaf, it contains timbers from king Henry VIII's flagship the Mary Rose, which sank in 1545, and Isaac Newton's apple tree, which inspired him to form his theory of gravity.

Here is the link for more about that.

http://news.yahoo.com/queens-state-coach-encapsulates-british-history-220653016.html

Timbers from Henry VIII's flagship!  Is that saving history for the public?   Maybe it is.  Doesn't seem the best use to me.

Find and photo by Robert H.

I've been showing some of the finds of Robert H. lately.  I posted his trash finds one day too when I was talking about how much trash is picked up by detectorists.

Here is another one of Robert's finds.  This one is really glitzy!

Congrats Robert.  





A few posts ago I was talking about signal detection theory as it relates to metal detecting.  I talked about how signals usually exist in a field of noise.  I wanted to talk a little about three features of good signals when you are using all-metals or pin-point modes.

First, of course, is loudness.  Obviously a loud signal will tend to stand out, but not necessarily, if you have a lot of noise, including a very rough threshold or poorly ground balanced detector.  Increasing volume can increase noise as much as the signal and therefore won't necessarily be of much help.

Signal loudness, when considered in conjunction with other variables, can tell you something about the depth, size and composition of a target - even in all metals mode.  Of course shallow targets will tend to be louder.  Larger targets will tend to be louder.  And more conductive targets will tend to be louder.

Distinctness is another quality of a signal.  Signals will be more distinct (have a more sudden onset and termination) sound, when the target is more shallow.  Distinctness will generally make a good signal easier to identify in a field of noise.  However, as the target gets deeper the signal will appear more smooth.  It will not be as loud and will not be as distinct.

A third signal quality is duration - how long the signal remains loud as you sweep your coil.

You can get a very good idea of how shallow a target is by combining these three signal characteristics.  A small target near the surface will be loud and distinct.   The duration of the signal will, however, vary depending upon the size of the target.  Duration and distinctness, as I've defined them are different things.

A deeper object of the same size and composition will produce a signal that is not as loud and not as distinct.

A larger object of the same composition at the same depth will produce a signal that is as louder but the signal will not be as distinct, and the duration will be larger (The signal will be more spread out.).

If you sweep multiple times over an object in all metals mode and vary the direction of your sweep, you can get some idea of its size and shape.

One peculiarity that I've talked about before is the double signal produced by narrow long objects such as nails when you sweep in one direction and single beep when you sweep at 90 degrees to that.  I've gone over that in detail in the past.

With practice you can use your detector in all metals mode to gain a lot of information about suspected targets from the loudness, distinctness and duration of the signal.

Back to the signal in noise problem.  Signals giving faint signals are more difficult to detect in noise, as are signals that are less distinct.   Faint indistinct signals will often be lost in noise such as that created by black sand and salt mineralization or even an erratic threshold tone, however you can easily detect near surface objects in black sand from the more distinct signals. 

Learn to understand what your detector is telling you.  It might be saying more than you would guess.


I showed a photo of two detectorists on a beach a day or two ago.  They wrote in.  The detectorists are Tim and Betty M. 

Thanks to all of you who write and submit finds and information.  I really appreciate it.


On the Treasure Coast the surf today is three to five feet.  The surf will be decreasing the nest few days and we'll be back down to something like a two foot surf.  Don't expect any improvement in beach conditions.  The tides are pretty flat now too.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net