5/12/15 Report - Time Saving Metal Detecting Tips. Modern Coins Abound On One Treasure Coast Beach.

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

Beach This Morning Near Low Tide

Same Beach Looking South

People sometimes mention using discrimination as a way to save time.  The obvious theory is that you will save time by not digging junk.  I've shown before that discrimination does not always save time.  I looked at one video and using the video timer actually counted how many seconds it took the person to get a reading before deciding if the item was junk or if he would dig it.  The amount of time spent reading the display and making the decision often took longer than it took him to retrieve the item.  I think he would have been surprised to see that the number of seconds he took reading the display was greater than the number of seconds he took to recover the item.

If you have good retrieval skills and are working where you can do a quick sift, such as in dry sand or in the water, recovering a typical item should not take more than a few seconds.  Of course you still might save frustration and effort by discriminating even if you don't really save much time.

In any case, there are other methods for saving time.   One comes from learning to use your detector well enough that you can get a very good idea of an item's location and depth without switching to a pinpoint mode or reading a display screen.  The better you know your detector, the quicker you will be able to pinpoint the item and get a good idea of the depth of items from the auditory signal alone,  That can save you seconds on typical items.

Accurate pinpointing and depth analysis will save you time by cutting down on scooping or digging too.  Don't dig a deeper hole than necessary.  Very often items will be in the top few inches of sand.  When you can tell that is the case, digging a deeper hole will cost you time.  The more sand you get in your scoop, the more you will have to sift, unless of course, you don't get the item and have to dig again.  There is a skill to it.

Here is another time saver.  When digging on the beach, especially in wet sand, don't move the sand farther than necessary.  Keep it close to the hole.  That makes it easier and quicker to kick the sand back into the hole.

When working on a slope in wet sand, I like to have the sand right next to the hole just to the uphill side.  That makes it very easy to kick the sand back in the hole.

I've noticed that a lot of people don't sift when working in wet sand.  As you know, wet sand doesn't sift quickly.   They just dump the sand on the ground and spread it out so they can see the item.

If the water is moving nearby, let the moving water rush through your scoop.  Be careful to do it so the item is not washed out of the scoop.  That means not over-filling the scoop, and having the scoop oriented so the rushing water goes into the open end of the scoop.  Put the tip up a bit. A little shaking will help the item settle into the scoop.

Small items can wash through the holes of the scoop and into the water.  Again, it helps to be able to read the detector signal so you have a good idea if the item might be small enough to wash through the scoop.

I was reminded of most of those things recently when I was digging a lot of coins in wet sand.

Some Coins Dug In Wet Sand One Morning.

I was actually getting tired of digging coins.  There were a few other items.  All of the coins were recent.  Some were not discolored despite being in the wet salt sand.

Very Small Item Dug Same Morning.

This is the type of item I was talking about.  It appears to me to be a bead.  It would easily slip through most any scoop.  It is small enough to sit on Roosevelt's face on a dime.  I picked it up somewhere between the coins shown above,

Some of the ear rings these days are huge.

Here are a couple of those that were dug along with the coins and bead.

The largest one would fit around a child's neck.

Both of these ear rings are junk.

I need to get some good photos of the better finds.

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Here is a good bargain.  You can get a 24 pack of AA batteries very inexpensively at Harbor Freight, if you have one of those near you.  In fact you can get a 24-pack free with any purchase May 22 to May 55.

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I've been taking my time perfecting use of a detector that I got this year.  I never took that much time and really studied a detector to that extent before.  I'm thinking of when we finally get some good conditions and want to really exactly what it will do.

On the Treasure Coast it looks like the surf tomorrow will be about the same as today's.  By Thursday and Friday it will start to increase a bit.  Nothing exciting though.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net