Welcome!
» Log In
» Create A New Profile
Home
>
Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
>
Topic
Introduction
Posted by PulltabKing
This forum is currently read only. You can not log in or make any changes. This is a temporary situation.
|
Introduction November 06, 2018 07:03AM |
Registered: 5 years ago Posts: 36 |
New forum member here. I just wanted to introduce myself.
I got interested in detecting when I was 7. My grandmother had just bought a Whites Coinmaster 5000/D TR G.E.B. We would go out into the woods near Longview Texas and I was her digger. I can't remember anything specific we dug, but at 7, an old rusty can was a treasure to me.
That next Christmas I got an orange Radio Shack detector. I found lots of cans and junk. I used it on and off until I was 12....then I got an upgrade.
Anyone remember the Brinkman Treasure Sensor 4000? Again, I found lots of cans and junk. One day I was visiting my other grandparents (mothers side) and brought my detector. They lived in a neighborhood from the early 40's. They bought the house around 1948.
I was in the backyard not finding anything good. After a while my grandfather came out and said, "boy....why don't you run that geiger counter next to the driveway. I'm always dropping stuff when I pull my keys out of my pocket".
Within five minutes I found a coin. It was a wheatie!!! A minute or so later...another one!! Then some dimes and a quarter. By the end of the day I had a pocket full of change.
Needless to say, that was the day I got hooked on metal detecting.
Unfortunately, a dime was a dime and a quarter was a quarter when I was 12. I probably had silver and most likely spent it on penny candy at the store. I remember thinking I had really found something because wheat pennies were old and didn't look like a Lincoln cent. Now if I had found a Mercury dime, I'd have known it was something good.
My grandfather with zero detecting knowledge taught me something that day. Location location location! The places I had been digging, probably had a few goodies to be found, but if you want lots of coins, you've gotta hit high traffic areas like next to a driveway. How I approached a new site changed.
I kept on using that detector for a few more years. Then racing BMX and girls took over. I still had the treasure bug, but I had more important things to occupy my time. LOL!
Then in 1994, I saw a Western and Eastern magazine at the store. I bought it and read it over and over. After drooling over the ads with the latest and greatest machines for a month, I decided to hit my local metal detector shop.
A couple of hours later and several hundred dollars later, I was the proud owner of a Garrett GTA1000. I sped home and read the manual a few times and for the first time learned what a discriminator was. Being a computer nerd and a ham radio operator, learning the technical details of how a detector works, that opened up a new window. The next day I was finding clad coins at the local park.
Remembering what my grandfather taught me about location, I hit an abandoned house from the teens I used to mess around in when I was a kid that next weekend. It still had the clothesline, so I thought that would be a good location to start. Boom...I found my first mercury dime, an old Palmolive token and a few buttons. After that day, I've never looked back. The treasure bug bit me and I was officially infected!
The next leap I took was going to our local club meeting. When you bought a new detector from that shop, you get a one year membership to the club. I met lots of people and eventually I was invited to hunt with some members at some good spots.
The quality of my finds grew and grew. I was finding Barber dimes, Indian head pennies and cool tokens now!
I also noticed there were several members that were using the Whites XLT. After a year or so I bought one. The new features this machine had was very stimulating to my nerd self. The manual explained alot. I played around with the gain settings and Mix Mode. Learned about ground balance, voltage controlled oscillator, self adjusting threshold. I could now set up a custom program to the maximize my finds at the location I was hunting at that moment. Everything was beginning to make sense. I was putting in the hours hunting, testing and comparing.
Later on I started hoarding metal detectors. Club members were always selling something. I became friends with the owner of the metal detecting shop. He sold used machines too. That just made the hoarding issue worse. I would go visit him on my lunch break about once a week and sure enough he'd have something new in. He was a wheeler and dealer. He'd say, "give me that Whites Classic you bought at the meeting last month plus $100 and you can have it". My biggest regret was getting rid of a Fisher 1266x. I'd use one now if I had one.
Time went on and people were starting to use Tesoro Sidewinders with a 4" coil at heavy trash sites downtown. I ended up getting one. I was going to sites and finding silver between other people's dig holes. All the bells and whistles the TID machines had, taught me alot.
But I was now beginning to learn to hunt without a bunch of numbers and focusing on sound alone. Learning new techniques and the slight variations in sound. Before the Sidewinder, I found myself relying on numbers more than sound. That is a bad trap to fall into.
Sound and TID used together is best. I always wonder what I left behind because of jumpy numbers. Probably a Seated coin next to trash. DOH! Facepalm!
A few years later someone had a Troy Shadow X2 with a 4" coil for sale. To this day it's my goto machine in trashy demo sites. Even with the small coil, the depth is outstanding. The X2 is basically a Tesoro Silver uMax. My X2 runs hot compared to the uMax. Even better depth than my friends X2 with the same coil. I'm easily 2" deeper in air tests. I wish Troy Galloway would rise again. All the X series were good.
Anyway...I digress. Getting off topic here. LOL!
Shortly after, I got into water hunting and ended up with a Fisher 1280x. A club member now best friend invited me to hunt the beach in Galveston Texas. That was the trip I learned that a pulse induction machine was in order. So I added a Whites Surfmaster PI to the collection. Rarely used so I sold it after a few years. Being still hooked on the beep and dig machines a Tesoro Vaquero was added to the hoard shortly after they hit the shops.
In 2011 I had to sell "most" but not all of my toys because of a divorce after 20 years of marriage. I moved to West Texas to a cool historical town south of Abilene Texas. Now I'm plagued with something new. Small nails and iron everywhere!! I've done very well out here, but now it's time for some new tools. The Equinox 800 , Fisher F19 and especially the Deeptech Smart Plus has my attention. I've got the experience, but the wrong tools in these iron infested sites I now hunt.
On top of the iron driving me crazy, in this part of Texas, Indian artifacts are everywhere. Especially near the Colorado River. So I find myself going out to detect at a new site and end up spending most of my time looking for arrowheads. LOL!
Sorry for the long post. I just wanted to share my treasure hunting experience and journey along the way.
I've been lurking in the forums here for years. This forum is very different than others. The technical knowledge posted here fascinates me. We are lucky to have brilliant people that post here.
I hope to be able to contribute some of knowledge and share my new experiences with everyone.
Thanks for reading,
Chris
I got interested in detecting when I was 7. My grandmother had just bought a Whites Coinmaster 5000/D TR G.E.B. We would go out into the woods near Longview Texas and I was her digger. I can't remember anything specific we dug, but at 7, an old rusty can was a treasure to me.
That next Christmas I got an orange Radio Shack detector. I found lots of cans and junk. I used it on and off until I was 12....then I got an upgrade.
Anyone remember the Brinkman Treasure Sensor 4000? Again, I found lots of cans and junk. One day I was visiting my other grandparents (mothers side) and brought my detector. They lived in a neighborhood from the early 40's. They bought the house around 1948.
I was in the backyard not finding anything good. After a while my grandfather came out and said, "boy....why don't you run that geiger counter next to the driveway. I'm always dropping stuff when I pull my keys out of my pocket".
Within five minutes I found a coin. It was a wheatie!!! A minute or so later...another one!! Then some dimes and a quarter. By the end of the day I had a pocket full of change.
Needless to say, that was the day I got hooked on metal detecting.
Unfortunately, a dime was a dime and a quarter was a quarter when I was 12. I probably had silver and most likely spent it on penny candy at the store. I remember thinking I had really found something because wheat pennies were old and didn't look like a Lincoln cent. Now if I had found a Mercury dime, I'd have known it was something good.
My grandfather with zero detecting knowledge taught me something that day. Location location location! The places I had been digging, probably had a few goodies to be found, but if you want lots of coins, you've gotta hit high traffic areas like next to a driveway. How I approached a new site changed.
I kept on using that detector for a few more years. Then racing BMX and girls took over. I still had the treasure bug, but I had more important things to occupy my time. LOL!
Then in 1994, I saw a Western and Eastern magazine at the store. I bought it and read it over and over. After drooling over the ads with the latest and greatest machines for a month, I decided to hit my local metal detector shop.
A couple of hours later and several hundred dollars later, I was the proud owner of a Garrett GTA1000. I sped home and read the manual a few times and for the first time learned what a discriminator was. Being a computer nerd and a ham radio operator, learning the technical details of how a detector works, that opened up a new window. The next day I was finding clad coins at the local park.
Remembering what my grandfather taught me about location, I hit an abandoned house from the teens I used to mess around in when I was a kid that next weekend. It still had the clothesline, so I thought that would be a good location to start. Boom...I found my first mercury dime, an old Palmolive token and a few buttons. After that day, I've never looked back. The treasure bug bit me and I was officially infected!
The next leap I took was going to our local club meeting. When you bought a new detector from that shop, you get a one year membership to the club. I met lots of people and eventually I was invited to hunt with some members at some good spots.
The quality of my finds grew and grew. I was finding Barber dimes, Indian head pennies and cool tokens now!
I also noticed there were several members that were using the Whites XLT. After a year or so I bought one. The new features this machine had was very stimulating to my nerd self. The manual explained alot. I played around with the gain settings and Mix Mode. Learned about ground balance, voltage controlled oscillator, self adjusting threshold. I could now set up a custom program to the maximize my finds at the location I was hunting at that moment. Everything was beginning to make sense. I was putting in the hours hunting, testing and comparing.
Later on I started hoarding metal detectors. Club members were always selling something. I became friends with the owner of the metal detecting shop. He sold used machines too. That just made the hoarding issue worse. I would go visit him on my lunch break about once a week and sure enough he'd have something new in. He was a wheeler and dealer. He'd say, "give me that Whites Classic you bought at the meeting last month plus $100 and you can have it". My biggest regret was getting rid of a Fisher 1266x. I'd use one now if I had one.
Time went on and people were starting to use Tesoro Sidewinders with a 4" coil at heavy trash sites downtown. I ended up getting one. I was going to sites and finding silver between other people's dig holes. All the bells and whistles the TID machines had, taught me alot.
But I was now beginning to learn to hunt without a bunch of numbers and focusing on sound alone. Learning new techniques and the slight variations in sound. Before the Sidewinder, I found myself relying on numbers more than sound. That is a bad trap to fall into.
Sound and TID used together is best. I always wonder what I left behind because of jumpy numbers. Probably a Seated coin next to trash. DOH! Facepalm!
A few years later someone had a Troy Shadow X2 with a 4" coil for sale. To this day it's my goto machine in trashy demo sites. Even with the small coil, the depth is outstanding. The X2 is basically a Tesoro Silver uMax. My X2 runs hot compared to the uMax. Even better depth than my friends X2 with the same coil. I'm easily 2" deeper in air tests. I wish Troy Galloway would rise again. All the X series were good.
Anyway...I digress. Getting off topic here. LOL!
Shortly after, I got into water hunting and ended up with a Fisher 1280x. A club member now best friend invited me to hunt the beach in Galveston Texas. That was the trip I learned that a pulse induction machine was in order. So I added a Whites Surfmaster PI to the collection. Rarely used so I sold it after a few years. Being still hooked on the beep and dig machines a Tesoro Vaquero was added to the hoard shortly after they hit the shops.
In 2011 I had to sell "most" but not all of my toys because of a divorce after 20 years of marriage. I moved to West Texas to a cool historical town south of Abilene Texas. Now I'm plagued with something new. Small nails and iron everywhere!! I've done very well out here, but now it's time for some new tools. The Equinox 800 , Fisher F19 and especially the Deeptech Smart Plus has my attention. I've got the experience, but the wrong tools in these iron infested sites I now hunt.
On top of the iron driving me crazy, in this part of Texas, Indian artifacts are everywhere. Especially near the Colorado River. So I find myself going out to detect at a new site and end up spending most of my time looking for arrowheads. LOL!
Sorry for the long post. I just wanted to share my treasure hunting experience and journey along the way.
I've been lurking in the forums here for years. This forum is very different than others. The technical knowledge posted here fascinates me. We are lucky to have brilliant people that post here.
I hope to be able to contribute some of knowledge and share my new experiences with everyone.
Thanks for reading,
Chris
|
Re: Introduction November 06, 2018 08:01AM |
Registered: 13 years ago Posts: 741 |
|
Re: Introduction November 06, 2018 10:57AM |
Registered: 14 years ago Posts: 3,948 |
|
Re: Introduction November 06, 2018 11:03AM |
Registered: 17 years ago Posts: 10,071 |
|
Re: Introduction November 06, 2018 02:10PM |
Registered: 14 years ago Posts: 2,332 |
|
Re: Introduction November 06, 2018 02:29PM |
Registered: 16 years ago Posts: 1,345 |
|
Re: Introduction November 06, 2018 02:42PM |
Registered: 14 years ago Posts: 3,028 |
|
Re: Introduction November 06, 2018 03:52PM |
Registered: 5 years ago Posts: 111 |
|
Re: Introduction November 06, 2018 04:08PM |
Registered: 11 years ago Posts: 1,612 |
|
Re: Introduction November 07, 2018 06:15AM |
Registered: 5 years ago Posts: 36 |
Harold,ILL. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Those Shadow X2s are Hot. What kind of Air test do
> You get on a dime?
8" easily with the 4" concentric coil. Sensitivity almost set to max.
I back off until the chatter goes away on air tests. My friend with the exact setup barely hits 6".
Unfortunately, it's impossible to run it that hot in the iron infested sites I have out here.
When I lived in Fort Worth I could run it hot at most sites. Iron infestation was less common there for some reason.
I've never seen so many small to medium sized rusty nails at any site I've hunted before, until I moved west.
I've found all the easy pickens with my current arsenal. It's time for a higher frequency machine.
-------------------------------------------------------
> Those Shadow X2s are Hot. What kind of Air test do
> You get on a dime?
8" easily with the 4" concentric coil. Sensitivity almost set to max.
I back off until the chatter goes away on air tests. My friend with the exact setup barely hits 6".
Unfortunately, it's impossible to run it that hot in the iron infested sites I have out here.
When I lived in Fort Worth I could run it hot at most sites. Iron infestation was less common there for some reason.
I've never seen so many small to medium sized rusty nails at any site I've hunted before, until I moved west.
I've found all the easy pickens with my current arsenal. It's time for a higher frequency machine.
|
Re: Introduction November 07, 2018 07:02AM |
Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 821 |
|
Re: Introduction November 07, 2018 07:55AM |
Registered: 5 years ago Posts: 36 |
marcomo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Welcome to the forum, Chris. Enjoyed reading your
> intro, you are a good writer.
>
> You're among friends now so fess up: how many dete
> ctors did you have at the height of your detector
> addiction?
The thing is, once I became good friends with the shop owner, I did lots of swapping, so I rarely kept any one detector for more than six months. I enjoyed learning various features and testing them out, then on to something different.
On a hunt day, I always brought three or four along.
Now...to answer your question, I lived in a two bedroom apartment at the time and the extra room had a 12' long peg board I put up where I had them all hanging.
I'd say I only had around 12 to 13 at any one time.
The biggest issue was finding room for all the coils I collected. I always tried to find a 5-6" coil, a 12-15" coil plus the stock coil for all the detectors I owned.
Each coil had to have its own lower rod with velcro securing the cables. It got old real fast changing coils 10 to 12 times a day, plus "maybe" a touch of OCD too.
The height of my addiction was between 1996-2000 when the internet and Ebay became popular. The shop owner was buying and selling online plus doing walk-in trade ins or a deal with a club member. That how he ended up with such a large inventory and a detector addict to buy them all. I'm pretty sure I was his best customer. LOL!
I have a friend in Fort Worth that has been buying detectors from the 60' up to the late 80's. They all work too. He's had to fix a couple along the way. Pretty soon, hes gonna have to add on to his house if he doesn't slow down. LOL!
-------------------------------------------------------
> Welcome to the forum, Chris. Enjoyed reading your
> intro, you are a good writer.
>
> You're among friends now so fess up: how many dete
> ctors did you have at the height of your detector
> addiction?
The thing is, once I became good friends with the shop owner, I did lots of swapping, so I rarely kept any one detector for more than six months. I enjoyed learning various features and testing them out, then on to something different.
On a hunt day, I always brought three or four along.
Now...to answer your question, I lived in a two bedroom apartment at the time and the extra room had a 12' long peg board I put up where I had them all hanging.
I'd say I only had around 12 to 13 at any one time.
The biggest issue was finding room for all the coils I collected. I always tried to find a 5-6" coil, a 12-15" coil plus the stock coil for all the detectors I owned.
Each coil had to have its own lower rod with velcro securing the cables. It got old real fast changing coils 10 to 12 times a day, plus "maybe" a touch of OCD too.
The height of my addiction was between 1996-2000 when the internet and Ebay became popular. The shop owner was buying and selling online plus doing walk-in trade ins or a deal with a club member. That how he ended up with such a large inventory and a detector addict to buy them all. I'm pretty sure I was his best customer. LOL!
I have a friend in Fort Worth that has been buying detectors from the 60' up to the late 80's. They all work too. He's had to fix a couple along the way. Pretty soon, hes gonna have to add on to his house if he doesn't slow down. LOL!
|
Re: Introduction November 07, 2018 09:14AM |
Registered: 7 years ago Posts: 565 |
|
Re: Introduction November 07, 2018 12:43PM |
Registered: 7 years ago Posts: 1,312 |
|
Re: Introduction November 07, 2018 02:40PM |
Registered: 15 years ago Posts: 147 |