It Only Takes An Inch. An Inch Of Extra Depth, Or Missing A Coin That Is Just An Inch To The Side Of Your Coil.

Been kicking this around in my head for some reason for the last few days and thought I'd write out a little segment on it. For some stupid reason the phrase "It Only Takes An Inch" has come to mind here and there for the last few days. Since I'm out of meds at the moment, :') I thought I'd just run with it and hack out a few thoughts on the subject...:')

First, I'm sure many of us have seen other hunters who swing with the coil way off the ground. Even if they aren't very bad at that, they often are still hunting with the coil just a bit higher than they probably should for best depth. Now, I'm not one to scrub the ground as I feel it ends up costing you depth via falsing and noise caused by the coil being bumped or slid around on it. On the other hand, I try to hunt with the coil just kissing the top of the grass as that's my general rule of thumb for easy swinging, less fatigue, and less falsing caused by coil chatter. Just like riding sensitivity too high making the machine unstable, if you are causing the machine to false or chirp here and there by scrubbing the ground it could very easily cost you depth and not give you more. But, by the same token, I don't want to get too high. And, even though some people do a good job of keeping the coil right near the ground, often even these people will lift the coil at both ends of the sweep. I don't try to cover a wide patch of ground like that with a wide sweep unless sometimes when I'm beach hunting and gridding out a large area. Instead, I only worry about the ground right in front of my feet, and rarely sweep my coil any wider than my two feet for best coil control and coverage. It's also less fatigue as you can keep your back straight and not be reaching from one side to the other trying to cover a larger area.

Also, on machines where you set a fixed ground balance, it's important to ground balance at the height you plan to sweep while hunting. Kissing the ground with the coil when you aren't hunting that close I feel throws off the ground balance of the machine somewhat, or at least I think it has the potential to do that.

Anyway, back to the other aspect of the topic that's been kicking around in my head for a few days. You ever hunt a hard hit park and happen on a nice clean coin signal only a few inches deep or so, and out pops a nice old silver? Ever wonder just why nobody ever dug that coin long ago, as it wasn't masked and was shallow enough that most machines on the market could have easily have seen it? Well, I'm sure a few of those are due to various things. Such as the coin being on edge at one time or deeper, but that the frozen ground moved it flat or brought it closer to the surface. Or, there could have been a piece of iron masking that coin that finally degraded and washed away in the soil to reveal it.

But, there is one other possibility and probably the more likely reason why that coin has never been found before. That being that nobody simply ever passed their coil over it. Think about it. It only takes your coil missing that coin by an inch and you never even heard it. Or, you might have even nicked it with the side of the coil, but your machine gave a bad response that sounded like trash simply because it didn't get a good look at it. This is even more true for coins at depth, because often a deeper coin will not give a good response until you pass over it with the very center of the coil.

And further into this point...Next time you are at one of your favorite hunting sites and feel there is no "easy" silver left to be found there, take a good long look around the place. Chances are the site is rather large, but even at a smaller one do you know what kind of meticulous person it would take to cover every square inch of that soil there? Most hunters, even the best of them who make great finds every day, don't cover the ground in such a detailed way as to insure not missing spots. Even if they do grid, unless you are using stakes and strings to mark off areas it's very easy to wander out of your row. In fact, even using string and markers to grid a box at a time, it's still rather easy to not cover the ground properly with each sweep insuring you didn't leave a gap between your last sweep and this one. And, even if you make a good effort to not leave gaps between sweeps...Are you overlapping your sweeps enough to insure that the center of the coil is covering most of that ground on each pass? While it's more important with a concentric to overlap your sweeps, it's still true for a DD coil, in particular for deeper targets. The center of the coil will get you the best depth, and also the best response on a target that might otherwise only null or sound like junk if the center of the coil hadn't seen it. Also, these coins don't even have to be all that deep for that to happen. They could be masked or on edge, and only will sing "coin" when you've got the coil in just the right spot sweeping over them.

So, no matter how capable you think your machine is or isn't, chances are nobody has hunted that "dead" site with as much intention as you could...If you just go in there with the right mindset and will power to take your time. Don't be worried about what is "over there" 20 yards away. The most important ground is the one right in front of your feet. Don't even worry about what's two feet to your side. Just worry about the ground right in front of your toes. Cover that well first, and then move on. Overlap your sweeps, not even by just half, but try to crawl forward only inches at a time. That alone can make all the difference. Remember, you are trying to find a coin roughly half an inch in surface area among acres of "inches" spread all over the place. Give that some serious thought, and then next time your hunting you might resist the urge to "get over there", and take the time to see what potential finds might only be one inch away.

The next time you happen along what you think is going to turn out to be a silver or some other old coin. Take a moment to sweep around that spot in a sloppy way without trying to get right over it on purpose. I bet you'll notice that you don't even hear that coin on most of those "drunken" sweeps in the general area. And, if you do hear it, I'll bet good money it doesn't sound like anything but trash until you've "just by chance" swept right over it with the center of the coil. Even still, even if you do happen to sweep right over it, depending on it's depth or being masked, I bet some of these coins won't even give you a coin signal until you've centered and wiggled right over them to isolate the signal from the surrounding ground or any nearby trash. For that reason too, when hunting "in inches", don't use assume with a good solid center sweep over something that by the sound it's just trash. Especially if it sounds deep, or maybe mixed in trash but "hinting" to a high tone, make sure you center and wiggle right over it before deciding it is indeed just another piece of junk.

For the deeper hits I always check them out by getting right over them and wiggling, and often only then will that "trash" tone rise and become a "coin" high tone. I must admit I don't usually take this kind of time with shallower "trash". With the deep signals I don't care what kind of tone it gives at first, but with the shallower stuff I'll only investigate further if I hear a hint of a high tone mixed in with the lows. Perhaps I should take more time to wiggle through and around the shallow junk even if I don't at first hear a hint of coin mixed in there, as a coin can easily not give that high tone unless you are in the perfect spot to see it mixed in the trash. But, on the other hand, if you are hunting "in inches", you don't have to worry about that so much with the shallower stuff, as your slow advancement in inches with the coil will more than likely fish that initial high tone hint out for you to investigate further. As said though, on the deeper "trash" hits, I always center right over them and see just what kind of signal I can dirt fish out of it.

As a side note that pertains to this topic, just changing the angle at which you grid a site can make all the difference. Often masked coins or ones on edge might only produce a good enough signal to dig from one particular angle of sweep. It's human nature to parallel or (though less common) to hunt at a 90 degree angle to some landmark, such as a sidewalk, a wood line, a street, or a building. Human nature dictates most people will hunt in one of those two directions to those landmarks. So, instead of working it parallel, or even instead of working the spot the less frequent (but still common) 90 degree relation to that object, why not grid the area at a diagonal direction to it? That alone can make the difference and reveal badly masked coins or ones badly on edge that simply will only null or give a real junky signal from any other direction. Many of the coins we've found this year have been so badly masked that they were a complete null for two different machines from any direction but one tiny tight spot and angle. Had we not hit those coins from that rarity of an odd hunting angle many of them we would not have even heard, or at least only got a "trash" signal from.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2012 05:17PM by critterhunter.

I'm always amazed to see how many targets are still in the ground when I go back over an area at 90 degrees to the first passes. Some targets can be attributed to your saying "it only takes an Inch" and the coil didn't quite get over it or some targets might be on edge and didn't sound off since they were inline with the sweep direction the first time. Heck I've even hunted at 45 degrees to first passes in a really productive area and hit more targets.

Wow, what an idea. I agree with all you say.
In fact I've been planning a video demonstrating just what you talked about.
Thanks for the insight.

Heck whether your talking detecting or loving an inch one way or the other makes a difference also being 50 or 70 has to be taken into consideration....

Seriously one wonders how many goodies we missed by turning left or right or going straight ahead...

I agree with most of what you say....except when using a sov ion our parks,I always scrub the coil. I know for a fact it has given me that extra bit of depth needed. Now in more irony sites ...demos..I will often raise the coil a liitle. Keep writin,I like readin...

Seems like reading many manuals over the years some say keep coil an inch or so off the ground others say virtually scrub the ground and others are somewhere in between.
Guess it depends on the unit you are using....Indeed an inch to the left or right, straight down or closer to a masking object can be the difference. For this reason many seasoned detectorists will overlap their swings in hopes of not missing a good target....

Yes, but even the best of us fail to overlap as much as we probably should. Most guys who bother to overlap do it by say half a coil length or so, but even then it's not giving the kind of effort that is needed to make finds at hunting out sites. Even on a DD coil there is deeper depth at the very center, and also there are some masked coins that simply won't sound off unless the coil is passed over the perfect spot. A little too far forward or backward and it could be null city or a total junk signal with no hint of a high tone due to the surrounding trash.

I remember reading a thread a month or two back where a guy had a back and leg injury. He owned a a really good machine if I remember right, but he decided to use his cheap $90 detector to hunt while he healed because it was such a light machine. He didn't even want to walk across the park because of his condition, so he hunted right next to the parking lot in the grass. Anyway, he just worked that small area with a very slow "inches at a time" type of advancement and slow hunting. He posted a PILE of silver that he found in that one little area over the weeks while his body healed by doing that. And he even mentioned he had worked this same spot countless times before but had missed all that silver. And I'm talking silver barber quarters and a whole slew of other silver coins laying in a nice big pile in the picture. Like maybe 30 to 50 coins it looked like!

I figured Tom would jump on this

Many of my articles on the home-page of this web-site are exactly about this. This is all important information.

Also....... some dirt allows you to 'scrub' the ground with the coil. (Inert Florida dirt is one place).
Other dirt may not allow this...... as it would make the detector 'false' quite a bit....... or mis-ID... due to excessive mineralization feedback.

First, if you don't want to read these two posts from others, do yourself a favor and look at the picture of a PILE of silver at the bottom of this message. That should give you incentive to read what they have to say!

I ran across a couple messages I was talking about above that fit this topic nicely, but I had a bit of the details mixed up. That's no matter, because the message is still the same. Not only about the importance of how cleanly you swing the coil, but also that slow and simple inches at a time in coil advancement at the most can make an old even tiny spot seem new again. These two messages from elsewhere were not related to this thread in terms of a response in any way, but rather were just from some other thread unconnected to mine, but were so good and to the point that I was trying to make above, that I thought they were worth posting under this thread to see the actual merits of such techniques. They had stuck in my mind for months, so when I happened upon them again I just knew I had to re-post them under this thread because they really get the point across...

(QUOTED MESSAGE #1)

"...One winter about 10 years ago I had a nasty fall on some ice and messed up my back and leg. The following spring I wanted to hunt but knew that in my condition I couldn't go too far. So, I opted to hunt a very limited area in a section of a local park that I could get to easily from the car but just confine myself to about 50 sq. feet. of space. I had hunted the area previously with good luck so I wasn't expecting much.

Since I knew I didn't want to cover more than this limited area I swept the Sov in the same slow way I always do but instead of walking I just inched my way forward and overlapped every level swing. It wasn't long before I started getting signals so I limited myself to only high tone targets that sounded soft. My knee and back hurt as I uncovered a few dimes and quarter but it wasn't long before I uncovered a nice Barber dime, then a Mercury. It's amazing how much better I started to feel. But equally amazing was how many good targets I took home that day from such a limited spot I had hunted numerous times previously with a slow, level swing. What I realized is that I often found myself thinking ahead to where I'd search next and lose focus on the place I was currently at. When that happens the steps got further apart and the coil didn't overlap on each swing. When you combine this with the fact that I was using a small coil, it's easy to see that coin sized targets can be missed very easily.

Good technique is something most newbies never learn and oldsters like me sometimes forget. That day I realized that I'd rather hunt a 50' area well than a 300' area poorly. I'm no longer racing to get to the next spot."

(QUOTED MESSAGE #2 About Where The Silver Is?)

"That's a question I've been asked by local guys who detect, and have seen more than one ask the same question on some forum or other. No question there are fewer lost silver coins still to be found, but they can still be found and it doesn't take the latest expensive detectors to find them. Location is a big factor, but technique is just as big. In the last five years the number of detectors users in this area has pretty much exploded. Seven or eight years ago there probably wasn't a dozen people in the county I live in who detected, now there's probably over 25 just in the small town I live in and the one thing almost all of them have in common is poor technique. They swing way too fast, leave huge gaps between swings and don't keep their coils level through the arc of their swings. Almost of the silver coins I and the guys I've hunted with have found has been in the four to six inch range with only a few deeper or not that deep, but the way they use their detectors, regardless of brand and model, is the main reason most of them seldom find silver coins, or any coin much over two to three inches deep. In the last couple of months I've been detecting with one or the other of them and got coin signals right behind them, called them back and had them swing over where I got the signal using a slow, level swing and they got it easily. A few of the signals were silver coins no more than four to five inches deep, and even though I constantly remind them to slow down and keep the coil level it doesn't sink in and they take off wide open again. An example. Recently I was detecting with a guy who was using a new detector that has excellent depth and found a silver dime that was less than four inches deep. The guy said he had swung right over that spot, and asked me to put the dime back and put the plug back in the hole to see if he could get a signal on it. I put it back and he whipped his coil over it several times and never heard it. I told him to slow down and when he did he got it with no problem, but went back to his normal too fast sweep speed when he started detecting again.

Some of them buy large expensive coils thinking they're the answer, only to find they don't find any more, if as much, as they did with the standard coils. Another example. I took the old 100 khz Compass Coinhustler that has a 6.5 inch coil to a grassy area near the school down the street where the kids play. The Coinhustler has a 6.5 inch coil and about four inches is as deep as it will get even a large coin, and then it's just a slight increase in the threshold. Just as I got there a guy stopped and asked could he hunt with me. I said yes and he got a new Fisher out that had an 11 inch oval coil, started swinging at breakneck speed, leaving large gaps between swings and lifting the coil at least a foot off the ground at both ends of his swing. In the maybe 30 minutes he was there I found 18 coins, from surface to one that was maybe two inches deep, with the Coinhustler and he found one zinc penny. I don't mean to sound like I'm bragging, I'm not. I know for a fact that I miss a lot of coins because I'm hunting the same places here in town I've hunted with dozens of different detectors since March of 1970 and still finding silver coins and wheaties, but almost all of the guys around here who started detecting in the last few years swing their coils as fast as they can, leave huge gaps between swings and if they find a silver coin, or any coin much over three inches deep, it's by accident. Where's the silver? Here's some that was found recently with a $70 Bounty Hunter Gold Digger at places that had been hunted by others."

(END OF QUOTES)

Edit: Figured out how to post pics on here without having to subscribe to another site. See pic below...

Also, just linking this thread to my other one about digging it all at pounded out sites for future reference, as I think the two topics kind of go hand in hand at bringing an old site back to life.

[www.dankowskidetectors.com]



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/24/2012 04:54PM by critterhunter.

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I always scrub the ground as long as it's terrain that allows it, of course I use a coil cover too, but I'm making sure that any things I miss aren't because I have my coil too high. Found quite a few targets already that were very faint and if the coil was off the ground at all, they would not have given any indication at all. Besides, it's easier on my arm resting the coil on the ground instead of holding it off of it. Again as with a lot of aspects of this hobby, to each their own and what works for me might not work for you.

I always found scrubbing on any machine I've owned caused too much falsing. I prefer a nice easy glide just kissing the top of the grass myself. One thing though, whatever you are...scrubber or not...Make sure to ground balance with the coil at that height you hunt at. If you balance with it a inch or so off the ground and then scrub you're changing the ground load.

Same deal in a way with FBS guys who noise cancel. I've seen them point the coil forward when doing it. That's putting the coil in a somewhat vertical position. As we all know antennas are directional if you are old enough to have played with rabbit ears on a TV. For that reason I say lift the coil a foot or two but keep it horizontal as the emi might not be bad when vertical but will get worse when horizontal, putting you on the wrong channel for best sensitivity level due to noise.

In most cases....... EMI is vertically polarized. When the coil is brought into parallel position to Earth (the dirt)..... most EMI is mitigated. (((Underground transmission/power lines are an exception to the rule))).

I have often thought, (when laying the detector down to dig), ' glad that interference isn't happining when I'm swinging it '. I noticed emi can have different reactions on the detector, most are random tones that seem to be out of order. Rarely, have also heard emi with a cadence. The latter, comes in intervals (no matter position of the coil) and you have to stop and wait for it to subside.

Nice silver coins CH. Love the way they look when they're not cleaned, shows the definition off.

Those weren't my coins. I just re-posted the message and pic from somebody else elsewhere.

NASA-Tom Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In most cases....... EMI is vertically polarized.
> When the coil is brought into parallel position to
> Earth (the dirt)..... most EMI is mitigated.
> (((Underground transmission/power lines are an
> exception to the rule))).

Tom, of course you've got the education to know what you are talking about, but a few questions...Then why do some antennas give a better picture when the antenna is horizontal to the ground (say for some TV stations back in the day to tune just right)? I thought transmission waves will bounce off the atmosphere and can have directional changes that can make the signal stronger in some cases with the antenna horizontal to the ground? I think that's called "polarization", isn't it? I'm drudging bits from my experience with building/flying RC electric planes with onboard antennas to transmit video down to live ground station viewing here, so fill in the blanks if you could.

Also, even if that's not the case, wouldn't it then at least be true that by holding the coil vertical during noise cancel you are forcing it off channels it might otherwise prefer when held in horizontal orientation during the noise cancel? But my main point is that regardless of all that, there still *could* be the possibility that certain frequencies with EMI wouldn't be too bad when held vertical but *could* be a bit worse when held horizontal?

Just throwing it out there for you to fill us all in...

Yes......... somewhat freq dependent. Some lower freq's propagate much better in horizontal fashion. Ham's and CB radio's perform with lower signal/noise ratios when antennae are horizontal (slang = on the flat-side). And EMI is (usually) 'white noise'. If you take (especially a T2/F70/F75)...... or any 'overdriven' (extra sensitive) unit........ and hold the coil parallel to the ground...... the EMI is usually much less. If you start to tip the coil up..... the EMI increases.