14k diamond ring, Italian gold necklace, and a pair of Minie balls

Used noise cancel #11, audio gain = 30 with the 18”x15” SEF coil, 13” Ultimate coil, Pro coil, and the Minelab 8” coil. Sensitivity level varied depending on coil.

Got in 2 days of detecting.

The 1st day was at a park that produced an 1877 seated dime and an 1894 barber half dollar on a single hunt. This time, using the Ultimate coil, got 3 silver dimes; 1964, 1959, and a 1940. But the surprise of the day were two 3-ring Minie balls that were only a few meters apart, and both around 5” deep. After 4 years of detecting in Northern California, have only detected 1 Minie ball from a salt water location. And now, 2 more only a few minutes apart.

The 2nd day, using the Procoil, went back to the beach that produced a gold earring on the last hunt there. The tides moved targets and sand around, filling in some areas, and lowering the sand in others. The strip of beach where older, lightweight (a lot of surface area per volume) gold jewelry sometimes washes in, produced a 14k 3.7g gold ring with 18 stones.
Further down that strip, got a 14k 10g Italian gold chain. Got very lucky and spotted part of it in a shallow area. The E-trac couldn’t target ID it with 01-50 discriminated out. But with an all-metal pattern, it was easily detectable at 3”-4” using manual sensitivity around 24, and Noise Cancel #11. It came in with a repeatable signal of 01-50.



Here are the gold and silver finds. The diamond ring has 18 stones instead of 16, but I have no complaints.

ID = inner diameter (in millimeters)
Procoil auto-sensitivity = 16
Rings air-tested with ring parallel to coil, unless otherwise noted

carat ID   grams depth  FE-CO  max depth description
14k   18   3.70   4”    12-04    7.5”    gold ring, ring parallel to coil
                  4”    12-05    7”      gold ring, ring face parallel to coil

14k   --  10.00   --    xx-01     .25”   gold necklace. Only the large section at
     						     the end of the chain was detectable using
						     manual sensitivity at 19

Here are the before and after cleaning photos of the gold jewelry.
The diamond ring had the typical 14k reddish brownish discoloration caused by salt water corrosion, but electrolysis, salt/vinegar solution bath, baking soda/water paste rubdown, tumbling, and ultrasonic cleaning brought the shine out of the gold and sparkle back in the diamonds.
The 14k Italian necklace was mostly in excellent shape, excluding the clasp. The clasp had the typical 10k greenish clumps caused by salt water corrosion, and didn’t clean too well. But the chain itself and the hallmark parts at the end of the chain are high quality.



The top row is the pair of 3-ring Minie balls
The 3 photos of “something” on the 2nd row was found near the Minie balls.
The bottom right photo are the 3 silver dimes before cleaning. All 3 were in pretty good shape.




Here is a group photo of some of the finds.

Detecting since Feb, 2010
E-trac with 18"x15" SEF, 13" Ultimate coil, Pro coil, Minelab 8" coil, 4.5"x7" SEF, Sunray target probe
CTX3030 with 17"x13" DD coil, 11" DD coil

WoW!

Nice!

What no buttons? Yeah Buddy eye-popping finds, can I call you Bling Master?

nice digs...and I have to say,you take great pictures!

Impressive finds.
Is that a broken ring or earring in the bottom shot?

rapidroy7 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What no buttons? Yeah Buddy eye-popping finds, can
> I call you Bling Master?


Location is one of the most important factors.
I got extremely lucky in locating a highly productive beach when I first started out detecting. It took over a year and a half to effectively learn how to hunt that beach.

Finding a productive beach with several decades of lost jewelry, then thoroughly learning how to hunt that beach with a detector that works well enough in the wet sand can make a lot of difference.

Detecting since Feb, 2010
E-trac with 18"x15" SEF, 13" Ultimate coil, Pro coil, Minelab 8" coil, 4.5"x7" SEF, Sunray target probe
CTX3030 with 17"x13" DD coil, 11" DD coil

Aaron Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Impressive finds.
> Is that a broken ring or earring in the bottom
> shot?

Thanks.

I’m not exactly sure what it is. After electrolysis cleaning and tumbling, it might be, at the most, an old costume jewelry ring.

Detecting since Feb, 2010
E-trac with 18"x15" SEF, 13" Ultimate coil, Pro coil, Minelab 8" coil, 4.5"x7" SEF, Sunray target probe
CTX3030 with 17"x13" DD coil, 11" DD coil

deathray Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> nice digs...and I have to say,you take great
> pictures!


Thanks.
Macro photography and online Fotoflexer seems to work well.

Detecting since Feb, 2010
E-trac with 18"x15" SEF, 13" Ultimate coil, Pro coil, Minelab 8" coil, 4.5"x7" SEF, Sunray target probe
CTX3030 with 17"x13" DD coil, 11" DD coil

Thanks for sharing Digs--a lot I agree , you pretty much had it covered with that hunt a little of everything! Precious Metals -n- Relics is there anything else? Please Tell !

Digs alot wrote- I’m not exactly sure what it is. After electrolysis cleaning and tumbling, it might be, at the most, an old costume jewelry ring.

The reason I asked was I don't think it would have been possible for the Etrac to pick it up if it was gold. I've got broken gold ring pieces and the only detector (not counting the Gold Bug) I could get to even register them was a Tiger Shark.

Aaron

Aaron Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Digs alot wrote- I’m not exactly sure what it
> is. After electrolysis cleaning and tumbling, it
> might be, at the most, an old costume jewelry
> ring.
>
> The reason I asked was I don't think it would have
> been possible for the Etrac to pick it up if it
> was gold. I've got broken gold ring pieces and the
> only detector (not counting the Gold Bug) I could
> get to even register them was a Tiger Shark.
>
> Aaron


When the tides lower the sand in the right areas of the beach, small gold jewelry with enough surface area can be detectable in wet areas with E-trac, including thicker broken gold rings and broken rings with faces.

The 5th group photo down in the 2011 anniversary post below shows the broken gold ring finds.
[www.dankowskidetectors.com]


The 4th, 6th, and 7th group photos in the 2012 anniversary post below shows more broken gold ring finds.
[www.dankowskidetectors.com]

In most cases, it was the surface area of the ring faces that was detectable, or the width of the ring.

A thin gold band with a break doesn’t seem to have enough area to produce eddy currents large enough for the E-trac to detect, because the break in the ring prevents the eddy currents from flowing around the perimeter of the thin band.

For some reason, the E-trac does becomes more sensitive to small gold jewelry in wet sand areas when using a high manual sensitivity, Noise Cancel #11, and FE-CO 01-50 unmasked. The E-trac can’t identify the target with a valid Target ID value, so it responds with a value of 01-50.
The E-trac can detect some broken gold rings with this setup, but the tremendous amount of tiny pieces of trash targets would require a lot of time digging and locating with a sensitive pinpointer, not to mention hot rocks to contend with.

If the ring in the photo that you mention was gold, I don’t think the E-trac would be able to detect it, not even with the setup above. But I’m hoping someday to detect one in a shallow wet sand area.

Detecting since Feb, 2010
E-trac with 18"x15" SEF, 13" Ultimate coil, Pro coil, Minelab 8" coil, 4.5"x7" SEF, Sunray target probe
CTX3030 with 17"x13" DD coil, 11" DD coil

Yes, I was referring to thin gold broken ring pieces.

I found a antique 10k wedding band w a broken solder joint a few yrs ago on land w my LTDSE. It read foil before I dug it, later after showing it to a hunting buddy of mine he pushed the joint together and then waved it infront of the coil and it then read pull tab.

Imagine there's plenty of nice size broken gold rings out there reading foil....

Holly cow!! Pretty awesome....
Corey