METAL DETECTING (beginners guide)

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so i went on my first hunt, after getting getting kicked out of the yard for digging holes i decided to go check the 24 hour tim hortons coffee shop & the melted snow piles at the local mall.

here is what i found.

Tim Hortons:
one copper button, one 25 cent coin & 5 pennies. (big score)



The Local Mall:

one 25 cent coin, one 5 cent coin (lots of pennies not in photo)

one small (375) gold broach with 7 pearls (engraved 1940)

one gold ear ring (10k)

one broken 18k gold chain 32 inches

three broken very small pieces of gold (k unknown)

one 925 silver bangle with 9k gold outer band

one broken ear ring, wells 1/20 12k GF

one 925 silver ear ring

three 925 silver rings, one 925 harley davidson, one 925 silver with tiger eye stone, one womens 925 silver with 5 coloured stones (2 red, 2 green, 1 yellow) its very dirty.

total silver weight (with stones) = 19.5 grams

total gold weight = 7.5 grams

bangle weight = 3.3 grams


i will also include the:

tin foil
broken pad locks
tractor trailer security tags
make up containers & brushes
bottle tops
tetra packs (juice boxes)
gator aid bottle type seals
screws
nuts
bolts
nails
chunks of steel from the snow plow
and many other random things including a pigeon skeleton :shock:

total time to clear the mall parking lot = 3.5 hours


as my first try at metal detecting this is one bad ass day :!: :!: :!:


metal-detecting-day-one.jpg
 
Great finds!

I just wonder what the pigeon ate that made you find it while detecting... iron enriched cereals maybe? :lol:

Göran
 
it was just there in the mud

i am going out today to where they are widening the hwy and moved some old homes.

more mud :lol:
 
1888 - 1920 canadian pennies in not bad condition.

http://www.coinsandcanada.com/coins-prices.php

so far i am enjoying metal detecting, never in a million years did i think i would have good finds !!!!
:shock: all this in 2 days :shock:
i gave my wife a big kiss & said "Thank You Very Much" for the x-mas gift. <B

now going to have to learn how to grade coins.

http://www.coinsandcanada.com/coins-grading.php



after washing them gently in water only this is them.

1888-penny.jpg


1920-penny.jpg


34-pennies-1888-to-1920.jpg


Whooooo Hooooo


EDIT: going back right now
 
I haven't used my metal detector much as of yet, but I found it very interesting that when I did use it, I would find all kinds of metal objects. But the goal is to find coins, and other precious metals, or to find some metal you lost (keys, eyeglasses, etc).

Below is what I did and hope it will help any beginner learn to metal detect and have an idea of what the detector detected.

Since there are many different metal detectors out there, the only way to explain this will apply to any brand/make or model.

1. Round up every precious metal you may have and also coins and other metals.
2. Take all the pieces and place each one on a small separate piece of paper. Spread each piece about 5 ft apart. Do all of this outside in your yard or other place where you have room.
3. With your metal detector on, go to the first piece of paper and listen for the sound it makes. Look at the item and take note of the material composition. Continue doing this with each piece of paper until you have metal detected all your items, keeping mental and sound/tone notes in your head. You need to adjust your detector to distinguish some metals. Even still simply go back over the pieces and your should start hearing different tones, depending on the metal.

When I thought of this test to learn my metal detector, I used gold, silver, palladium, copper, tin, coins, stainless steel. Once I adjusted my detector to cancel out or make a distinctive tone per item, I was able to sweep over each item in my back yard and they each made a different tone/sound.

After confirming your tests and you're comfortable with the results of how the detector is set, simply have someone place something on the ground, then cover it with a piece of paper. Your goal is to wand the detector over the piece of paper and be able to tell what you just detected, be it gold or silver or another metal. But, if your goal is only gold and silver, then simply ignore any other tones you hear if you know for a fact it isn't what you're looking for.

Keep in mind that I never tested my detector on different karats of gold, so I'm not sure if a different karat will make a different tone. I guess I'll try it one day.

I hope this will help some beginners out.

Kevin
 
testerman said:
...
1. Round up every precious metal you may have and also coins and other metals.
2. Take all the pieces and place each one on a small separate piece of paper. Spread each piece about 5 ft apart. Do all of this outside in your yard or other place where you have room.
3. With your metal detector on, go to the first piece of paper and listen for the sound it makes. Look at the item and take note of the material composition. Continue doing this with each piece of paper until you have metal detected all your items, keeping mental and sound/tone notes in your head. You need to adjust your detector to distinguish some metals. Even still simply go back over the pieces and your should start hearing different tones, depending on the metal.
...
This is really good advice. I attended a metal detector demonstration recently, where the tutor scattered several coins, keys, et al across the grass to demonstrate the detectors' responses to various metals. He couldn't find two of them at first. He eventually did, but not until after he had come up with a few rogue items. :lol: I thought the irony was beautiful.
 
Depending on the area you are in, your target may not be the only thing in the hole. You could have a piece of iron scrap that may mask a gold or silver signal underneath or around it. Some say to dig every target and then recheck the hole. You will get the trash out of the way and may get suprised with something else showing up in the hole. Happy Diggin
 
To jason_recliner, That no# 2 idea came to me by chance. And then I built on it from there. Since I had different types of precious metals, and other metals too, it was an experiment I knew would teach me something about my metal detector.
And by the way, I have a Bounty Hunter Tracker IV. It's not as modern as the newer one out there, but it works, and it'll find metal.

shaftsinkerawc said:
Depending on the area you are in, your target may not be the only thing in the hole. You could have a piece of iron scrap that may mask a gold or silver signal underneath or around it. Some say to dig every target and then recheck the hole. You will get the trash out of the way and may get suprised with something else showing up in the hole. Happy Diggin
I meant to mention that when doing the test, do it where there isn't any electrical wires around or any other metal pipes, which could very well be under where you're detecting.

Thanks for the added info shaftsinkerawc.


Kevin
 
necromancer said:
Palladium said:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-29595359


Awesome, Newfoundland is the closest place to me to find buried Viking treasure, it's a long drive :lol:

http://www.historica.ca/the_vikings_in_newfoundland.php

Google Images
I bet you wouldn't think it's a long drive if you drove out with some goodies :p

If you have the time and the means, go for it. I'm waiting to go back to my home town and go on the beach. I've seen people doing metal detecting since I was a little boy and always said I would do it, but I never did, until 2011, locally, in my back yard. First time out, almost $1.00 in pennies, a nickle and a quarter and I think I found a dime too. But, just for testing purposes I did good.

Kevin
 
from mid-June through September, you can take a 14 to 17 hour ferry ride from North Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Argentia, Newfoundland. that's not including the driving.

you also won't find to many people swimming in Newfoundland, as a fact most people i know that were born there don't swim at all, kind of strange for a lot of people that fish for a living & live on a island. guess it's way to cold in the ocean there.

but would be fun finding ancient treasures. summers are short in N.F.L.D. & winters may bring 20 feet of snow
 
Well I finally bit the bullet and joined the club today. Bought myself a Minelab X-Terra 705.
It's not a "real" gold detector. It's VLF and I chose the DD coil. It's good for beach treasure with also with decent ground mineralisation capability for a bit of goldfields action.

I live roughly half an hour from the beach and a good 2 hours from Victoria's "Golden Triangle" and spectacular Shiraz region. But I think I know where I'd rather be.
I also met a bloke today who found a 3.6kg nugget, supposedly 5 minutes into trying out his new detector, who also accidentally let on enough clues to know the name of the farm on which he found it!

Wish me luck...
 
The X-Terra 705 is a good all-around detector. Not particularly great at anything, but still good at most things. It is a good detector for coin and relic hunting.

Please read the users manual. Read it again. Read it with the detector in hand, working all controls. This is the same advice I give for any new equipment or tools anyone acquires.

A bit of detector specific advice is to dig every signal. In doing so you will learn what each sound and meter combination actually mean. Also, many artifacts and relics are made of materials that coin hunters routinely reject. When detecting for gold, your detector will not perform as well as the GPX series, or the new GPZ 7000, all from Minelab, but you should be able to easily detect half gram and larger nuggets up to 30 cm deep.

I had a GPX 5000 from shortly after the release date until after a recent stroke. With that detector, my marginal hearing could not distinguish lead from gold. Due to this I dug every target. Found a lot of trash, lead bullet fragments, shell casings, and some gold. Learning what the detector is trying to tell you is not an exact science, but rather, as alluded to above, an artistic interpretation of the combination of sounds, meter readings, and knowledge of the environment.

Once you have used your detector for several months, you will likely have learned enough to distinguish an aluminum pull tab from a small gold ring, even though the sounds and meter readings are very similar. I wish you well.

Galen
 
Thank you for the great advice, Galen.
Edit: Thanks also Necro, for posting the beginner guide links in the first place.

After 2 hours playing with it last night, I'm hoping to get to know it a bit better in the goldfields this weekend.
I am prepared for a most humble success to failure ratio; I doubt there's many square metres remaining that haven't been shot to, shot from, drunk over, trashed on, and had a few dozen prospectors already poke through. But I am also very sure there's plenty of gold out there just waiting to be found.

I would love to one day post something interesting in Gallery.
 
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