Experiment Tonight - coins, gold, iron

[sicam]

Tonight I decided to gather material - Coins (of various years), gold, iron.

I used :
2 quarters, 2011 and 1976
2 nickels, 2011 and 1963
2 dimes, 2011 and 1965
4 pennies, 2011, 1961, 1919 - Yep a wheat penny.
1 gold ring
3 iron - hair pin, hitch clip, railroad spike
1 aluminum - foil ball

My plan was to turn discrimination until I could find the coins and gold and not see the iron.

Discrimination @ counterclockwise all the way.
--All items detected.

Discrimination @ clockwise all the way.
-- Only Both quarters, Both Dimes, 1961 penny and a tiny chirp on large iron.

Discrimination @ best tuned position -about halfway between.
-- Strong hits on all coins and gold, tiny chirp on the large steel, no chirp on aluminum.

Now my question comes in - why did the 1919 wheat penny not hit on clockwise all the way like the 1961 penny?

According to wiki, the 1961 and the 1919 should be same composition of 95% copper, 5% tin/zinc. Everything after 1982 should be 5% copper, 95% zinc ...basically worthless even as a penny. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_o..._States_dollar

Is there a chart of basic discrimination effect by material type?

I feel that I am ready for tomorrows hunt. I will need to buy me a detector so I can give my kid his back.

[turtlefoot]

That's interesting. I don't have a good answer for you. What detector are you using. Good luck tomorrow on your hunt.

Doug

[sicam]

Bounty Hunter Pioneer Prospector - $20 bucks new.

[turtlefoot]

Originally Posted by sicam

Bounty Hunter Pioneer Prospector - $20 bucks new.

I was wondering if it was a Bounty Hunter. The reason I say that is I had a Fast Tracker and a Tracker IV at the same time. The guts are virtually identical. The Fast Tracker would hit so hard on Hematite. I could not discriminate it out but yet I couldn't get a beep out of the Tracker IV.

I also used a Pioneer 202 for some time. It is a great machine. It would show small pieces of silver as iron every now and then. I would swing the coil over a piece of sterling jewelry and it would ring up as silver 99/100 times but every now and then it would ring up as iron. The next time it would show as silver though.

Have you tried turning the detector off and back on again to see if you get the same results?

Doug

[sicam]

I can recreate it everytime.

If you search the net others also detect the wheat penny as different from the 1961 penny. There must be some composition difference between them.

[jwebs]

I have no info on the discrepancy with the pennies, but, out of curiosity, is the ring that you're using for your test a larger men's wedding band? Smaller gold rings, including the ones that usually have the big shiny rocks, can come in as low as a foil reading...gold chains come in in this area as well.

You'll inevitably dig more trash if you disc. low enough to pick these up, but depending on where you're hunting and what for, it may be worth it for you.
GL, and HH!