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Etrac is great for... but what about...

TheCoilist

Elite Member
Joined
Aug 16, 2010
Messages
2,358
Location
Virginia
Okay. So I found something out! The ETRAC is utterly awesome at finding rusty nails! But what about silver? I get that great tone, check the ID and dig and it's always nails or heavily rusted iron.

Just wanted to see if the iron typically falls in the range of silver. Of course the land is filled with old rusty nails, etc. it's an old home site that burned down, but it tends to ring up high tone and in the silver range. Is this normal?
 
Okay. So I found something out! The ETRAC is utterly awesome at finding rusty nails! But what about silver? I get that great tone, check the ID and dig and it's always nails or heavily rusted iron.

Just wanted to see if the iron typically falls in the range of silver. Of course the land is filled with old rusty nails, etc. it's an old home site that burned down, but it tends to ring up high tone and in the silver range. Is this normal?

How much experience do you have with it? Sounds like you just got it and took it to the hardest place in the world to detect. Best to learn how to drive the machine before taking the pole and Indy. lol

All jokes aside.. Burned down houses are VERY hard to detect. Might want to think about a smaller coil as well if its in heavy iron.
 
Burned down house...yep, WORST place to hunt other than an actual landfill. Get away from there and hunt someplace decent, or don't complain about the digging.

As for your question, "is this normal", yes. Nails pointing anywhere near up, or even just sideways act as directional antennas and point the returning energy back to the coil. This causes a lot of falses. Some are "iffy", some sound like dead-on silver dimes. But that E-Trac will also find coins when nails are in the hole with it.

You have to take the time to learn a detector. You should be starting out in tot-lots to learn the tones and pinpointing, then moving to schools and parks to continue to learn and refine. Jumping straight into a trash-fest is like a highschool student trying to attend graduate school.
 
Don't feel bad I have 7 years experience with my Explorer & it does the same thing when a single deep rusted nail is present, the nails do give a slight bit higher pitch squeal then a silver coin..
 
Etracs are silver magnets.Gold is where they don't shine.Got a couple friends who switch to an ace250 when looking for gold.But silver they knock it out of the park with the etrac.Get to know the machine or it will get you frustrated.
 
Im pretty new to the etrac and have found out that iron falses high like that. I have just started to switch to TTF and switch to an open screen when i get in heavy iron areas. The iron will then drop to low tones. I have managed to pull out a few silvers doing this. GL and HH!
 
By the way that burned down house/nail infested site sounds like a perfect place for your atpro to pull some silver... :yes:
 
Don't feel bad I have 7 years experience with my Explorer & it does the same thing when a single deep rusted nail is present, the nails do give a slight bit higher pitch squeal then a silver coin..

Guess you just need 6 more because I don't have that problem. :yes:

The null provides as much info. as the sound.
 
i normally run mine in the coin program and what works for me is if i get that good high tone and its an jumpy signal i'll open up the screen (hit quick mask) and alot of times the FE number will jump up in the 30's and thats normally been junk for me, this isn't 100% foolproof but its cut back on my nail finds
 
Burned down house...yep, WORST place to hunt other than an actual landfill. Get away from there and hunt someplace decent, or don't complain about the digging.

As for your question, "is this normal", yes. Nails pointing anywhere near up, or even just sideways act as directional antennas and point the returning energy back to the coil. This causes a lot of falses. Some are "iffy", some sound like dead-on silver dimes. But that E-Trac will also find coins when nails are in the hole with it.

You have to take the time to learn a detector. You should be starting out in tot-lots to learn the tones and pinpointing, then moving to schools and parks to continue to learn and refine. Jumping straight into a trash-fest is like a highschool student trying to attend graduate school.

Not a site to pass up. The lady who owns the property (also a member of this forum) had contacted me to help her find goodies on her land. While the Etrac has found some great stuff (as I have had/used it for quite sometime now) I had never used it on such an iron infested location. I do have the x-8 coil, but have not used it on this property. I was thinking the larger OEM coil would be the best bet for depth. The question was whether or not the nails showing as silver was normal. The tone and ID was spot on but once dug it was nothing but rusty nails. Rechecking the hole and no more signals.

Im pretty new to the etrac and have found out that iron falses high like that. I have just started to switch to TTF and switch to an open screen when i get in heavy iron areas. The iron will then drop to low tones. I have managed to pull out a few silvers doing this. GL and HH!

You know the whole time I was there I was in Andy's coin pattern and a custom mode. I swapped between my AT Pro and Etrac and never once thought to put it in TTF! That is exactly what I should have done! Thanks

By the way that burned down house/nail infested site sounds like a perfect place for your atpro to pull some silver... :yes:

The AT Pro with the small coil was killing it! Once we go through the property I'll take pictures of everything we've found. The lady who owns the property got an Ace and has been finding tons of old relics. I was using the AT Pro by the old servants quarters and was cherry picking coins left and right from the iron. Of course this meant I was passing on the relics though.

i normally run mine in the coin program and what works for me is if i get that good high tone and its an jumpy signal i'll open up the screen (hit quick mask) and alot of times the FE number will jump up in the 30's and thats normally been junk for me, this isn't 100% foolproof but its cut back on my nail finds

Quick mask FE numbers didn't change. The jumps for the nails was 12-14 / 44-48 even in wide open. I would even get 1/38 1/39 for larger nails. It was just odd I thought.
 
Guess you just need 6 more because I don't have that problem. :yes:

The null provides as much info. as the sound.

I've been detecting a constant 14 years straight now & thats not counting my time I swung a machine 23 years ago, so I think I have the experience covered.. :D
I guess your just special because everyone else that uses a minelab explorer or etrac digs rusted nails at some point, I'm not trying to start a argument just stating a fact..
 
I'm not detecting at a burned down house site, but with some experience (using Explorer) I can now tell the rusty nails from the silver, mostly by sound, but also rusty nails usually don't sound as good when you turn 90 degrees and sweep over them. Silver coins will usually sound good in four directions. Not foolproof, I still dig some nails.
 
Yah the rusty nails can have a similar tone to silver but usually they are not as consistent. I did the same thing when I first got an Etrac, went to nail infested area to pull out the silver everyone else missed. Ended up digging nails because I didn't know how to avoid them. Now many hours later and armed with a smaller coil I have pulled good targets from the same location and not many nails. And when the iron gets REALLY heavy, like garbage/burn pile heavy, TTF has plucked out targets amongst the trash, as mentioned above. You will get the feel for it and dig less iron as time goes on.
 
I've been detecting a constant 14 years straight now & thats not counting my time I swung a machine 23 years ago, so I think I have the experience covered.. :D
I guess your just special because everyone else that uses a minelab explorer or etrac digs rusted nails at some point, I'm not trying to start a argument just stating a fact..


I didn't say that everyone doesn't dig nails at some point, I'm it's not an issue for me in the same way that you seem to be describing. I have no issue with nails where i hunt until the site is so beat there's nothing left to dig but the extremely low % hits. My real thoughts for this thread is that anyone who digs nails all the time with a Minelab either has tougher nails to deal with...probably more modern, or they don't know their detector well enough. Anyway.... I'm not even sure why I'm posting at all because I absolutely couldn't care less about any of this. Time to get away i think.
 
I've been detecting a constant 14 years straight now & thats not counting my time I swung a machine 23 years ago, so I think I have the experience covered.. :D
I guess your just special because everyone else that uses a minelab explorer or etrac digs rusted nails at some point, I'm not trying to start a argument just stating a fact..

Everyone STARTS to do that, then they learn. I may dig up a rusty nail, but very rarely. Maybe once every other hunt, and I usually figured before I dug there was a high chance it'd be a nail. Rusty nails do NOT sound like regular coin targets, especially silver.

If I were in a super heavy iron infested site, I'd definitely use a smaller coil and go to TTF, or use my Compadre. That'd make things much simpler. It handles iron way better, especially in horrible clay where it will go just as deep as any explorer or E-trac.
 
Everyone STARTS to do that, then they learn. I may dig up a rusty nail, but very rarely. Maybe once every other hunt, and I usually figured before I dug there was a high chance it'd be a nail. Rusty nails do NOT sound like regular coin targets, especially silver.

If I were in a super heavy iron infested site, I'd definitely use a smaller coil and go to TTF, or use my Compadre. That'd make things much simpler. It handles iron way better, especially in horrible clay where it will go just as deep as any explorer or E-trac.

I guess you guys didn't read my very first response on this post, I only dig nails if its a deep single nail.. If its nail/iron infested I'd either walk away with my explorer or pull out my atpro & get down to business..
 
old rusty nails can be a bummer. i have been an E-Trac user for going on 4 years now and still at time dig them. i find the best thing to do when you get one of those posible nail tones is turn 90 degree's on it and if the numbers jump all over it's more then likely a rusty old nail.
 
How do you know the null is not a piece of iron right next to the silver dime???


The key is listening for the null that's through the target and it usually happens from one direction. That, the tone change, and just general experience, is what tells you which ones to leave alone. And something I've said forever is work your way to using fairly high sense and low disc, get used to it at that setting, and then basically lock it in for good. When you use the same settings it's like creating a base to work off of and you begin to understand the most subtle changes. The people who change settings, or worse programs, or even worse detectors, are always fighting to learn these little things and will probably never get there.
 
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