Discrimination

When I first started swinging, I adjusted the discrimination up to a tolerable level....site dependent of course.

Less in clean areas and more as necessary in trashy spots.

I run the disc at a 1 now...I still get iron signals but I am so used to them they don't bug me at all. The reason I like iron in my earphones is b/c if I'm in a remote/historic area, the presence of iron is a hint that other stuff may be around.

Thanks for your response! That is my concern- missing iron relics and other valuable finds. Why does iron seem to read everywhere? Is there just a natural amount of iron and related materials just hanging out in the ground?

my method seems to be similar- switching things up depending on where i am detecting, but I am just curious about the presence of all those iron signals.

Well, I don't have a Fisher, but I think I can safely say that if you relic hunt, you will probably want to be in all metal mode with zero disc. and just dig it all. I have not done much in the way of relic hunting yet, but starting with all metal mode and after finding multiple nails and junk with just a few coins and ferrous treasures to show for it, I disc. out iron. Now, jumpy signals are typically caused by either a large iron or mixed metal target that the detector is trying to disc. out or by small or deep items. If I find a jumpy signal, I usually switch over to all metal to determine A) if the signal gets cleaner and B) the size of the target. Most of the time the target turns into a strong large signal in all metal mode, so I write it off as trash (at least in the parks I hunt). sometimes it stays questionable and sometimes I'll dig it on the off chance it's something good hidden by iron masking.
Hope this helps.

Thank you, BentRod. that was all very helpful. much appreciated.

attacktheX said:

Thanks for your response! That is my concern- missing iron relics and other valuable finds. Why does iron seem to read everywhere? Is there just a natural amount of iron and related materials just hanging out in the ground?

my method seems to be similar- switching things up depending on where i am detecting, but I am just curious about the presence of all those iron signals.

Click to expand...

Yes...a ton.
More in some sites than others, but I am always amazed at the amount of iron signals I get on all my detectors.

Using too much discrimination isn't as much a risk to iron as it is to non iron. Small to medium sized iron finds are almost always junk iron, and even the ones that are not, aren't really great either unless you're at some fantastic historical site and getting excited about every piece of metal no matter what it is. Personally I don't care about a rusted knife or fork, or even for some type of gun part because the time I would spend digging smaller iron would most definitely mean I was finding less of what I would want to find because I was wasting my time.

The problem with too much disc. is it helps mask the good stuff that's near iron and that's the reason I use extremely low disc. even though as I said I have little to no interest in most iron relics. So I hear a lot of noise which is the iron, and running the detector this way also lets the bigger iron (cannon balls, trade axes etc.) break through and that is the stuff I want to find. There's way too much out there in my opinion to waste time digging iron, and really, most people are going to dig their share anyway even if they don't want to.