beachdude
Elite Member
I am back in South Africa for another 3 months and this time I know a little bit more about metal detecting than I did at this time last year. I came down with my Stavr Scoop, my White's Dual Field, and also an Excal II. I aim to hunt the coast from Port Edward (near where I am currently located) on the South Coast, all the way up the North Coast to Balito. This is the Indian Ocean side of South Africa which has the warmer water and the swimmers.
Been here 2 weeks so far, but the first week was pretty much taken up by home repairs here. My place is on the sea and I have learned that things don't have to be in the ocean to rust and decay. A more general blog thread of my adventures here can be found on my site TRIBE here (admin, I hope it is OK to post this):
http://www.tribemagazine.com/board/...reasure-along-south-african-coast-2013-a.html
It is more explanatory for people who aren't detectorists so they can understand what I am doing.
I am going to post some of my finds in this thread on the Friendly forum with pictures as I work my way up the coast.
So far, most of my nearby beaches appear to be sanded in, except for one, Silver Beach, which has had tons of sand scooped away by a rotating current that is cutting away the beach and dumping the sand in a big flat sandbar just offshore.
Last year I had a lot of trouble hunting this beach with a BHID 300 because of the high titanium content in the sand (ilmenite). This material is swirled into the beach sand; in many places it is really dense and in other places it is very thin, and a BHID didn't like it at all. I ended up ordering a Dual Field and had it shipped down to me last year and it cut through the black sand like a hot knife through butter.
I had no idea how an Excal would perform on this beach, but the Excal seems unaffected by the ilmenite. Perhaps it is the smaller DD coil (I am using the 10" model), or the slightly different technology, but there doesn't seem to be any falsing at all.
Here are some photos of the beach and how much cutting occurred within a week.
Two weeks ago:
Last week:
I dug a lot of coins out of this beach and 2 gold rings over the period of a couple of weeks. A 9k wedding band:
and this terrific 18k gold wedding band from the UK just loaded with hallmarks:
Nearly all the coins are crusty, rusty, and modern and only about 50% of them are spendable.
Last year I had some luck at another beach up the coast in Ramsgate, but it is sanded in.
There is a chest deep trough right in the water right at the bottom of that slope and I tried hunting that for a while but there is a wicked rip current flushing it out and I could hardly stand upright. Hunting any forther out the waves are too big to deal with. They completely knock you over and it would be impossible to postion a scoop over a target.
I did find a nice silver ring on the wet sand of that beach though, the first silver ring of 2013:
Today I am going to go further up the coast to see if I can find another beach with some erosion.
Been here 2 weeks so far, but the first week was pretty much taken up by home repairs here. My place is on the sea and I have learned that things don't have to be in the ocean to rust and decay. A more general blog thread of my adventures here can be found on my site TRIBE here (admin, I hope it is OK to post this):
http://www.tribemagazine.com/board/...reasure-along-south-african-coast-2013-a.html
It is more explanatory for people who aren't detectorists so they can understand what I am doing.
I am going to post some of my finds in this thread on the Friendly forum with pictures as I work my way up the coast.
So far, most of my nearby beaches appear to be sanded in, except for one, Silver Beach, which has had tons of sand scooped away by a rotating current that is cutting away the beach and dumping the sand in a big flat sandbar just offshore.
Last year I had a lot of trouble hunting this beach with a BHID 300 because of the high titanium content in the sand (ilmenite). This material is swirled into the beach sand; in many places it is really dense and in other places it is very thin, and a BHID didn't like it at all. I ended up ordering a Dual Field and had it shipped down to me last year and it cut through the black sand like a hot knife through butter.
I had no idea how an Excal would perform on this beach, but the Excal seems unaffected by the ilmenite. Perhaps it is the smaller DD coil (I am using the 10" model), or the slightly different technology, but there doesn't seem to be any falsing at all.
Here are some photos of the beach and how much cutting occurred within a week.
Two weeks ago:
Last week:
I dug a lot of coins out of this beach and 2 gold rings over the period of a couple of weeks. A 9k wedding band:
and this terrific 18k gold wedding band from the UK just loaded with hallmarks:
Nearly all the coins are crusty, rusty, and modern and only about 50% of them are spendable.
Last year I had some luck at another beach up the coast in Ramsgate, but it is sanded in.
There is a chest deep trough right in the water right at the bottom of that slope and I tried hunting that for a while but there is a wicked rip current flushing it out and I could hardly stand upright. Hunting any forther out the waves are too big to deal with. They completely knock you over and it would be impossible to postion a scoop over a target.
I did find a nice silver ring on the wet sand of that beach though, the first silver ring of 2013:
Today I am going to go further up the coast to see if I can find another beach with some erosion.
Good hunting to you!
Nice hits!
