Big Boys Hobbies

Any quick tips, trash rings like coins

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PioneerChaser

New Member
Joined
Mar 12, 2014
Messages
28
Location
NY State
Hi all, I'm hunting with a Eurotek Pro. Been fiddling with it a few years now, mostly in my 1800s yard. I'm your basic longtime lurker.

Now I'm moving farther afield and slightly frustrated. I spent yesterday digging iron nails and barb wire fence bits that were hitting over 80, nice clear high sounds. I'm still quite inexperienced but feel I must be missing something simple.

I'm working real old sites that are deep so running volume 11, little or no discrimination, as much sensitivity as stays quiet. Happily digging relics but never any coins. Huge rusted strips of steel that have no iron grunt but hit at 90s 7 inches down.

Anyone able to throw me a tip?
Thanks for reading!
 
I guess that bit of wisdom escaped me somehow. I have access to a huge old farm that once had a bunch of houses, gone since around the 50s. I feel certain there's goodies to find but wow so much junk. I don't mind digging up my share but I have to be missing stuff.
 
PioneerChaser said:
Hi all, I'm hunting with a Eurotek Pro. Been fiddling with it a few years now, mostly in my 1800s yard. I'm your basic longtime lurker.

Now I'm moving farther afield and slightly frustrated. I spent yesterday digging iron nails and barb wire fence bits that were hitting over 80, nice clear high sounds. I'm still quite inexperienced but feel I must be missing something simple.

I'm working real old sites that are deep so running volume 11, little or no discrimination, as much sensitivity as stays quiet. Happily digging relics but never any coins. Huge rusted strips of steel that have no iron grunt but hit at 90s 7 inches down.

Anyone able to throw me a tip?
Thanks for reading!
Click to expand...

Go to a local park, and detect there for a while. If your goal is to learn the machine and how it reacts to coins, detecting in a trash infested site with lots of iron will only frustrate you. Sure, you might eventually come across a coin, but not in any volume enough to learn what's going on.

In fact, I strongly recommend you go to the park, turn on Iron discrimination (get it out of your ears), and then start detecting for coins, jewelry, dropped items, etc. You'll quickly learn what the sounds are (or at least a lot faster, than if you're digging 99% other stuff).

On the plus side, park finds are usually shallow, in the top few inches, making retrieval easy. For a bonus run, find a set of soccer fields (commonly in use this time of year), and run the sidelines of every field (just one strip down every sideline where the parents sit...this will NOT be the exact edge of the field, but about 3 feet out and then sweep with your detector against that edge. (leaving a 3 foot gap). They always make parents sit back. If you can find a second line on the edge, that's even better, because it'll tell you what's going on.

If your field isn't trash infested, you can do about 6 fields an hour (down each strip). Lots to find, and possibly some rings. :)

Cheers!

Skippy

Cheers!
 
Try turning 90 degrees after locating a target.
Large rusty trash rarely falses or sounds the same from both directions.
Also try lifting the coil, often times the tones will change.

But in the end the more trash you remove from an oft hunted
site the more good targets will be unmasked.
 
Good tips thanks I'll keep going.

These targets do in fact change when I turn so I guess I haven't been listening well enough.

I'll check for parks I can use. I know of some busy little league fields I could hit.

I did about an hour in my yard today. Dug up the usual trash plus another half dozen 1944 pennies. I've pulled probably 50 of them from the same area maybe 8x8 feet. Every few months more appear. Only pennies ever though, 1930s - 50s. My yard is old but boring for the most part. Still haven't found the privy. I speculate it could have ended up under an addition as the house has grown from the one room cabin it began as.

Maybe the huge woods area is just a bit over my head still. Found an ox shoe, old button at 9 inches, and a nitro express headstamp 8 inches down last week though so there is stuff there. Sure would love to see some coins out there though, the houses that used to be there were built pre 1870 and there are cellar holes, fence lines, and orchards still visible. No idea how much it's been dug. Pretty remote in places so possibly not too much.

Appreciate the tips to help me get better so I can find the real treasure.
 
There's no big secret to finding old silver coins, it's a matter of doing as much detecting as you can and learning what your machine is saying as much as possible, combined with good locations for the things you're hunting.

It won't hurt if you get a few items similar to what you want to find and practice listening to how they sound on your machine. Some folks make gardens with their practice items, I just put mine on a paper plate or in a zip lock on the ground and listen to what they sound like. Silver money, silver rings, gold items, all have their own sounds and number ranges, and the more you tune in to the things you're hunting for in practice, the better you'll do when out in the field.

Keep after it, it gets easier! :yes:
 
Certainly everything said thus far is valid. Clean out the debris, know your machine, do a test garden etc. After years of hunting "old farms" I've found that all farms don't spew old coins. We hunt farms that go back to the late 1600's. Some produce, some don't. We figure that, "back in the day", farmers and farm hands rarely carried much coinage. There was no need and a quarter was a small fortune then. It'd be like us carrying around a pocket full, a holy pocket at that, of fifty and hundred dollar coins while working in the fields etc. You just wouldn't take a chance on loosing any. If you did need a coin, bread, eggs, milk etc, you'd go to the family jar and take out just what you'd need. So the possibility of finding dropped coins is slim. We still hunt them simply because every now and then you get lucky and a found coin could be a very special one. The guys that find silver, indians etc regularly, generally hunt places that had a lot of human activity on a regular basis. Or had a lot of commercial activity, farm markets, old curb strips etc.
Keep at it, know your machine, do what you can to rid out the trash and do what you can to pick out those rare coin hits. Smaller coil, attack your location from different directions, go after a rain and hunt those higher probably areas extremely well. Wells, out houses, clothes lines, the walk to the front door, where wagons would pull up, the big tree that people would pic-nik and relax under. In other words, maximize your chances. If you have to dig a lot of trash, so be it but learn at every hole. Nobody said this is easy.
 
What part of NY you from. I am thinking maybe if you meet up with someone on here that they maybe able to help you.

I filter out the iron because I am looking more for coins than old iron relics. I have dug everything from old bullets and shell casings to old tools. The only time I have every really looked at iron signals was when I was doing an old stage coach site in Colorado and we where working with an university and marking the signals that we found.

If you are trying to find an old home site's location that you are not sure exactly where it is, then look for iron and let that help you determine where it is. To much trash will drive you nuts and it takes a person that is determined to hunt these type of sites.

So you have to ask yourself what you are wanting to find and does your site have it. Set your machine up for what you want to find. As others have pointed out, you should always try different directions to see if the signal changes and or disappears. Sometimes just raising the coil a little will give you a better idea on the target.

Keep asking questions that is the only way you will get new ideas to try.

Ray
 
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All good advice, but the sad truth is, some detectors just suck in areas that have a high content of rusty tin. You can either dig up all the rusty tin and get rid of it or get a detector that is better in rusty tin. It really is frustrating to spend all day digging rusty tin. When I switched from the MXT to the Racer 2, I went from 1 silver coin total for the year at homesteads with the MXT to 4 silvers the first week out with the Racer.
 
I'm located south of buffalo. Done my research and found old roads, mills, and home sites. I use a garmin with map overlays.

I likely could learn alot from a pro.

So many great tips. I've tried discriminating out the iron but must be the rust giving me that nice high tone and number.

I guess persistence is key. I'll keep digging and listen better.

Thanks so much for sharing this is all great info.
 
I've only been swinging my Eurotek Pro (very similar settings to yours, vol. 11, no disc, sens 8) for 3 months or so, but I'm beginning to learn its language.

First, echoing what some others have said - shifting numbers, 'chippy' signals that start as a high or mid-tone and immediately drop to the iron grunt, and signals that disappear after a 90 degree turn are more often than not something 'wrinkled' - foil, crushed bottle cap, shredded aluminum can, etc.

Second, anything over 90 is also automatically suspicious, especially if it reads deep. It's gotta be a clear tone and a consistent number for me to dig a 90+, and even then, I've been skunked so far.

Third, if you get a high tone, shallow signal, cut a 4" plug, and still get a shallow signal over the plug hole, you're probably looking at something big and rusty.

Of course, shifty signals might be bracelets or necklaces, numbers over 90 could be big silver, and that big rusty thing could be a forgotten time capsule, so I end up digging them anyway. There's so much to learn in this hobby!
 
On a loud signal, often lifting the coil will tell you if it's a coin or a large piece of junk. If the signal remains strong after lifting it, it's probably junk of some kind.
 
I use a lower grade machine and unless discrimination is turned all the way up deep iron gives the high tone so ive turned my sensitivity down until I get a better machine rather than digging 8 inches to find a washer. In my yard I do this because I know I can go back any where else I just dig.
 
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