no gold

VooDooMan

New Member
Joined
Sep 14, 2018
Messages
14
Location
MS Gulf Coast
Of course I haven't found any gold yet, but how do I know if it targets gold.
I only have my 10k wedding band to test with and it doesn't make a distinct sound. I have noticed that it will read coins and then when I hit pinpoint it shows iron or foil. In the places I hunt, I can't dig 8-9 inches down to find out if it is a coin or a pop top. I was hunting today and it read a penny a few times and I dug up a buried aluminum can. I'm still learning this machine, so I dig plenty. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I find just what it showed was down there. I hope I haven't passed up gold thinking it was iron. The silver dime I found with it showed as a dime. Any hints will be helpful.
 
If you want to find gold your best to dig foil to zinc. Just my opinion.

I’m sure there’s tighter zones you could target, I dig rusty iron up.

Hit some lake beaches or soccer / basketball field sidelines unless your around me, if around me those areas are just plain empty....

Good luck and happy hunting.
 
There just is not a "lot" of gold to find in my opinion. Been hunting for 25 years and I dig a lot of lower conductors because I like nickels. Only found 3 gold rings in my life and no gold coins. Best bet for gold would be beaches naturally. Last year did a test of digging 500 pull tab signals (in that range) to try and come up with a guesstimate on tab to ring ratio. 500+ tabs and no rings so there you go.
 
First: WHAT DETECTOR????

The VID on a gold object is VERY dependent on the Shape and Size of the Object. Therefore, there is NO reading that says Gold.

On most detectors Gold objects can VDI the same as a Nickle, Pull-tab, foil, etc. all Low Conductors. So if you want Gold then dig every low conductor and bring a large trash bag.
 
Our Forum Brother Skippy wrote a very detailed post about finding dirt gold..about a year ago I think....Boiled down, Its more about hunting in the correct locations than the rig or TID signals...And of course thinking about finding gold and concentrating on digging the right signals in the right locations...
 
What detector do you use?
Most of my gold rings are same as nickel
Some lower in foil range
Some in penny range.
 
Small gold usually rings up quite low (foil - pulltab range)

Larger gold usually rings up higher (upper pulltab range - penny)

Gold can ring up as pretty much every signal on your detector. So the more targets you dig, the higher your chances of finding gold are.
 
Look under the about me section on members profiles to find out what they swing.
In this case it is a BH Tracker IV and Treasure Master.





I have found about 3 dozen gold targets in public sites, mostly parks, in 8 years.
They ranged from lower end foil, like those round drink freshness seals, up through most of the foil area, all the nickel numbers, the tab numbers and into zinc where zinc cents show up.
It can come in higher too, high karat gold, huge pieces and large gold coins can easily come in at dimes or even quarters.
I didn't dig tons of junk to find all of it either, some for sure but less than you might think.
The reason why is I studied that rare metal closely, where it might be found, how it behaves on all my detectors and learned my detectors very well, also.
All my gold targets came in solid which is the type of signals I go after, sometimes they don't but so far all of mine have which is why they got dug.
Every one was a surprise except one, I never expected to find most of that gold, I was just going after solid signals no matter where they were on the scale.

Learn your detector...
Gold can be lost anywhere but try to hunt areas where you might have a decent chance of finding some...
Don't assume, gold can show up anywhere from iron on up...
Get some luck....
Have patience...

That's how you do it.
 
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Like Pastor Bob said, there just isn’t a lot of gold to be found. I’m stlll trying for my first, after ten years and several different detectors.
 
During the spring summer and fall I detect the local beaches. I try to hunt two days a week for from 4 to 6 or more hours. Heat and humidity have a large bearing on how long I last.

this year I have dug exactly 4 gold items. Dry sand, Wet sand and in the water when the surf is calm enough for me to be in it.

Two of the gold items were returned to the people who lost them. I recently took 10 different gold rings and passed them over the coil of my waterproof beach machine. I got 10 different tones out of those rings. Some sounded like aluminum foil and some were up in the zinc penny range the rest fell in between.


Every gold item I have dug on the beach or on the dirt has given me a constant tone and steady vid. I dig a lot of trash on the dirt but occasionally one of those pieces of trash turns out to be Gold.
 
I've since learned more about my machine and apparently I was doing it wrong. I talked to tech support at whites and got more insight on how it works. After searching 2 places, I have found nickels which it was bypassing before. I believe that it is a learning curve after a year of using my BH TK4. I have been able to find more coins since with my TM, A 1943 mercury dime and that is good in my book. I found a 45 mercury dime with the TK4 that I missed with my TM due to wrong settings. I have more to learn about the VDI and how to spot what is a good target.
On a final note, I have had targets showing good VDI but when going to pinpoint mode it reads iron. I dig and find nothing but a nail or rusty bolt. I remove the target and scan again to find no second target. How reliable is pinpoint mode as far as what the target is?
 
When you ask questions about using your detectors like how good is the pinpoint mode, etc. it would help if you include which of your detectors you are referring to. i am going to assume you are asking about the Whites Treasure Master which is a very capable detector that I have used as a loaner for beginners.

First, how many times have you read your manual? If you are fairly new to detecting reading it carefully 3 or 4 times is a must along with referring back to it regularly. The Treasure Master/TreasurePro manual is pretty short and is easy to understand.

It looks like you are on the MS Gulf coast. Does that mean you do a lot of dry sand beach and inland hunting? If so, what program mode are you hunting in:
coin and jewelry, beach or all metal? Your manual recommends that you hunt in coin and jewelry to get started which has preset discrimination of part of the iron detection range.

To your question about pinpointing and iron, depending on the size of your iron target, its depth and its condition-rusty or not, your TreasureMaster can give you a target ID number reading in coin and jewelry just about anywhere on the scale. I know you are new to this but ignore where that cursor is pointing on the detector's speedometer target scale. Many targets that you can find are not listed there and they can overlap target segments too. Pay more attention to the tones if you are using 4 tones, and to the target ID numbers. Practice at home (outside) with targets that you want to find or have found often and memorize their target ID numbers and the way they sound. Your TreasureMaster can probably give you accurate numbers in dry beach sand and sandy soil to a depth of about 5". Deeper than that, the target ID numbers and especially the target identification cursor are pretty useless. It is that way on most detectors when detecting deep targets. You have to use your ears and your experience.

So back to pinpointing. The TreasureMaster has a very good pinpointer. It can tell you fairly accurately the location, size and depth of a COIN sized object in inches. If your target happens to be larger or smaller than a US coin all bets are off. You can tell by the sound when pinpointing if it is larger than a coin sized object by the size of the response. If the sound extends over an area bigger than roughly 2" in diameter and/or if it overloads, you are probably looking at a surface target or a larger target like a big piece of an aluminum can or one (like iron, tin, a small battery or a zinc penny) that emits a large decay halo around it the longer it is buried. If it is big it could be up to a foot deep or more! So if you decide to dig and you reach the depth suggested by your pinpointer and find nothing recheck the target for size with your pinpointer or probe around in the whole and see if you hit something big deeper. Use your pinpointer for finding the exact location of your target, how deep it probably is, and how big or small it is. Don't use it mostly for trying to identify your target. If you have the concentric coil with the small open partial circle in the middle, your target should be in the center of that small circle if you have pinpointed it well and it is coin sized. Practice!!!!!

If you have changed a lot of your settings it is good to write them down and do a factory reset. Until you know your detector really well just hunt in the preset modes. I think you hold down the OPTION button while powering on the TreasureMaster and wait until you see FD on the screen and then release the option button. Try hunting in the preset modes with only some minor adjustments like the number of tones, your volume level and sensitivity. Don't run the sensitivity at max. Default should be around 5 or 6 which is plenty for most situations. Also if you set your threshold volume level above 0 you will move out of silent search and get that background hum which some people like but others don't.

The TreasureMaster likes a medium speed swing rate like 1 second to the left and 1 second to the right. No faster. Work on your swing technique so that the coil stays evenly just above the ground even at the farthest points of your swing away from you body by letting your forearm and elbow act like a hinge so that your upper arm doesn't move too much away from your body.There are plenty of good swing instruction videos on Youtube. Also, check out some of the TreasureMaster YouTube videos. Some of them are pretty informative about the TreasureMaster.

hh,
Jeff
 
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Pinpoint from multiple directions. Iron's response is direction dependent, where other metals are not. Iron will always give a good vdi in one direction, but if you sweep at 90 degrees from the intial direction, you will see that it is iron. This is a little tougher on deep, thorougly rusted nails, which always seem to sound good.
 
Here is my 2 cents on gold.

Dig low conductors.
When you dig it, you will not know it is gold until it is out of the ground.

The last gold I dug was in a seeded hunt in Florida. We were digging clad and hoping to get a "token" for a prize. The field happened to be a sandy beach volleyball area and what did I find? A dos pesos Mexican gold coin pendant that was not part of the hunt. It rang up like a zinc penny.
 
I now use a Fisher F22 and F Pulse.
I've found 2 gold rings and one gold plated 925 ring. I now have an 1881 S Morgan dollar in fine condition that I found. I've gotten used to this machine and we work well together. I put a DD coil on it to search in the salt water. I have found 3 of my rings in the water as well as lots of clad. I can attest to the F pulse finding targets down 4" in beach sand.
 
Of course I haven't found any gold yet, but how do I know if it targets gold.
I only have my 10k wedding band to test with and it doesn't make a distinct sound. I have noticed that it will read coins and then when I hit pinpoint it shows iron or foil. In the places I hunt, I can't dig 8-9 inches down to find out if it is a coin or a pop top. I was hunting today and it read a penny a few times and I dug up a buried aluminum can. I'm still learning this machine, so I dig plenty. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I find just what it showed was down there. I hope I haven't passed up gold thinking it was iron. The silver dime I found with it showed as a dime. Any hints will be helpful.

Consider this. gold is more often very small. Yes, big rings fall off too, but more often its an earring, or a tiny chain, or small pendant. The majority of gold rings i have found are thin bands too. As a low conductor already and then when the object is smaller the VDI drops. What Im getting at is (IMO) you rarely get a great signal with small gold and almost always a very low vdi. I recommend settings barely above iron and up to the nickel range if you're looking for gold. And when you get a barely there, crackly whisper of a signal, dig it too! Also when using the detectors pinpointer, small targets are going to give a faster blip near the surface. A quick beep of the the pinpointer and a low vdi is often a good strategy for the small gold. A low vdi and a long beep from from your pinpointer is most likely junk. One more strategy, to make it easy on yourself, start digging a % of targets in the low range between iron and nickle. Tell yourself you will dig 20% of the daily targets with really low vdi. Even if there is trash everywhere, dig 20% low vdi. Eventually you will surprise yourself with some nice yellow:thumbsup:
 
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