Christmas gold

On Christmas eve, the temperatures were holding on the high 50’s and the sun was out and shining. After a while, my family got busy with things and my wife told me to go and hunt.

I wasn’t planning on disturbing the soil this day and so the XP Deus was not charged. I decided to do a little gold hunting with the mighty Tesoro Compadre.

I spent two hours at the park and for my effort I found this:

This read as a nickel and although it is not marked, I know it is gold. The button has the words Fide Et Fiducia at the bottom and a lion atop a crown above that motto.

This it turns out, is a button from the Royal Army Pay Corps. These guys did the finances for the army of the crown. They were vigent from 1919 t0 1992. What in the world this button was doing in one of our parks, I will never know.

The second piece of gold is not less impressive but I won’t picture it here. Also unmarked, it tests as 22k gold with my old acid. It is super soft and about 1 oz heavy. The signal was that of a pulltab. You can id things on the Compadre by dialing the discrimination up or down. Anyway, when I came home, I ran both pieces by the Deus and the id’s remained the same.

The problem with these two pieces is that since they are unmarked, no one around here will pay me for more than 10K gold. The thing to do is to send it to a smelter but I quit doing that a while ago when they lost a necklace with diamonds on it and only gave me $18 dollars for my trouble.

I’ll figure something out later. Meanwhile, I have the day off tomorrow and the day promises to be a beautiful one. I will go see what other gold may be lurking under the dirt. Hopefully I can find enough to finance my next detector.

Thank you for stopping by.

The Mysteries of Masking and the Mighty Compadre

I went out for an hour yesterday, after dealing with a sick child. Once he was feeling better and was watching t.v. I excused myself for a bit of gold hunting.

I returned to one of three spots that I am methodically clearing of all mid-tones. At one point, I got what I believed to be a deep target signal. It was a consistent high chirp from all directions. I cut a deep plug and stuck the pinpointer in the hole but got no signal. When I laid the pinpointer down to deepen the hole, the pinpointer sat about 12 inches away from the hole and it went off big. I thought I would remove whatever was making the pinpointer go off before I continued looking for my deep target. The target that was setting the pinpointer off was a large mass of iron just a couple of inches below the surface.

So before I returned to digging the deep target out, I stood up and re-swiped the hole just to be sure I wasn’t off on my pinpointing.  There was no signal in the hole anymore so I scanned the plug and bang! a solid, no-doubt-about-it pull tab signal came loudly through the backphones. What!?

Curious, I put the plug back in the hole and scanned it from the top. Sure enough, the loud pull tab signal was there. Why didn’t I get this loud signal before? I dug the pull tab out with the Lesche and it turned out to be just 3 inches deep. I swear that I scanned this signal from all sides! And before I removed the large iron object  the pull tab sounded faint and high like the kind of signal that I dig all the time and that usually produces a deep target.

After thinking about it, I decided that the large iron target, TWELVE inches away, was masking this pull tab. I was using my 11 inch coil, which has a large footprint. An obvious solution to this is to use a sniper coil, thus minimizing the effects of the masking in this case. So yes, a smaller coil would have dealt with this problem but it wouldn’t eliminate THE problem, which is masking.

Now consider this on a smaller scale. Say, an aluminum can is sitting 6 inches away from a desirable target, Would I hear the good target? What if the large masking target was sitting 4 inches away? What if you don’t use a sniper coil all the time? Masking is a real problem and I fear an all too frequent one. And the point I am really trying to make here is that the masking target NEED NOT be on TOP of the good target to effectively mask it. Here are the metal chunk and the pull tab in question:

 

The rusted iron is about 2 inches thick.

So, today, for my lunch hour hunt, I left Maurice at home and brought instead the Mighty Compadre. With its 5 inch coil, is perfect for hunting gold in a trashy park. As if to assert his mightiness, the second target in my lunch hour hunt with the Compadre was this:

The ring was about 5 inches deep and gave a nice and clear beep. I was discriminating anything below nickel. The ring is obviously silver although no maker’s mark is present. It is well worn and the style says vintage. The picture doesn’t do it justice. Once I got to my office and cleaned it well, I could tell there was absolutely no corrosion. The silver looks old and the stone looks to be a garnet. I will test it with the acid once I get home but I am confident this is very old silver.

After a 1977 nickel and a few more pull tabs I decided to go get some food.

I’ve decided to continue my gold hunting with the Compadre. I know it won’t let me down.

Thank you for stopping by!

 

The park gave

I stopped by the park for a quick 20 minute hunt after work. I really just wanted to test a new tweak I made to Maurice, my XP Deus metal detector. Right away I started getting good, deep hits. The first thing I dug up was an old gas tank door key (no photo). Then I found a couple of ancient brass whatsits. Finally, at the very end of the 20 minutes I got yet another deep, repeatable hit. At 7 inches of depth I found this:

Yep, that’s my first gold ring of the year. I was beginning to think that I was going to go the whole year without finding a gold ring. Phew! This signet ring is 10K and as soon as I can discern the maker’s mark (it looks like a B and an O with the 10K wedged sideways between the two letters) I will have a more accurate idea of its age. I can safely say that it is not a modern ring though, given the park and the depth at which I found it. Plus the style just says vintage.

I think I will have it reshaped and polished.

Thank you for looking!

Auspicious Beginnings

I woke up this morning with plans to explore a site that may hold some good stuff. It was snowing and the temperature was hovering around 24 degrees. No matter; I put on my long johns, grabbed my Deus metal detector and headed out into the white. With no wind, it was actually kind of pleasant outside.

After about two hours of exploring and finding $1.55 in clad and two wheats, I moved on to a large and open grassy area where, according to my research, nothing has ever been built. I began detecting and within minutes I got a nickel signal. I dug the hole and at about five inches deep I got the first gold of 2013:

It is a small medallion with the letter S on it. I could tell I had gold right away as there was no sign of corrosion anywhere. In addition, the high yellow color told me this was a high carat gold piece.

I decided this was a good time to stop and headed home. Once home I cleaned the medallion and looked for the carat mark:

Sure enough, the piece is 18K gold. I have found my share of gold since I began doing this a year and a half ago but this is my first 18K gold.

So I begin 2013 with a good find. The medallion weighs 2 grams. That’s a bit over $50 U.S. Not much value money-wise but but I’ll consider it a good sign of things to come.

Thank you for looking!

Micro gold and the AT Pro

I went out to the Iron Pit again this afternoon. I hunted for three hours and added so many pull tabs to the gallon jar that I am now half way to full. Besides a Jefferson nickel, I found a tiny gold chain clasp.

At the Iron Pit, I run the AT Pro with the sensitivity at four bars and iron discrimination at 35. I do this to deal with the vast amounts of rusted iron at the site. So I was swinging away when I got a very soft middle tone that would sound about every third swing. It was the quality of the sound that made me take notice. The Target ID (TID) was 35 and the depth indicated was six inches. Since I have no experience with deep gold I thought I’d dig it.

I dug a six inch hole but there was nothing at the bottom. I investigated the pile of dirt with the Propointer and I got zilch. Last, I ran the Pro over the hole and the dirt and I got a hit with a TID of 35. Whenever I saw a TID, it was 35. I then spent a few minutes running small amounts of dirt through the Propointer until I got a hit. I didn’t have to look anymore as I could see the beautiful yellow of gold.

Tiny gold

The clasp actually had a couple of links attached but I lost them during further air testing. The air tests revealed that the coil had to be in contact with the clasp to get a tone and a TID. I guess the clasp was barely beneath the soil and that’s how I detected it.

There is a chain and a pendant out there waiting for me…

From the look of the links that I lost, the chain that this clasp went with was very dainty. I did spend 20 minutes looking for the rest of this chain but I could not find it. I may try to find it again later when I am rested.

So now I know how incredibly difficult it is to detect micro gold. Were I not looking for mid tones, I would have never even considered investigating an iffy mid tone with a TID of 35. I am not surprised that the Pro alerted me to it since I have found tiny bird shot at depths of three and four inches with solid tones and TIDs.

Thank you for looking!

Gold ring #2 for the year plus a V nickel!

Woo hoo!

Thank you for looking!

The Very Definition of Masochism

I have gold fever. I can’t deny it. I want gold and lots of it. To that end, me and another hunter, Stevouke, have vowed to dig pull tabs until we both find another gold ring.

The problem is that the very goal seems infinite. There seems to be an endless number of pull tabs and this makes the job seem unmanageable. Maybe I am over thinking this but I thought one way to make the task less daunting was to set boundaries to it somehow.

Stevouke is doing this by keeping a count of the pull tabs he digs. Me, I decided I needed something more tangible and visual. Here is my idea:

If you ever wonder what pain looked like…

I am going to see if I can find a gold ring before I fill this gallon container with pull tabs and foil.

Thank you for looking!

Brothers In Arms

After a little over an hour of digging for gold using my CZ-3D, my body and my soul were weary.

At least there’ll be less to dig next time

So I snapped a picture of my loot and sent it to Stevouke (from the Friendly Metal Detecting Forum) who was hunting in the morning like I was. I got a similar picture back from him and a similar story.

Somehow knowing there’s someone out there who understands what I am doing and why makes me feel a lot better.

Thank you for looking!

Jewelry on the AT Pro

I found this ring at lunch time today.

Ring clump!

Ring #5 in two weeks

I hunted with the AT Pro and the 8.5×11 DD coil. I hunt with the Pro wide open, Pro/Zero mode and sensitivity at one bar below max. I keep my ground balance at 76 always to maximize the depth of the Pro on silver items.

What I really want to post about however, is the sound quality of this ring. While the VDI on the Pro said 62, the sound was subtly different than the signals I’d been getting. I will attempt to describe the sound this ring and all the other ones, with the exception of the 10K gold class ring, gave on the Pro.

The Sound was round
The beginning of the signal rose gradually and in a continuous way. The end of the signal fell gradually and continuously as well. This gave the signal a soft quality.

The sound was hollow.
If you expel air from your mouth while puffing up your cheeks and making a sound like a very soft B, then you’ll come close to what I am talking about.

By contrast, the sound pull tabs and foil make is more like striking a solid piece of wood. The sound has a quick and sharp beginning and end. There is no hollow quality to the signal.

That’s the best I can do to try to describe the sounds I am starting to learn. I am still purposely digging as many pull tabs and foil as I can to further educate my ear.

By the way, the 10K gold class ring had a dirty sound to it. It was scratchy and it was mid-tones and high-tones mixed in. I think this was due to two things:

A) The ring had some kind of metal weld material stuck to it where the stone may have been
B) The area I found it at has A LOT of tiny pieces of iron mixed in with the soil.

Also, once the rings and pendants are out of the dirt, the sound difference between them and the pull tabs disappears. Crazy, I know.

I will continue to document this process of discovery so stay tuned!

Thank you for looking.

 

 

Half a gold ring

I did not find the other half of the ring. The markings are very hard to read. It may be a 10K ring. I will test it when I get home this afternoon. It doesn’t appear to be plated but the pearl may be fake. Do real pearls peel? 😀

***UPDATE***

After looking at the markings for a while it suddenly became clear what they say: HONG KONG.

Although I see no evidence of plating, I will count this ring as plated as I believe that’s what this is.

*************

I am hunting with the V3i on Best Data. The 22.5kHz frequency and the 7.5 kHz frequency lined up but the 2.5kHz frequency was off on the rejected negative VDI range. When I pinpointed, the dominant frequencies were the 22.5kHz and the 7.5kHz very much even while the 2.5kHz was a small green bar. The ring was about six inches deep, which tells me it was dropped a while ago. I didn’t break the ring, I think it was a lawnmower casualty.

Thank you for looking!