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Too much iron?

CarsonChris

Elite Member
Joined
Jan 1, 2019
Messages
1,911
Location
Carson City, NV
Haven’t gone to any old sites yet. I have multiple locations I want to go check. Are there areas you don’t hunt because of iron?
 
I had my best old coin discovery at a beach full of rust. Two barber halfs two barb dimes, barb quarter and a 1937 merc.
 
Nope. I like sifting through the iron. Usually means the site saw a lot of activity and probably has plenty of semi masked targets that other detectorists passed over.
 
Sites with loads of iron, more difficult to hunt.
Not all detectors here equal either as far as locating things like relics, coins, etc.

Coil size is a player too.

Soil mineralization can be a player too.

One’s experience with detector they are using is a player too.

One must go slow, and approach spots on ground from multiple angles. Notice I said spots here. Meaning gridding a site as a whole is different here. Gridding a site won’t allow a detectorists to hits spots from as many different angles. Gridding is a way to begin though.
It is also helpful to gauge how dense and how big the ferrous is in a site per area wise. These areas where iron is bigger and or thicker, even more time and careful use of detector necessary.

Detector settings here especially disc setting is key to find nonferous ( more challenged) in sites with lots of iron.

Coils size bigger like stock can see things sometimes a smaller coil can’t alert on and the depth of such nonferrous is not considered out of range for smaller coil either.

Sweep speed and coil height management when moving coil around very important to squeeze everything any particular model is capable of locating.

I enjoy hunting such sites.
Requires patience though and due diligence.
 
I don't mind the scattered iron like nails and other bits since this is typically where the good stuff is found.
However, it is when there are huge sheets of iron that are mostly rusted away into lots of chunks. These I just walk away from due to many smaller pieces breaking off.

Maybe if I want to clean the site to see if good stuff is there I'll dig those large iron junk but will use a large Magnet to pull the small pieces out.
 
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