woodbutcher: said:
I see a lot of posts where people say this machine is deeper than that machine,,etc..I’m curious how much deeper do you guys think x machine is than Y machine?
Yep, and I read way too many posts when it seems like all people know to talk about is 'depth.' For me and in most places I hunt, 'depth' is a non-issue.
woodbutcher: said:
In my dirt some machines might get 9 inches at the very best while most get 7 to 8 with no problem.
And here is one reason you pointed out that 'depth' discussions can be close to meaningless, and that is the ground mineral make-up. Some dirt is very mild and low-mineralized and in it,
some detectors and coils can achieve impressive 'depth' on the smaller-size targets most people search for. Coins, Trade Tokens, Buttons and Insignia, Gold and Silver Jewelry, etc.
But
some ground is such a challenge that
many detectors can struggle to hit on a 4" to 5" target that's been in the same position for many decades. Oh, they might give an audio response, but many units have difficulty producing a close or consistent visual TID, especially with DD type coils.
woodbutcher: said:
I have a test bed like everyone else,and although I don’t believe it mirrors real life situations most all machines get the 8 inch merc,maybe 2 machines will get the 10 inch.
I've had 'test beds' but I agree with you that the best 'tests' are those we get in-the-fields on naturally lost and long out-of-sight targets. No planted depth, no control of the target's orientation, nor control of the hidden spot being clean of any contamination from nearby metal that can partially mask a desired find.
In favorable weather I might decide to go search a city park or school, maybe a vacant lot or parking strip. On most days, I plan on going out to detect a ghost town, a homestead, maybe an old encampment site, etc. In 55 years of detecting I have never set out to go search a planted coin garden. Nope, keep it natural and I'll enjoy the hunt and learn more each time.
woodbutcher: said:
So for me it’s really splitting hairs when it comes to depth,One machine is really be better than the next.
I don't know. There's more than 'hair-splitting distance' between an 8" coin and a 10" coin.
woodbutcher: said:
Just wondering how you guys judge depth increase from one machine to the next,and how much deeper is one over the other in your soil?
Honestly, I never try to consider judging 'depth' as such between different detectors. The search coils can make a big difference. The detector's operating frequency also can be a factor. The basic designed circuitry might favor one model over another, but 30 minutes away the ground make-up might change that order of detector 'depth' performance.
I have found some deeper-located coins in my life-span of detecting. Some in great ground conditions, and some in a more challenging mineralized environment. One of the deepest I found was a silver Walking Liberty 50¢ piece at about 10" in fairly mineralized ground in April of 1969 using a White's BFO with a red-colored wooden 6" search coil.
I nabbed one of the medium to larger size Chinese Cash Coins at almost 11" in April or May of 1984 in a quieter area
(sparse trash) of my favorite ghost town using a Tesoro Inca in the Disc. mode with an 8" Concentric coil. The deepest smaller-size coin I've ever found was a Capped Bust Half-Dime at 6½" in 'Twin-Flats', Utah, my favorite ghost town, using a Pillar 1 Reale with stock coil, and while there was some nearby trash I was able to get a hit on it.
I have hunted some wide-open and limited masking target city parks in Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Nevada and Arizona that I consider to be reasonably mineralized ground where I have made deeper small-target recoveries of coins and a couple of trade tokens. The depths were in the honest +8" to 11" range. I have also found smaller-size desirables hunting plowed fields, pastureland and rangeland that were also mostly trash-free.
But I don't exaggerate target depths to help dress-up a story, and in all those cases I was dealing with very clean ground. No shallower masking trash. Using a 9" to 11" diameter coil,
most of the time, and those deeper-located targets have NOT be in the "frequent-finds" category, either. They were few and far between, and those seldom deep-target encounters pale in comparison to all of the modern-to-older coins and other keepers that have come my way from much shallower depths in the majority of places I choose to hunt.
For example, I have never found, nor am I likely to ever-again find, one location that has produced hundreds of older coins for me than my favorite place, 'Twin Flats.' I first hunted it in early May of '69 and made periodic visits with what we had available to search with until July of '83. At that time we got a terrific detector on the market that totally changed-up my good target recoveries in dense trash sites and my old coin recoveries increased dramatically.
Indian Heads far outnumbered Wheat-Back cents, and the latter only dated into the teens
(except my very first coin there which was a 1927 wheat-back). There was a Flying Eagle and a Large Cent, short of a dozen 2¢ and 3¢ pieces. Quite a few Half-Dimes, including that 1836 Capped Bust I mentioned, and Nickel coin recoveries varied each trip but it was usually about 5 'V' to every 3 Shield.
Dimes and Quarters and Halves were regular attractions with Seated Liberties numbering about 30-35 for every 1 Barber. Never a wheat-back Penny newer than 1927, and never a Buffalo Nickel. Never a Mercury Dime or a Standing Liberty or newer Quarter. The only Halves were Seated Liberty and only two.
Hundreds of coins were carded in 2X2 holders and filled 4 binders with some cleaned or left to be cleaned and carded. 'Twin Flats' does have a few kind-of less trashy areas, or you could hunt on the fringes and encounter less debris. But most of that old townsite was quite littered and it called for smaller-size coils to better handle the challenges.
Old coins, and hundreds of them, and I have searched out into some of the less-littered parts of it, too. And what have been the depths of the deepest coins I recovered there other than Chinese Cash Coins? The 6"-6½" capped Bust Half-Dime. A Flying Eagle 1¢ that was down about 12" or so ... but I didn't hear that one. Not until I had already removed about 5+" of dirt to recover the Seated Liberty Quarter that was directly above it in a pile of dirt from the bottle hunting craze of '55 to '58 out there.
I did get an 1868 Seated Liberty Half at about 8" to 9", but that was after recovering an 1871 Seated Liberty half at about 5"-6" and I swept over the hole to double-check the spot where I recovered it. The 1868 was about 2"-3" below the 1871 and off to the side about 1" or so.
Perhaps 3, possibly 4, of the other old coins I found were at 5" depths or
slightly deeper. The rest of them? Well, about 10-12 Pennies were eyeballed in whole or partially exposed. About 6 or 8 Nickels I also spotted before the coil got to them. An 1854, 1858 and 1877 Seated Liberty Dime and one 1853 Seated Quarter all came my way just keeping an eye on the ground during my searches.
All the rest were just sub-surface and out of sight to about 3" to 4" maximum depth. Easy recoveries because I just
'toe-scuffed' the loose ground. When I recovered a coin from 4" to maybe 5", I considered that do be a 'deep target' for that site .... and many other old ghost towns that I continue to hunt and enjoy to the present are the same. Those are pretty much the typical depths of all the coins and trade tokens and other small, neat targets I find in ghost towns, homesteads, military and pioneer encampments, around old dance halls old churches, or houses of ill repute.
Depth? Oh, I have detectors and coils that can achieve impressive depths, but site-selection is the key for me and depth just isn't an issue. Most targets, good and bad, are not 'deep' and there's too much of the discarded junk to make it difficult for getting anything deeper.
Just my thoughts about 'depth' discussions.
Monte
