DetectingWales.com

Hi all
I have been wondering about depth, there detector manufactures out there very very expensive machines blabbing on about my machine goes deeper than yours, how often do you find very deep items, I use a blisstool and a minelab both are very deep machines but I have not found much past 8 inch deep, I think I have had about 8 coins in total at about of foot down,
Almost all my finds are around 4 to 8 inch deep .
Is there a need to go out and spend a fortune when most machines can do the job.
Al

my answer would be no ,anybody would tell you that most finds are in the top 6" most detecting makers like you to think that the deeper a machine goes the better stuff you will find {its usually the opposite unless better stuff consists of plough shares and tin cans} and as ive said before if a machine tells you there may be something at the 2ft deep range could you be really bothered to dig it?
lets face it the deeper a machine goes really shoots the makers in the foot ,, weve all heard that finds will get churned up by the plough and a site is never dead {yea right} but imagine if a machine did pull up stuff from 2ft ,,plough or not I think youll be struggling to find anything once you've gridded that with the latest must have machine,even most hoards are in detecter range its just the fact that they are as rare as rocking horse poo, I for 1 am happy with my average 8" {who wouldent be  ::)}  and in this game patience is a virtue remember a good producing site is good cause nobody has dug everything up with a jcb on it.

Carling I grid heavily detected areas and it still produces, you can grid with a top end machine all you want but if its not laying right in the ground you will miss it, a deep plough always works for me, just think of the small cut coins, out of reach, I must of had about 10-15 this year from gridding a back garden sized area........ I think this season coming will be the same with the next turn of the plough.

the question was would a top end detecter find good finds at a greater depth , you really haven't answered  the question , indeed your just confirming what I said that if you take your time on a good site finds will come up but not what would happen if you had the must have hoover on it,,, just the same as any other machine once the field has been turned you may {or not} find more stuff.

Firstly have a read of this thread which may help explain things;
http://www.detectingwales.com/index.php?topic=17543.0 (http://www.detectingwales.com/index.php?topic=17543.0)

I'm afraid Paul has fallen into the commonly held belief about finds being in the first 8" which I fear is one of the biggest loads of rubbish talked about in the hobby, the majority of what we find maybe in the top 8" but that is the limitation of detector technology not of the finds themselves, I personally would hazard a guess that on a field that has seen almost continuous usage stretching back over 2000 years detector finds would represent only 20% of what is actually there with the majority being out of reach, this also explains why a site is never dead, only a detectorists enthusiasm and patience for it has died.
And another bit of fantasy is that "most hoards are in detecter range" no sorry the hoards that have been found with a metal detector obviously were but those that are deeper can't be found so who knows, given that the floor level of many Roman towns such as London, Bath, Gloucester etc are far more than 2 meters below the current surface and then add the depth the Romans buried them and they are gone forever. It's the same as the often repeated "My machine doesn't miss much" well I'm afraid ignorance is bliss here and we will never know what we miss as we don't know it's even there.
Remember that absence of evidence IS NOT evidence of absence so keep swinging a proven machine and be happy with what you find, dwelling on what we aren't finding but walking over is a short cut to a padded cell ;)

I agree with everything you say Geoff , as for my point of most things being in top 6" and the hoards in detecter range ,,im thinking of the here and now ,,im sure there is masses of stuff that will never see the light of day but tectin technonlogy is what it is and these are todays limitations and as we don't know what and where things are buried that will never come to light I prefer to keep that side out of the equation.

theres also the point that the currant machines wont find the big big hoard at depth because they just dont see them at deep down .garys hoard test is still unfound by a standard machine .
so you could say they only see items down to 8 inches and no major hauls at 2-3 feet or even deeper such as the Jersey hoard which was 5-6 foot deep

Did the Deus find the hoard? im sure it did, but its been a while since I went on Gary detecting.

I just did a quick check, the Deus did find the hoard with the big coil.... The standard coil gave a iron signal with a reading of 01... The large coil also gave a reading of 01 but gave a dig able signal, its buried at 2ft the Deus is the only machine to have found it in 4years :)   

Not quite Dale in his first post about the hoard he states  "We are not interested in testing a machine with no discrimination circuit as you would not search in all metal on a junky ancient site" but a 01 signal on the Deus is an iron signal ??? also he's testing a larger coil which as far as I know he doesn't do on any other machine so is it more a case of the Deus with the larger coil is the only one he's bothered to test ???

What about the pi machines any extra depth with the better ones of those ? 

  Lets be honest, if i wanted to bury a hoard<I would want a REALL LONG shovel...  LOL.
     IMHO  I think most people would bury their hoard at least 12"+.. 

Yes definitely but of course there is no discrimination (target id) and so you have to dig everything which is OK when hoard hunting or looking for something specific but for general detecting it means that you would probably only cover a few yards in a day on most sites ;)

Hi geoff  i thought some of them have disgrim ?

No not yet or not a reliable one anyway, some can disc iron by switching from being a detector to being a magnetometer a sort of reverse discrimination but true target id is the holly grail of detecting technology ;)

 How about the Minelabs GPX and the new SDC and the Garrett ATX  or Whites TDI SL.  do any of them have even just iron discrimination ?

 even if they had iron and foil ring pulls that would proberbly be enough for me as i dig medieval and roman sites so have to dig most signals anyway do they have different tones so you can decide to dig or not ? 

No, no and no  ;D They are all made primarily for gold prospecting 90% of this is done in the gold fields of the States, Australia and Africa where habitation has been thin on the ground and so is the detritus that goes with it.

As you say when someone events something to enable the pi machines a decent discrimination they will be onto something

A different thread i know ..but  i was out with the explorer again with the 15"wot coil on the fields with high mineralisation ,

 had to turn sensitivity down to between 18 and 25 depending on which part of the  field i was on and also turned the gain down a bit , seemed to be ok ish and ran smoothly i had a few things to decent depth,  the ground is so hard and dry too at the moment so im sure that effects depth a bit , not sure if dry ground is worse or better for mineralisation ? 

The wot coil i have on it is the all terrain 15" model 2029 not sure what KHZ that is and was wondering if there is a different 15" wot with a different frequancy that might help in the mineralisation

 of course using a smaller coil would help ! 

david

No David the Explorer is multi frequency and so is the coil it emits it's primary search frequency between 11kHz and 16kHz but it also measures the returning harmonic frequencies and while this is what gives it the edge on id'ing iffy targets it's also what confuses the issue on heavily mineralised ground. Yes moisture in the soil will always give you greater depth (thus I don't detect in the summer) but it will also tone down the effect of the mineralisation but at the end of the day a small coil is the best option.

Thank s again geoff   i will try my 12" sef ,i realise i may need smaller still  than that but i will try it ,   could you reccomend a coil to cope better in the mineralisition  ( explorer se  )

its not difficult to dig out a deep hoard so long as your equipped with the right tools .a normal spade is not much use.but if you use a fork to soften the soil then a spade to dig it out its no big deal to dig a 3 foot hole . in most cases its been added to over the millenia so the depth has increased from where the hoard was . XP were supposed to be selling a hoard hunter attachment for the Deus by now but no sign of it. the bigger the hoard the greater the depth IMO .then the displaced soil would need to be scattered about to level out the ground after burying the hoard .i dig a lot of deep holes and after 2 -3 feet you need to be in the hole to get the soil out.

the depth i find most gold on beaches is at about 10''. the gold is always there on every beach but unfortunatly so is the sand ,at moment all my beaches got too much sand on but i keep checking just in case.you need to wait for the right moment then hit the beaches hard when conditions are good.
 inland is a totally different kettle off fish,i dont think i will ever suss out the score with inland detectin but thats part of the fun i guess
.you dont need a detector than hits deep if you get a good field. ;)

had myself a continuous high tone yesterday dug down about 2 ft and it was still there ,, thought bugger this and filled it back in, I wonder what was in there as the field to left and in front has produced plenty of roman bronze and silver and field to right a few saxon items,, oh well guess I will never know .

In all honestly after reading the above post I could not walk away and leave a diggable target without finding out what the target was even whatever the depth of the hole.

Using the Deus it does like deep iron, but but I did on a DW rally in Abergele have a croatal bell  it felt like 18", it was a cracking tone. Admittedly I was on the point of giving in  ::) and then got the target. ;D

I agree with Geoff these hot summer months the ground is now too hard in most cases to detect. I just picked up new ground  near a known roman site, and as much as I would love to nip over there now and detect. I explained to the landowner, that the fields need a fair bit of rain on them, so as to avoid causing damage. Detectorists who are considering digging 18" - 2' holes in dry soil would whoever you are struggle to replace the soil in a tidy fashion.

As to the original thread, I believe that a lot of the top end detectors offer too much discrimination to the user and reliance on a screen, when in fact the user should become more accustomed to the sound in your ear. A good tone or iron tone whatever you like to call it should be investigated, one flip over of a clod should either improve a tone or worsen more so on known historical sites.