Tag Archives: masking

Three Ringer Circus and other things

10 Mar

This past Saturday, Maurice and I were invited to hunt an awesome site out in Western Kansas (Thank you Keith!). The scenery was Dances With Wolves beautiful and the history of the area is fascinating; a history which includes (it is claimed) Custer himself.

It was a great hunt on a beautiful day with some great company. I always believed that I would never find a three ringer bullet unless I went East, to the hallowed fields of the Civil War. But I was wrong. I found my first three ringer bullet at this site. I will post a picture of it later. Although slightly flattened, the bullet is complete. I found two other three ringers but they were heavily damaged, I would guess when they made contact with a person or an American Bison (known around these parts as Buffalo). I also found a pouchful of cartridges, most of them as old as the history of the place. All in all it was a fantastic trip, one which I hope to make again.

Today at lunch, I went to Riverside park to begin one of many experiments regarding masking. I posit that there are many coins that are being masked by deep iron. So I’ve decided to spend 30 minutes every hunt digging deep iron signals. Today, I dug 9 iron signals. Only the second iron signal revealed an hitherto masked coin. I am excited because although the ratio of iron to non-iron targets in this experiment was 9:1, I am betting that all coins being masked by deep iron are very old coins. This coin was a dateless Buff but I think I can make a very faint 16 at the end of the date, which could conceivably make this Buff a 1916 coin. I will keep you posted.

Thank you for stopping by!

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The Mysteries of Masking and the Mighty Compadre

26 Jun

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:

masking

 

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:

old-ring

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!

 

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