John Harun Mwau Facebook : Metal detecting
Metal detecting beaches and wet sand is one of the most popular hobbies among the folks living near the coast. And how can you resist all that sunshine and soft sand?Even if you don't find much, just being there is a nice relief from a day's work, plus it gets your mind off the business of life. Screeching seagulls, sounds of breaking waves, yellow sand under your feet, and a beautiful sunrise... ahh, just thinking about it makes me want to go! Most people go to the beach just for that, but why not bring your metal detector and double the fun?Beach hunting is not the same as it was 5, or even 10 years ago. Now it seems like everybody and their brother own a detector, and off to the beach they go.Of course it's not like that everywhere, but here in the good ole USA it's not uncommon to see 3 to 5 guys every day during the summer. With this amount of beach hunters, the new sand sweeping machines might as well take a break!Beach detecting with all that competition, is becomin g harder and harder these days. So what can you do? More then likely there is another less popular beach only a few miles away, why not give it a try? Stop running around trying to cover the whole beach like there in no tomorrow. Slow down! Watch your coil height, are you one of those that keep it off the ground about a foot? Are you afraid to scratch it? Hmm, maybe that's why you're not finding much. The finds you're missing could pay for 10 coils. Are you discriminating the junk? How much junk do you think there's left when you got all these hobbyists with their metal detectors scooping everything on their path? Turn the discrimination way down and dig it all! The trick is not in the fancy detector or a huge coil - but how fast you can recover your targets. It's so simple - the more targets you recover - the more chances you have to find something good. Just think about it for a moment.Just by following these simple steps you will increase your finds by 50% or even more. I t works for us every time, and will work for you if you try it. It takes time to become good at this, but knowing how, will save you time and frustration.Most people are working during the week, and the beaches are not as crowded as they would be on the weekend. If you add up all the people that have visited the beach during the business days (Mon. - Fri.) it would figure out to be about the same size crowd as you would see on the weekend. So, try it on a Friday night after work. I'll bet you won't see your competition - unlike the next morning - they are all there bright and early. You can instead relax and do what they did Friday night, go shopping, eat out etc. Or if you are a die-hard like we are, head for another less popular beach and see what else you can score.Most beaches around here are charging a fee to get in, usually 8 AM till 5 PM during the summer, but this varies from beach to beach. Sunday night is your best bet, right after a busy weekend. Start with the mo st visited and the most popular beach. If you're not having much luck, try another one. Find the most productive beach, and concentrate on just that one. Sometimes we go metal detecting at night on the beach, but it's not easy to do, and the police showed up one time, flashing flashlights in our eyes and wanting to know what we were doing there. They were looking for some rowdy teenagers the neighbors were complaining about.Always cover your holes, yes even on the beaches! People that are walking and jogging, rarely look where they're going! Always take the trash you dig up with you. A lot of times we get home and go through our trash, and discover things we thought were junk, that turned out to be a treasure.After our eyes our ears are the most important link between our detector and ourselves, our central processing unit, the human brain. We must have good hearing ability to pay attention to what the detector is telling us. A hearing test may reveal deficiencies that could handicap our ability to pick the many subtle sound changes. So it is important to adjust the detector correctly for tone threshold and volume. Use a sound enhancer and or external speaker if you are hearing challenged. Set up your detector in the dark or close your eyes as you adjust the tone control with a small test object. Listen carefully as you move your test nugget further away and you will find the setting that sounds the best and clearest to you. Experiment with the threshold and volume control.While we are walking about detecting we are listening to the sounds that the detector produces. The detector has a sound vocabulary that we should learn in order to increase our recovery skills. This sound vocabulary covers sound quality, sound shape, sound repeatability and sound relativity.Is the sound loud, distorted, faint, short and sharp, is the sound broad, does it rise, does it fall, does it break up, does it repeat.Metal detecting is an extractive industry, we dig ho les to remove hopefully gold. We are trying to make as few holes as possible with the least amount of sweat. We also must fill our holes.The obvious loud sound of a large surface target is easily heard but the fainter sound that is almost a suspicion is harder to hear. It is these suspect sounds that we want to further examine. We want to eliminate our suspect sounds quickly to save us time and effort from unnecessary deep excavations.On hearing a sound we must look down to see what may have prompted that sound. Before we start digging holes we ask ourselves a) is it ground noise b) is it rubbish c) is it a non ferrous target.
Many sounds are caused by visible surface thrash like rusted objects and can be kicked away. Sometimes the source can be an old decayed ants nest that we can clearly see. If we cannot see the cause of the sound we listen to the detectors vocabulary and try to get a clearer answer by getting our search coil closer to the ground and changing direction. If the sound is developing into a possible dig, we scuff the ground with our boot or scrape the surface clear to allow closer contact with the search coil. Imagine the coil being like "Feelers" on an insect. The closer to the ground the more feel will we have. If the sound persists and even improves we use the hoe end of the pick to chip away any loose vegetation and scrape some more soil away. At this stage no hole has been dug. We are now trying to pinpoint our target noise. If the sound is still located in the same area and has not moved I dig a small dish shaped hole and try to sweep the leading edge of the coil into the d epression. At this stage I am usually quite certain as to the exact location of the target but unsure of its depth. The digging continues till the target is removed. On deep targets the hole must be widened several times.At times, on examination a possible target disappears or turns into multiple target noises. Hopefully you listened to your detector and looked at the adjoining ground before digging a big hole. The answer could be ground noise due to clay domes, charcoal, old ants nest, hot rock etc. These areas can usually be identified by a wide broad sound response. Once disturbed by scraping and breaking of the surface crust the sound response changes and the target sound moves about or turns into multiple sounds or just disappears. Re ground balancing your detector can eliminate the need to dig a hole altogether.After a storm notice the black sand build up. This is mother nature concentrating all the heavy material in one strata level. The tidal action between high and low tide combined with the rough seas stirs up the sand. These layers have a good chance of containing old coins and jewellery. To harvest this potential bonanza it is important to be there at the right moment. Just after the event (storm with high winds are ideal). What the seas uncover one day will be covered and buried again tomorrow.Tip: The first 2-3m from the top parallel to the erosion are the best for first pass.
Wet sand detectingWhen detecting below the high water mark there are a few golden do's and don'ts.Do not rush out and buy the cheapest detector available, you must have the right machine for the job, being stable on the wet sand in conjunction with deep seeking capabilities.To find the gold and coinage in quantity, the type of beach composition you must be looking for is: brown sand on black sand, black sand, hard pack, stone beds on black or hard pack sand, all these mediums must be within the depth range of your machine.Look for iron-infested patches, the art in working this type of beach is to use the all-metal mode on your detector and isolate each signal with a circular motion of the search coil. Now test the signal on discriminate whilst being careful not to overlap to another signal. I found an Edwardian purse full of coinage; three of the coins were two Sovereigns and a Crown, from this type of area.Old photo's of the beach or old post cards, these will show you wh ere the people of that era sat on the beach, also it will show you where the bathing machines went down to the waters edge.
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