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Saturday, October 12, 2013

Elusive beach metal detecting finds

I recently saw a "Groundhog day" style post while lurking on an internet metal detecting forum. 
A long time water hunter was venting about never having found a gold chain in the water, the same water hunter uses a popular submersible metal detector with an extra large 15 inch search coil. 
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out why you have a better chance of finding a gold chain in the water using a smaller 10 or 8-inch search coil. 
You can avoid going years without recovering certain metal detecting finds by taking a look at the finds you are recovering in numbers. 
If you always predominantly recover one size, or type of find in large numbers, you may have a problem caused by your choice of search coil or metal detector control settings.
Sometimes a combination of both may be causing the lack of variety in your metal detecting finds.
Recovering high numbers of medium to large gold weddings is nice, but it could be a warning sign that you are missing small gold. 
Changing search coils or metal detector control settings will allow you to find small gold.
Alternatively, recovering a majority of small gold targets may be a bad sign, a lack of large gold targets, such as class rings may mean you are lacking depth. 
A beach or water hunter should be able to recover gold chains (with and without pendants) and both large and small pieces of gold jewelry. 
A few years ago I used a different submersible metal detector with a 12 inch search coil for deep water jewelry hunting on tourist beaches.
I noticed my large gold and platinum band numbers increased, but ladies ring numbers declined.
I stopped using the metal detector with the hardwired 12 inch search coil, and almost immediately my ladies ring numbers increased.
Achieving variety in your metal detecting finds is not just a sign that you search different beaches. 
A variety of jewelry finds can also be a sign of a beach or water hunter using the correct size search coil and control settings to suit the beach being hunted. 


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