Thursday, August 1, 2013

Testing gold rings and chains.

I received a couple of interesting emails this week from people testing their metal detectors on the beach to see how they react to broken gold rings and gold chains without pendants.
Both emails confirmed what I already knew, that a gold ring when broken responds totally different to an unbroken ring and that all gold chains without pendants respond differently. 
I find that gold rings that are broken or have a small piece missing out of the band respond with the same kind of signal on my CTX 3030 and Excalibur's as a gold chain with no pendant.
The audio response from broken gold bands and gold chains without pendants can be confusing.
These targets do not respond with a classic two way repeatable signal, more like a bottle cap or other "iffy" target being rejected using a low or minimum level of discrimination search mode. 
Although you could easily miss broken gold rings, gold chains or open gold hoop ear rings, they all have one thing in common with the audio response, a weak or glancing gold tone.
No matter how slight or brief a gold tone, it is a sound that grabs the attention of a veteran beach or shallow water hunter. 
I was impressed that the people who contacted me took the time to perform actual beach tests with their metal detectors. 
It is important to know what your metal detector can find, it is even more important to know what your metal detector cannot find!  
Knowing how your metal detector will respond to various gold jewelry targets will put more gold in your finds pouch. 
An experienced beach or shallow water hunter can find broken gold jewelry and gold chains without pendants. 

All it takes is that initial gold tone response, no matter how brief, if you heard a fleeting gold tone you must stop, investigate and recover the target. 
Change to an all metal search mode if you have to, never walk away from any target giving mixed target tone messages to your metal detector. 
Seeing a broken gold ring or a nice gold chain in your scoop basket is incentive and reward for conducting jewelry tests on the beach with your metal detector.  
Often the biggest gold comes from the smallest gold tones, train your ears to find big. 




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