Thursday, November 20, 2014

Metal detecting over rocks on Oak Island

I had plenty of experience searching rocky beaches before I went to Oak Island to help Rick and Marty Lagina in their quest to find treasure.
I put that experience to good use by going against conventional wisdom and installing a large 17 X 13 inch search coil on my CTX 3030, instead of using a smaller search coil.
Both large and small search coils are excellent for searching over rocky beaches, although most beach hunters would assume a smaller search coil would be a better choice.  
I know I lose depth having to sweep my search coil over the top of rocks, but a very large search coil can still detect targets much deeper than an average size search coil over rocks.
This 1700s flat button was one of several buttons I found on Oak Island during filming of the show. 


When searching for old coins and artifacts in rocky areas, I often go for target depth over target separation. 
Many of my best Spanish treasure finds in Florida, have come from using large search coils on the beach. 
The perfect solution to metal detecting over rocks on a beach, is to own small and large search coils. 
Use a small search coil when searching on rocky tourist beaches, where target separation is important because of the high number of likely trash targets. 
Rocky beaches are always less hunted than sandy beaches, I often see beach and water hunters ignoring rocky areas. 
In my opinion, the reason why rocky areas are ignored, is because the majority of beach and water hunters rely on one size search coil. 
It also takes a special set of recovery skills to recover targets in rocky areas, and a few different recovery tools.
I wore  a modified tool belt, with needle nose pliers, flat head screwdriver and a pin pointer to help me locate and recover targets on rocky Oak Island beaches. 
It was also impossible to use a long handled beach or water hunting scoop, a big spade was the recovery tool of choice. 



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