Metal Detecting Tips & Tricks

The talking detector, what language does it speak?

What can we see?

This introduction is not about what settings to use on your detector and what coil to use but more about fundamental techniques like listening and how to dig up your targets.

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

• Hearing Target Sounds
  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.

• Sound quality
  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.

• Sound shape
  Is the sound concentrated in the one central area. or is it long and narrow, or is it over a wider area

• Sound repeatability
  Is the sound heard consistently with every sweep and from all directions

• Sound relativity
  Is the sound proportional to the target size

Recovering Targets

Metal detecting is an extractive industry, we dig holes 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.

What was that sound?

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 depression. 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.

Pin pointing the target

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.

Target Recovery

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