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Finding Nickels with the E-Trac, Part 2

12/16/2010

5 Comments

 
Well, a year later I am ready to cover part 2 of my blog on finding nickels.

My hypothesis at the end of the last blog post was: Would opening the FE all the way from top to bottom for 12-13-14 result in more nickels? Is the FE value of nickels the trick? That would explain my friend's result with using Relic mode. It would also tend to support my supposition that the nickel "halo" is causing the nickels to read lower than FE 12 and more like/closer to iron. This will be by next experiment... which will be covered in Part 2.

Did opening the FE all the way from top to bottom for 12-13-14 result in more nickels? No, not really. They all tended to stay right around the 12 line and in the accepted range for coins in
the preset coin program. The FE value is not the trick, nickels come in right where they are supposed to for the most part.

For 2010, I found that having learned the nickel tone, by doing these experiments and training my ears, I was digging a lot more nickels.

I learned that by pinpointing a signal and then sweeping the coil over the center of the target, a good nickel signal almost always showed a predominance of CO 13, even if it bounced around. Sure, the beavertails are foolers, and I dug more of those this year too. I also found that a repeating 11-14 is almost always a beavertail and not a nickel.

So, my advice for finding more old nickels is to try setting up your screen to be only open for nickel signals and go for a few hunts just for nickels. Set that tone in your head, so it pops out from the trash and noise at that end of the scale. Having learned the tone, you should be able to easily pick it out and will start digging more nickels. The more you dig them, the more you will hone the skill of finding nickels.

I had a question in my mind about depth and what it did to nickel signals, but a very deep shield nickel that came in at a good but weak 10-13 satisfied my curiosity on that point. The nickel signal is just as consistent as the other coin IDs on the E-Trac.  CO 13 is a magic number for nickels, much as CO 44 is a magic number for memorial cents. Not infallible, but darn good and better than any other ID detector I've ever used.
5 Comments
James link
2/27/2011 09:15:28 am

I don't have an e-trac, but on my explorer i had a similar experience. I had to open up the discrimination a little more and once I learned the location and pattern, it was easy to find the nickels. I even did some of the dig only nickels days.

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Jay Mills link
4/7/2011 11:01:51 pm

I use a Sovereign GT with a WOT 15 coil and also use a amp for my headphones that bring all of these tone differences much clearer. But most of my hunting is on beaches. I pick up nickels as far down as 15 inches and have learned the small tone differences with alot of practice.

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Bill Stroud
11/30/2011 10:09:50 am

Nick , Like you said I now make it a habit when I find a nickel before it goes in the pocket it goes back on the ground close your eyes, find it again and and again... learn the tone

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Sesotec Metal Detectors link
1/9/2012 07:41:21 pm

I like this blog after reading.

Reply
Darrell Obermann
12/28/2013 02:52:31 am

In or around 1982 I lived in Springfield Mo. I bought a garrett master hunter vlf/tr discriminator, at first I had a horrible time with it, then I made myself turn back the sensitivity, our ground is high in mineral, and started finding the good stuff. Across the street from where we lived was a school yard, the spot between the curb and gutter and the sidewalk in front of the school was where the mom's would let their kids out of the car to go to school, handing them their lunch money as they went. This became a hot spot for coins and I really covered it well and found a lot of coins but few nickles. One morning there was a man working that parkway with a compass detector the cheepest one they made, just a coil with a stick and a match box size body. As I watched he was digging a lot and I thought I had worked this area verry well, finally I could stand it no more and I went over there to see what he was digging. He had a nail apron full of nickles, he told me he only dug week smooth signals and they would either be foil or a nickle and that someone had been working the area with one of those new discriminators and was missing the nickles GUESS WHO THAT WAS , live and learn.

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    I'm Nick A. and I am a metal detector hobbyist in Central Ohio.  I have been metal detecting for 20 years, and currently use a Minelab E-Trac detector.

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