 Online Since 2-1-08 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Updated: 3-1-09
|
The ground was not too dried out but there were plenty of places in this old park where only the top couple of inches was easily dug. The soil has not only collected quite a bit of trash over the years, but it is also quite mineralized. Birmingham has a long history involving iron ore and steel, and there are many areas in town where they used wastes from the steel making process (slag?) as fill material in the ground. There are areas where you can even see what looks like rusty iron ore sticking up out of the ground. The park also has "hot rocks" that often confuse my detector.
Along with this setup I have had to greatly reduce the speed of my sweeps or else the good targets get lost in the mixed with the trash. Going really, really slow is frustrating when you look out and see how much territory there is you would like to cover. With so little discrimination, I have to listen very carefully and keep checking the video display for evidence of a good target. So much for the setup. I'm not sure I know what I'm talking about here, but this setup seems to help, and I have been able to make a few good finds. We dug quite a few coins and I think most everyone at least found wheat pennies. The modern stuff was usually less than 2 inches, but not always. And the non-modern coins were usually 3-6 inches deep, though I found one wheat at half an inch near one of the vary large trees in the park. This was my first coin of the day and put me in a good frame of mind. This was only the second walking liberty half I have found, and this one is in much better condition. Like most of the targets today, it was situated with trash around it.. I was almost swinging too fast for the detector to give a good tone over it. But backing up and swinging back and forth in a very short path I got a steady 89 VDI at 4.5 inches. (This is my first attempt to post video clips. It seems to work, but my older digital camera only lets me record about 8 seconds at a time, regardless of how much space is available on the memory card.)
And the dime I found really didn't sound very good. Turns out that it was sitting at 3 inches deep and about 1 inch above a couple of pingpong ball sized hot rocks, which really screwed up the sounds the detector made. But I kept getting a very short high tone in both directions, so I popped out a plug and there it was. Swinging over the hole again, I heard a noisy higher tone and out of curiosity dug further, finding the hot rocks. And a short video David didn't find any silver, but he did get a ring. I haven't talked to him since the hunt, so I don't know if it was actually gold or not. It kind of looked like it was plated. As I was getting ready to leave for the day, I went to say goodbye to EddieG and Don. Eddie had just dug a standing liberty quarter at about 5 inches in an area that I was just sure wouldn't have anything old because I thought it had been filled in within the last 20 years or so. And because of that, I had not wanted to hunt that area. I guess I will in the future. If EddieG will get me a picture of the quarter I'll put it here. Gary made some good finds today, including a silver "war" nickel and a couple of indian head/buffalos. He also found a neat looking key at 7-8" deep. Gary posted it on the 'What it is' forum at Treasurenet (read it here). It seems it is a watchman's key that they used as they made their rounds. Here's a picture Gary sent of all his "good" finds made at this hunt. He's also sent a picture of the older coins he's found in January. Impressive! In all, I'd say we had a good day. Some were disappointed at not finding any silver, but that's all part of it. You have to be lucky enough to actually sweep your coil over it, and then have a good enough machine and enough experience to recognize it. Happy Hunting! Eddie Bradley |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/images/quotes_special.gif)
