The Coil Cover Game - A Revew

I have watched this phenomenon for a very long time in the metal detecting hobby, and I still occasionally go off a cliff over it. My wife says "Let it be..." but I can't! Coil covers drive me crazy!!! Especially nowadays when they are pretty much akin to useless but are still recommended by those who theoretically are in the know; especially on social media (is there any other nowadays??) platforms.

Now I am sure there will be those who would strongly disagree with me, but that's because they have been subliminally subdued into accepting the logical-sounding argument that coil covers act as a needed barrier between the outer world and your EXPENSIVE and easily damaged coil! And that actually WAS the case many, many years ago! Back then, in the 1970's and 1980's, we used co-planar coils that looked like fat serving dishes, we slang-termed them "dinner plate coils" which were made of thin injection molded polyethylene or polypropylene. 

The skin was very thin and easily worn through, especially if you were beach hunting in areas that had a rocky, gravel- strewn beach, like England, California, Oregon or Washington. Very tough on coils bottoms! The plastic coil covers were really a necessity back then...which were also easy to wear through, and you'd go through at least one or two a year if you were a prolific hunter. But time moves on. Here is 2023 our technology has advanced as quickly as our society has declined, and today's coils are made of practically miraculous materials that renders the coil's physicality almost indestructible! 

The coil's electrical / electromagnetic infrastructure is imbedded in an epoxy resin matrix. This material is hard...very hard! Here are some of its properties: 

• High tensile strength ranging from 90 to 120 MPa
• High tensile modulus ranging from 3100 to 3800 MPa
• High glass transition temperatures (Tg) ranging from 150 to 220 °C
• High compression, resilience, flexion, and tensile strength
• High resistance to degradation over time

The tensile strength of epoxy runs from 90 to 120 Megapascals, which means a PSI factor (covert pressure) at its highest is over 17,000 pounds per square inch! And at the lowest end of the range, tensile strength is running around a little over 13,000 pounds per square inch! I ran my 11" coil on my Minelab E-Trac continuously on the beach, in parks, at construction sites and everywhere in between without a coil cover for 7-years with little to no wear on the coil. Here is a picture of the actual wear the epoxy resin incurred on the bottom of the coil.

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Unprotected 11" coil bottom after 7-years use in all environments

And of course, I'm talking every day intended use here. Thus, there is really very little need for a troublesome coil cover any more, and of course this is from my perspective, while you may disagree.

Now, my opinion of course, of the whys and wherefores of the continued recommendation for using them? Despite the fact they fill up with water, sand, things you don't wanna' know about, they become loose quickly, fall off, cause target falsing and are miserable to clean, as well as reinstall? Money, pure and simple. Cash on the barrelhead. Moola and mucho denero! A coil cover can cost you anywhere from $15 up to $40 and whoever thought of this is a bona fide genius! 

I was a plastics engineer for a number of years and I can tell you they cost almost nothing to make and are pure profit all the way! I don't begrudge anyone using one, and as a recent case in point over the last few years, something that really does not do anything and is a royal pain in the keister, yet makes certain folk feel safe, then so be it. Everyone has the freedom to choose, I'm just trying to point out the man standing behind the curtain. Cheers!

  

Detecting Dishonor - An Ill Wind A 'blowing

As usual, I gotta get something off my chest about this expanding, but morally declining, hobby. There is a saying that postulates "Man carries the seeds of his own destruction" which is not dissimilar in the way the metal detecting hobby also carries the same seeds of its own destruction. Worst of all in my book, is the out and out theft of jewelry that is reported missing, usually in desperation, by an individual who put too much faith, I'm sorry to say, in the honor of a certain class of detectorists.  

Social Media's involvement in this enterprise is a double-edged sword.  One side offering hope and assistance to the owner, while the other has turned to sabotaging the same, using the location knowledge as an advantage to thrust the criminal agenda of thieves, and crooks forward. A sweet song of easy money, metal detecting predators are always hiding in the digital shadows, looking for a quick, easy score of gold in any form. Once the Social Media word is out, they are already in motion, even while the would-be recovery team is still discussing among themselves, online, plans for recovery. Detecting predators love this kind of advanced intel which sometimes will dictate their own plans for a quick dust-off and departure with the goods. According to my good friend and detectorist John Howland in sunny England, it is illegal to dig and keep a piece of jewelry, rings and whatnot. They must be turned in to the police who holds the item for 30 days, and if no one claims it, it is relinquished to the finder. Keeping a jewelry find is considered theft in England, and there have been many cases of detectorists failing to properly notify the authorities and have landed in jail charged with theft!

On the other side, many detectorists promote the hobby of metal detecting by unselfishly spending a good deal of their own time, using their own expensive high-tech gear while drawing on years of experience in the field, all the while making a herculean effort at doing good. And asking for nothing in return. And others follow their lead, because doing good and helping those that need our expertise feels good and shows the world most of us are not modern-day pirates or lowly thieves. And in a world where many things are so far out of our personal control, it's a privilege to wield the power to set things right once in a while. To bend the probabilities, if for only a second, toward the slim chance of returning it to its rightful owner. Just one look in their eyes when you hand them that gold ring inscribed with their grandfather's initials they thought was lost forever is enough compensation. Those who knowingly recover, then privately profit from a ring they found with information provided by the true owner, well, we are all in this together...except for you.

I Lost It Over There - I Think...

One of the best things we do as metal detectorists is return property, and usually very valuable property at that. Although sometimes the value is not monetary, but sentimental. One of the first questions a member of the Detecting Guild almost always asks, mentally if not verbally, is why you would take such a rare and precious piece of your soul into harm's way? There is never any real answer to this question, other than the obvious. Where else would you keep such an important reminder of lost love, loved people or long-gone technicolor memories? Right there on your finger or on a precious metal chain looped protectively around your neck. 

What we face, as detectorists, though, that the realities of human memory and perception are not always accurate, especially when clouded with emotion from the loss. I have been in the metal detecting hobby since 1965, yes, a bit over 60 years, and I have seen some things, as Hans Solo used to say. 

I think it may have slipped off my finger about here...

People sometimes don't even know when they lost it, let alone where they lost it. Recently talking with a good friend of mine, Bryan, he was telling me of a person who was seeking a lost ring in their yard. They just noticed it gone one day. He and several other detectorists made a valiant effort in Florida's knock-down-drag-out summer heat to find the piece without success. A short time later it was found at the bottom of the homeowner's pool. 

For years my wife and I have recovered a good deal of lost jewelry and possessions for folks and have faced a good many obstacles they unknowingly placed in our way. Usually it's the old "It's NOT over there, it's got to be around here someplace!!"  When you are not finding anything, and this is the continued response from the homeowner excuse yourself from the recovery and drive away. Don't forget in most cases you are DONATING your valuable time to this project and more than once during our work, the homeowner somehow got the impression we were her employees. Put an end to that sort of thing quickly. 

Number one in recovering lost items, especially small jewelry, you need to understand your machine and the tools, (i.e. search coils) it uses. Shallow recently lost small jewelry in a grassy yard (especially gold chains) need a small (6" to 4") concentric coil as the search tool, (your sensitivity turned way down to prevent sub-surface trash interference), as it is the most sensitive coil you can get. Sometimes jewelry is so small, even a pin-pointer won't pick it up. If you know your search technology, you'll realize a pin-pointer uses pulse tech, but you need VLF tech to get the goods in cases like this! Heavy gold rings and pendants can be recovered easily using 6" to 11" DD coils with little loss of sensitivity. 

It is always good to have a "physiology officer" along (in my case, my wife, as she is much easier to talk to, and more understanding than myself) Patti: "Let's take a walk around the area you think you lost it...we have a very high recovery rate if we get some good clues!" Me: "Why on earth would you take a 300-year-old, one-of-a-kind, rare gold pendent on a trampoline in the middle of an alligator infested pond...are you daft!?!?!"

Use your judgement, and know the capability of your recovery tools, when determining if a project is worth your time and the chance of recovery is possible within your own limitations. Never put yourself in danger (trying to scuba dive a toxic lake, detecting near a snake-infested area, detecting in a closed pasture where a "friendly" bull resides, hunting in extreme heat or cold) for any reason at all. Nothing is worth your ruining your good health or risking your life! 

And thanks to all those who do take the time to research and make a great effort to return someone's sentimental piece of the past, you bring immense good will to the hobby and boy do we need it now more than ever! Cheers!

Sweep and Pattern Failure - Missing the point and everything else

 I was casually watching a YouTube video the other day on my shiny new computer tablet, following a big-name treasure media guy. You know, guys with names like Pirate Rick, or Backhoe Bosco, Silver Sherry...you know the drill. Internet "stars" (with a small s) chasing the spotlight. His GoPro was recording the hi-speed passage of the beach below with his huge tramping feet, in and out of frame, as he talked, rapid-fire, a lot smack; we are gonna' find silver! and "The adventure begins!" as the color graphics swell with "GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!" and music fades for commercial.

We are back!! Once again, the treasure dance continues along the sandy shore, coil sweeping, incessant talking, and an occasional jerk to a stop as we DIG A COIN; and a clad one at that! Exciting stuff indeed! But wait...something is wrong. I stare at the 4K screen and try to figure out what. Something very basic, even primal, is going off the rails here. Suddenly I realize what's wrong, and it's because he's missing every other sweep by stepping forward instead of doing a reverse sweep before he moves!  This is equivalent to metal detecting a football stadium and literally missing half the field with your scans! What's going on here? Why is he in a big hurry? This guys a media treasure star, a YouTube darling in metal detecting circles! And here lies the problem: A person new to the hobby watches these channels, examines the detectorists' every move, then clones the same techniques when they are out in the field themselves. And missing half the targets.

Social media metal detecting and real world metal detecting occasionally diverge due to the fact that anyone can start a media channel and call themselves a treasure hunter . And many times they really don't know any more about the hobby than the tyro's watching the show. However, that YouTube money is sweet, one of the reasons this happens more than anyone realizes; mistaking entertainment as expertise. Maybe this was just one instance, but no. Time and again I watch videos where the detectorist is practically running up the beach or across the park...and missing targets by the barge-load!

This technique is called out by Gary Drayton, one guy who really knows his stuff, as low and slow, move ahead one step, sweep, coil level, to the right (or left) then, one coil width forward, sweep in the opposite direction. Step forward again and do the same. This assures your search pattern covers ALL the ground. Continual walking forward while swinging the coil almost assures you only cover half the ground you are scanning! Paraphrasing Mr. Drayton, "It's not how much ground you cover, it's how you cover the ground!" This technique along with stable coil control (keep it level!) will assure your targets, as Jim Fielding says, "...will be found, if they are in the ground!" There are only so many slices of metal detecting pie left, and with more and more people entering the hobby, those slices are getting slimmer by the day. Get your slice, using good technique, before someone else does!

Cleaning Coins - Are You Insane?

 One side of the metal detecting hobby that has almost become a hobby in its own right, is the cleaning of clad coins. I'm not talking about touching up valuable silver collectors' coins, oh no! I'm talking about everyday dirty money. Coins you dig up, find baking in the sun, or laying on or in sand, soil and muck. Filthy little metal disks...discolored, (and if zinc, half-rotted) unloved and as pitiful as a token of exchange can get. Now I know detectorists that LOVE to fill things with all the coins they have found. Big, clear, plastic 5-gallon water dispenser bottles, glass mason jars, aquarium fish tanks, a casket (you can TRY to take it with you!), milk jugs, thermos bottles, and on and on.  

                                      

Your Second Hobby - It's Complicated

Eventually, though, a new metal detector with some new amazingly advanced technical abilities makes the scene (daddy-oh) and you slowly become aware of all that metallic cash littering your seaside party barge. You need to either bank it by cleaning and rolling them or rinsing them off in hot water and tossing them in a Coinstar machine that counts it and takes anywhere from 8% to 10% of the total for services rendered, the result being you get handfuls of cash money ready for spending or banking. 

Now, if you are like a good deal of detectorists, you will go and spend $75 on a motorized tumbler; spinning rubber drums filled with chemicals, tumbling media (small gravel) and coins to be cleaned. And the TIME it takes to get all the coins through the process. Remember TIME, we will come back to it.

I clean coins myself by throwing them all in a perforated drum (a spaghetti colander will work) rinsing the dirt off with hot water, or hot water and a little dish soap, drying them off, then tossing them in a Coinstar. I readily collect the cash, sans Coinstar's 10 percent, and that's it. And the Coinstar Organization is more than welcome to their percentage. The other process, the hobby-within-a- hobby, is a small industry in itself. Now some people with a lot of time on their hands do like to complicate things sometimes, and if there are more gadgets and devices involved, well, all the better!

Banks are notorious for complicating things, and you cannot just deposit dirty coins, oh no! They must be clean, shiny even, and they must be carefully counted and be rolled in separate little denomination tubes, sometimes also printed with your account number. And of course, you need to travel to said bank, stand in line, have the bank rep count the little tubes. But this all comes after you have mixed dishwashing detergent, salt, vinegar, gravel, and other stuff into a slurry filling only half the tumbler. Then wait at least 30 or 40 minutes to tumble a few handfuls of coins, which you then dump into a colander to separate the coins from the gravel, then rinse them, then dry them, then counting and rolling, etc. Also remember you cannot just dump all the coins in together, oh no! Dimes, nickels, quarters, half-dollars, and on up, must be separated from the pennies or they will turn pink during the process. And we cannot have that! 

Finally, after half-a day, you have made a dent in your clad coins and spend some more time cleaning up after the process. Meanwhile I have long finished rinsing and cashing in all my coins and am at the beach with my detector looking for more. And when all your labor, which is worth something in itself, is added up, you have probably spent more in time and materials than your coins were ever worth. That's my opinion, of course, but then again, it is entirely your preference how you want to clean your treasure. Just food for thought. Good luck and happy hunting!

Detector Snobbery - Elitist Detecting

As the 21st Century progresses (although that can be debated), in the world of metal detecting there is a cold war running just beneath the glitz and glitter of treasure hunting, if that's even what they call it anymore. This conflict has always raged since the first guy with a mine sweeper found a treasure coin on a beach. And it is a war with the best, most advanced detector out there verses the best most advanced detector out there! You read it right, it's the all-time, all-encompassing argument between detectorists as to which machine is the best, and almost always degenerates into the time-honored discussion and disagreement over whose machine detects the deepest!

As the lists of detector manufacturers shrinks from several hundred in the mid to late 1960's to a half-dozen or less in the first quarter of the 21st Century, competition between the remaining brands has been fierce, and sometimes not on the up and up. In, then, the end, manufacturers Fisher, Garrette, DEUS (deh us), Minelab and Nokta Macro make up the players in this game of technical superiority. And there are plenty of arguments and points of context users continually par and counter-par with each other. I always find it a bit comical no one actually tests one machine against the other in a semi-scientific way. Except in one instance, they did. And the losers were not particularly happy about it. We will speak of this in a future post,

The end product of all this is BUYING THE LATEST MODEL metal detector, and totally believing the sales hype. Just so you know, the laws of physics governing the design of metal detectors are currently immutable, as far as electrodynamic devices go. These instruments have pretty well reached the end of the line unless a newly discovered tenet of our physical universe is discovered and then used to engineer better metal detectors that are light years in advance of our current models. Each new model is usually released with fanfare and excitement and with the unspoken assurance that it will surely go DEEPER than the previous machines of years gone by. But will it? 

Depth, from a metal detecting standpoint, is dependent on factors other than the machine itself. It depends on how wet the ground is, or in other words, how conductive the matrix (sand, soil, gravel, rock etc.) is to electromagnetic energy. Very low frequency machines are very good at passing through the earth and water, not suffering from signal attenuation, or energy absorption, that plague higher frequencies. It also depends on the type of search-coil, the size of the search-coil, how much power is being transmitted from the search coil. and how the gain and sensitivity controls are set. Just because it has a new and shiny exterior for 2023, does not make it much better than the sun-bleached hull of a metal detector from 2013. Especially if you are an expert at using the 2013 model. A new machine puts you back below the learning curve again until you get a few hundred hours using it in various situations and environments again. I would bet cash money on the old hand using an older detector they know like the back of their hand, against someone who has just purchased the newest machine with the amazing paint job with all the bells and whistles. 

I would say that learning your current machine's strengths, weaknesses and hidden talents makes it mandatory you don't fall for the latest machine to come down the pike every six months to a year. I know people who buy the latest machine before learning the previous "latest machine" from 11-months earlier. This will get you nowhere quick, but if you enjoy spending money and have plenty of it, by all means buy the latest detector out there ever 6 to 12 months, people will marvel at you, but not at you finds until you learn the machine really well. But you don't have time with a new machine being released really soon by a competing manufacturer you will have to have. Take a little time to learn a machine really, really well. Your detector will love you for it.

SCUBA Danger - Seriously Tanked

 Treasure diving had always held my fascination since I was a kid. Mike Nelson and his flaming magnesium underwater torch was the coolest; finding treasure, beautiful women, and still fight the bad guys deep in the depths! Luckily, my father was an avid diver, making his own gear before most of it was available commercially. Made his own wetsuit, bought a dual-tank set-up and he was off. I made the mistake once, during elementary school, when we were planning a bring your father to class event, of telling them my father was a scuba diver. This was like in 1960, when diving was not all that common. 

When Dad brought his tanks and gear in the day of our class, unknown to me, the subject was so interesting the teachers at the entire school got together and made it an all-school event in the school auditorium! Dad was expecting a short talk in a 20-student classroom, but instead found himself staring down a 650 sized student body, along with 20 or 30 teachers! I can still remember him, in his blue business suit, hefting the tanks on his back and the mask on his face while he explained in detail the use of all the gear. You would have thought he was a celebrated astronaut, and this was before astronauts! Afterward he was surrounded by interested teachers asking further questions. 

I thought he was going to kill me when I got home, and I was ready to explain that I had no idea they were going to do that, but he was still basking in the adulation of the 650-plus audience, so I escaped wrath of any kind. I was also the one tasked with bringing over 650 "thank you" notes home for him to read. One was mine. It read "Thanks Dad!" which my teacher chewed me out about, saying I showed no creativity in the note. I listened to all this and thought "Jeez, I see him every day, and I am still apologizing for what you and your ilk did without my knowledge!" 

Dad ended up teaching me to dive and also enrolled me in a NAUI scuba class at 14. I finally got my dive card, but not until NAUI had tortured me a few times diving in zero visibility water, tasked to navigate underwater with a compass, and how to change tanks underwater, or remove them completely. That last maneuver actually saved my life once, while I was doing an underwater hull-cleaning on a large yacht parked up against a seawall. 

I had gone under the boat and come up on the seawall side. I started cleaning the hull and was not particularly being very observant, when I suddenly noticed the tide was going out and the boat was settling on me. There was a slight concrete lip at the bottom of the seawall, not very wide, but my escape was blocked by this, and the curve of the hull was closing my escape upward to the surface. There was a large post at either end, near the bow and the stern so I could not get out that way. My tanks would never fit, and neither would I with or without the tanks! I suddenly realized I was going to drown.

trapped underwater in a confined space

 

My route back down under the boat was just barely wide enough for me to get through without the tanks. To make matters worse, passing boat traffic was making the hull ride up and down, creating sort of a continuous guillotine effect between the hull and concrete ledge. I'd have to time this well or be cut in half by a 25-ton boat! Either drown or be crushed. In the confined area I was in, I still managed to remember my NAUI training, and get the tanks and BC off, still breathing off the regulator. I braced my flippered feet against the seawall behind me, watched the hull coming up past the ledge, held my breath and PUSHED! I shot down between the yacht and the ledge and seemingly forever, surfaced on the other side.

My other buddies who had been working on the other side were astounded when I told them what had happened. I later showed them what had turned out to be a confined space, that none of us had recognized as such. You couldn't even call for help, because you could not surface by that time. Once again science, technology, training, keeping a cool head and working the problem saved me from certain death. Probably in a parallel universe I wasn't that lucky.