New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

With all three of my metal detectors I have never seen any need whatsoever for a pin pointer as you can easily 'centre' where an object is by passing the search coil over form side to side and then from top to bottom - I never had any trouble and have never yet destroyed or marred a coin and only made neat little hole

Hey thanks for the fast reply. I am having a hard time pinpointing exactly where it is for some reason. Also i get beeps some times then cannot find a signal again. Is this items that are very deep? Or little bits of metal in the dirt?

Best to ask kiwijw about that but sometimes I can get beeps with my old Garrett and have with my Goldbug but it is a loose connection or an anomaly rather than something that is there that isnt there.

Well lammerlaw maybe you should of stated how small your hole was in the first place then there wouldnt be any confusion i kinda figerd a small hole for you digging up nuggets would be knee deep and a foot wide.....but guess your probably to old and as you,v stated before "lazy" to dig that deep these days anyway.....but yea ok 2" that is small....so how do you get the coin out of a 2" hole if say the coin is 7 or more inch,s deep....?

hi dudelite and wellcome to the forum....as for the signals with the F2...if you get a signal and it disapears again it usually means it is small bits of junk..or as you say metal in the dirt...it wont be items that are very very deep as the F2 as other detectors can only go down so far depending on the size of the target..
if it is something real deep it would have to be of good size and you wouldnt lose the signal..

as for pin pointing it takes alot of practise,but i can tell you with the F2 you have a pinpoint button..so once you get a good signal you swing side to side while holding the button down slowly and when you get the smallest number you are basically over the target..do the same in both directions...side to side and top to bottom and when you get the smallest number while holding pinpoint you will soon have a good idea of where the target is..

.I normally use the pinpoint button on my goldbug and once i have it to where i think the target is i dig a hole about 4 inches in diamiter from the center of where i have pinpointed to.and i normally dont mark the coin ..as i said it takes alot of time and pratise to get the pinpointing down when you dont have a pin pointer but you will get there.

i see jafa still doesnt have anything good to say...just likes to try causing trouble...

dudlite..if you have been following post the i sugest listening to what lammerlaw (graham ) has to say..he is very knowledgeable..
and as far as signals go with the F2 then i would also say talk to madsonicboating as he has one and so does chrischch and they can both give some signals numbers and what they could mean as far as what the treasure is.

Hi Dudlite,

Even though you are having some trouble pinpointing it sounds as though you are having fun detecting and that's the main thing.

When you first start out your detector may be giving you a lot more information than you can make sense of, so you could try
reducing the sensitivity a little to reduce the information. Also you could bury a $1 and $2 coin separately about 3 to 5 cm deep and take note of
the numbers that show when you swing your coil over them. This might get you some finds to start you off. The rest will come with practice but to
speed up your hunt you will need a pin pointer before long. I suggest a Garrett Pro Pointer as the best on the market.

If you do go to the beach then the East coast is best as the iron sand on the West makes detecting quite difficult.

HH

Damn we need a lol button!

On the subject of lost signals: if it was a good strong signal to start with it could be a coin that while digging you flipped on end and is down the side of the bottom of hole somewhere. If I don't have a pinpointer I will carve the edge of the hole (carefully) and try and flip it back out again to where I can get a signal. Also, sometimes little bits of iron will have a giant rust cloud in the soil around them, this tricks the detector into thinking it is something better than iron. When you dig through it and break it up the detector discriminates the iron and you get nothing and wonder where it went. You can switch to all metal (well, not with an F2, but you can reduce the discrimination down to nothing) and it will show up again with a weak iron reading.

I am kind of torn about pinpointers. For a long time I didn't use one and never missed it. Then someone was asking me how good the Fisher ones were and I told them I didn't think they were particularly good but took it out to give it a chance. Turns out they are better than I had thought and now I take it with me all the time. I would say 3/4's of the time I don't use it, but there are times when it is really handy and saves time. I mostly use it when I have cut a plug out of the ground and think I should be looking at the target (judging by the depth the detector says it was) but it isn't there. Before I start digging further I use the pinpointer to see if it is just under the surface or just off to the side somewhere. If I get a hit it saves a lot of time to just pop it out. So I kind of like having it, but at this point am not willing to fork out the money to get a good one like the propointer becaue I don't really need it.

Most of my holes are about the same size as a standard Baked Beans Tin.
A Pinpointer makes the task sooo much easier especially when the target is in the wall of the hole or hiding in the middle of the plug. If your hunting in bark playgrounds (a great place to learn) many coins will have discoloured or have a crust on them which makes them very hard to see.