BELIEVE IT OR NOT. SD2200D

G'day fellow prospectors.

After digging down (around 15 inches on the down side shoulder of a gully) for a faint signal,which turned out to be a badly rusted, flaky piece of iron,measuring 1"x2" long,whilst testing a new Commander 18 inch round DD coil on my old faithful SD2200d,and after placing the target on a rock and swinging the coil over the target again(to the point of almost touching it with the coil) the target gave no sound at all. Losing depth on target sound after being dug up is one thing,but complete loss of target signal upon being dug out and placed on a rock on the surface is a first for me.Has anyone out there ever experienced a similar encounter?


Cheers kon61.

Hi Kon61. Have had the same experience a few times. I stuffed around swinging the coil over a non conductive piece of iron i dug out wondering what was going on for a second or two......... the target iron broke up as i dug it and on all occassions i had either left the conductive piece in the hole or flicked it out on the edge of the dig out dirt..or beyond.

Call it halo effect or loss of mass as a rusted lump is dug out of the hole that causes the signal to become weak. But if you have no signal on iron it is usually because its brother, the piece that did give a signal is lurking somewhere on the edge of your dig out.

I did have one rusted iron target (literally a limonite cast of the original iron piece i reckon)that fell apart on digging and the little piece of rust left on the heap gave no signal.

But what really bugs me is the small mellow targets (almost certainly a micro nugget) that disappear on digging them out. One that stumped me was stuck in a thin smear of clay on my pick..others have disappeared without a trace

Tributer

G'day Tributer.

Good answer to a to a mind boggling experience. I know i rechecked the hole and toss out dirt heap,over again thoroughly and could not get any more signals.But now you've got me thinking.Maybe there was a small piece of highly conductive metal that broke off the original larger bit of metal,that might have either lost its halo when brought to the surface or got chucked out to some side, out of detector reach or was either reburied in my toss-out,just out of detector reach. Same thing has happened with very small gold whilst using larger coils,(good signal in the ground, at good depth), but had to spread the pile of tossout dirt almost flat so as to pick up the nugget signall once more. Some small nuggets are that thin or spongy at times,that when once uncovered from their natural halo burial place, they almost become soundless on the surface,until making actual contact with the coil.


Cheers for the info kon61.