Useful Techniques in Using Metal Detectors

Metal detectors can net you some treasures if you use them correctly. The techniques used by the experts usually involve one thing more than any other: patience. When you're out combing the beaches, looking for historical treasures or even just trying to locate one of the plumbing lines to your house, you need to remember that slowing down a bit will make a big difference. After all, if you're looking for something that's been in the ground for 50 years, it can afford to wait a few more minutes to be found!

Most metal detectors function through creating a magnetic field. Disruptions in the field are often detected by the device and can set off the sounds that inform you that metal can be found below the Earth. If you hold your coils lower, the deeper they'll penetrate the ground. This means that you must hold out your detector as close to the ground as possible, all the time. While metal detectors do detect in a slightly wider range than the box that has the coils would lead you to believe, it's best to only consider a patch of ground that's had the detector swung over it for checking.

Walking with metal detectors is a bit like mowing a lawn or painting a driveway. Imagine that each sweep of the device topples off a row of lawn but that, just like when running a lawnmower, you need to overlap your sweeps. Do these sweeps slowly. You mustn't swing your arm energetically as you're detecting: it has to be a slow and deliberate movement. The concept is to allow your metal detector enough time to detect small deposits of metal beneath the surface and this is not possible with quick sweeps in general. If you're in an object-laden spot, make sure to spend more time in each sweep.

Metal detectors have various sounds, according to what they detect. You must learn to figure out the meanings of these sounds as accurately as you can. Iron, gold, silver, copper and steel will have their own distinct sounds in the device. The better you can differentiate them the less time you'll spend digging up useless stuff such as rusty nails and bottle caps. Seasoned metal detector afficionados usually pass on more signals than they can detect, simply because they're keen on distinguishing when there's sense to verifying that signal and when it's one that's ignorable.