You have bought the latest metal detector with all of the most powerful discriminated features to help you avoid the junk and find the good stuff. Right? Wrong. If only it were true that you could identify every target with 100% accuracy and then discriminate out all of the worthless finds. Unfortunately, a lot of [...]

There are many ways that you can improve your chances of making some good metal detecting finds. I have described several strategies that have helped me find more valuable targets when metal detecting. 1. Spend your time metal detecting sites that likely hold valuables. I know this sounds obvious, but how many times do we [...]

Before you can successfully recover a buried item, you must be able to pinpoint it with your metal detector. Many locations such as public parks and manicured lawns require careful metal detector recovery techniques. It is not acceptable or justifiable to take a full-size shovel into a public park or to dig a huge hole [...]

Developing efficient metal detector search pattern strategies is crucial to becoming a successful detectorist rather than relying on dumb luck. Each location has a unique history and distribution of activity. What works at one location may not be effective at another. This is true of tot lots, ballfields, beaches, private lawns and other places. Some [...]

Learning to properly sweep a metal detector coil is important. Poor coil techniques lead to missed objects and inefficient use of the metal detector. Four of the more significant aspects of good coil control are proper side to side swing, distance from the coil to the ground, overlapping and mineral chasing. Metal detectors are swept [...]

As mentioned in a previous lesson, soils contain varying levels of metallic ground minerals that can affect metal detection depth. A way to minimize the effects of ground minerals is through the use of ground balance circuitry. Without getting too technical, ground balancing allows the metal detector to limit the response from the ground minerals. [...]

Metal detectors identify targets through audio, meters, lights, and or vibrations depending on the specific unit. The two most common methods are audio tones and digital or analog meters. Each of these metal detector identification features has its strengths and in some cases a metal detector will utilize both types of target id systems. Metal [...]