One of my many hobbies. Like digging up civil war stuff. Best find to date is a gold officers ring from the deceased hand of dead union soldier on March 7, 1862. Don't know what its worth but I'll bet its a lot.

Wow! Thats awesome. I've always been 'into' 'those' kinds of things, but never have gotten the time or gumption to go and actually get into it.

What kind of metal detector ya got? how powerful is it?

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Manu Narayan

My hobby is to go to the beach, and bury stips of metal that say "get a life"
http://discussanything.com/Ubb/tongue.gif http://discussanything.com/Ubb/tongue.gif http://discussanything.com/Ubb/tongue.gif

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Blind faith can lead one to the light, or plung them into eternal darkness.

LMAO

Cool find '86!!!! ..... How do you get started in the hoby? ..... I would love to try to dig up some old stuff over here (Maryland).

Originally posted by 92Notch
Cool find '86!!!! ..... How do you get started in the hoby? ..... I would love to try to dig up some old stuff over here (Maryland).

Yes, but I was just kind of lucky on the ring. Hardly found anything else in the area, and nearly skipped over the ring as I figured it was trash. To get started just pick up a quality entry level detector for a couple hundred bucks. You can get them on ebay very easily. Whatever you do do not buy something cheap, like from Radio Shack. Get a Garrett, a Tesoro, or Whites. These are all top rate brands and you won't go wrong with any of them. Visit their corporate websites for more info. Make sure to get a detector with some discrimination ability built in. I believe all modern detectors have this. This will allow you to ignore trash like pull tabs and nails which are absolutely all over the place. Even the entry level ones should have plenty of depth especially with the larger objects. I have dug stuff up to 3 feet before on my little detector. Get one that is a cross between a relic hunting machine and a coin shooter. Telling you which one to buy is a tough call, but if you pick from those 3 brands you will not be sorry.

2nd and most important is research. Books, libraries, photos, common sense, word of mouth. I do most of my hunting out in the country at old civil war camps, and on the outskirts, but not in federal land protecting the major battlefields. I also look for old house sites, foundations etc. In the city, any parks, ball fields or school yards are fair game. You find a good bit of coins and jewelry in these locations. I like history more than coin shooting so I mostly try to dig relics. Found an old blacksmith shop awhile back dated to 1856, and dug an incomprehensible amout of iron, and raw iron ore out of the ground there. Horseshoes are common. For research one of the best tools around is sat imagery and USGS topography maps. From the imagery you can make out old roads foundations and other structures not normally visible from the ground. Found a lot of cool stuff that way. Go to terraserver.microsoft.com and you'll see what I am talking about. Marlyland should be a gold mine for civil war artifacts among other things.

Lastly, have a look at the treasure/metal detecting sites on the web. They offer good advice and their are web rings and forums as well. Use ebay to look at stuff for sale that people in your area have dug up to get some examples of the typical and not so typical stuff found. If you don't have luck at first, keep trying. This is not the hobby of the impatient. As an added bonus you will lose a lot weight. Very, very addictive. :D

Just purchased the best detector made off of ebay. 800 bucks was a lot to spend, but boy is it going to be fun. This is the most addictive hobby I have ever taken up, except for Mustang mods. This baby will pick up objects 20 feet deep if I need it to.

86Dude, dude, are any metal detectors waterproof? My father's retirement watch (a Concord Mariner) came off while he was on his boat at the local marina. At the lowest low tide the depth is about 8 feet. We tried to get an idiot who does diving in the marina, but had some BS excuses about not being able to get the O2 tanks filled. Would any metal detector be able to help locate it either in the water or above?

There are several waterproof models on the market, but your going to have to have a diver with a wet suit and something like this:

Here's a link:

http://www.detectorpro.com/headhunter-diver.htm

There are a lot of divers the detect underwater. You just need to find one of these guys and hire him to find that watch. They also frequent many MDing boards on the net like treasuredpot.com and findmall.com.

i'm a metal detectorist.

When speaking to the kid who normally does diving in the marina, he said he has to fish around quite a bit in the muck in order to find people's watches or keys, so one of those metal detectors would be a tremendous help. They are too pricey for one time usage. At this point, the watch probably has all kinds of marine growth on it, not sure if hiring anyone from out of town would be economical. I actually tried a magnetic rake attached to an extension and gently dragged it around at low tide but got nothing. The watch has so much stainless steel, magnets don't really work on it.

When speaking to the kid who normally does diving in the marina, he said he has to fish around quite a bit in the muck in order to find people's watches or keys, so one of those metal detectors would be a tremendous help. They are too pricey for one time usage. At this point, the watch probably has all kinds of marine growth on it, not sure if hiring anyone from out of town would be economical. I actually tried a magnetic rake attached to an extension and gently dragged it around at low tide but got nothing. The watch has so much stainless steel, magnets don't really work on it.

You have mail. Sorry for the late response.