|
|
Welcome to Dirt Journal.com! Herein is a journal of my metal detecting experiences since I began detecting in June of 2005. Follow along as I learn the hobby of metal detecting and find some really fun and interesting stuff along the way. Also stop by the forum to check out what others in the DirtJournal online community are digging up.
Let's go treasure hunting!!
Silver Coins to Date:
33
Precious Metal Items to Date: (1 Platinum - 7 Gold - 16 Silver)
SE Hours Logged: 52
5/9/08: Nice Surprise! - I'll tell you what, I was really in the mood to do some swinging this morning and I'm glad I did. I've had a certain community park on my mind that I had been to once before. It was built in the mid-40's so I was sure there was at least some wheats to be found.
The problem with this park is that it was renovated in 2000. They put in a modern tot lot which sits up a few feet higher than the rest of the ground (fill dirt). They also put in a nice tennis court (fill dirt), walking path (fill dirt), and a softball field. The softball field didn't really need to be filled.....but they filled that too just for kicks and giggles. Just to make it more complicated, they put in a drainage system which is basically a series of low cuts that lead to storm drains located around the edges of the park. To get to the old stuff you really have to read the ground using different clues. A few that I use quite often are tree roots, grass growth (or lack of), and terrain smoothness.
Tree roots are often a dead giveaway of where fill has been added or even sometimes when dirt has been removed. The more of the root system you see on the large trees, the less likely dirt has been added near that tree. Thick, plush, unnatural-looking grass often indicates fill dirt has been added as well. When an area is filled, it's more likely going to be covered with sod instead of seeded because sod can be ready to use in a matter of weeks. I don't know about types of grass and I didn't take any pictures to explain this better (whoops), but if you don't know what I'm talking about, take a look at a park that has been built in the past 10 years and you'll see what I mean.
The last indicator that I use usually goes hand-in-hand with the grass indicator. You know how most golf courses have really smooth terrain? There may be hills and valleys, but they are smoooooth and small-scale elevation variations are basically non-existant unless they are caused by an area where sod has been damaged in which case it becomes even more obvious. These smooth areas are the result of a tractor with a box-blade or a bulldozer or some other ground mover. I worked at a golf course in high school and after we bladed an area, we would go back and rake it with garden rakes to make sure all the little holes and inconsistencies were filled. This way the sod would lay flat as a pancake and major puddles wouldn't develop. You'll often find this smooth and well-manicured terrain near newer tot lots and in almost all newer parks and recently renovated parks.
Of course, these fill-dirt indicators aren't always accurate and I suppose old coins can be found in fill occasionally, but I get tired of digging memorial pennies buried six inches in sticky fill dirt. However, if the fill is shallow enough and you're detector can get deep enough, you could just detect right through it.
Well, I think I had a pretty good "read" on this park and started working some areas that hadn't been filled. It didn't take too long before I got a wheat at six inches near a large tree with exposed roots. There was grass, but it was natural, not thick. I then started working an area between the widewalk and the softball diamond's outfield. The mid-field appeared to have been worked over a bit as it was quite a bit higher than the sidewalk, so I worked the area where the ground tapered out to the more natural area. I scored a few more wheats at six inches.
This area dried up so I started working my way around the edge of the park which was bordered by a main thouroughfare on the east side, a residential street on the south side, and a solid wooden fence along the north and west sides. I worked my way around the back of the park and was along the wooden fence when I got a solid quarter signal at about four inches. This was about three feet from the wooden fence and two feet from the walking trail so I figured it was just another clad, but what a pleasant surprise to see that silver edge in the hole!
 WoooWeee! It's been way too long since I'd found a silver quarter. Let's see...the last one I found was in November of '06 so it's been eighteen months. It sure feels good. It's in good condition too...maybe a VF-40.
I worked the area pretty hard and came up empty and the temperature was starting to get into the upper 80's so I called it a day. I got home and checked the dates on my wheats and was very glad to see that I had found two new varieties for my collection... a 1950, and a 1945 S. What a way to make a great day even better!
My parents are coming in tonight for the weekend so I imagine Dad and I will be doing lots of detecting between now and Wednesday so I'm expecting more goodies to accompany my newest addition. I'll try to get plenty of pictures too. There is a school near my house that is quite old and looks promising so we'll be there either Saturday or Sunday. I have high hopes for that one. We'll probably hit Galveston Monday and who knows where else. I'm really looking foward to it.
5/4/08: A Few Finds - I've been out a few times in the past weekends and the finds have been accumulating in my pouch so it's about time I get them processed and posted. I've been doing pretty well about finding wheat pennies since I got the SE which I will now lovingly refer to as "Bessy"...I hope you can catch the play on sound. I'm not sure if it's the different locations I've been hunting or Bessy's tendency to make things sound better than they normally should. In any case, I went to a little league baseball complex with Tim a few weekends ago and found a 52 D and a 55 D in the same hole, I think that's a first for me... two wheats in the same hole. They were about six inches deep. Earlier in the day at another ball field I found my first clad half for the year, a '99. It was a very nice surprise.
Last weekend I got a '16 D wheat at Logan that didn't sound good at all. I was getting iron in one direction and something that didn't sound too much like a coin in the other. It seemed small and non-ferrous though so I dug and was rewarded. It wasn't even that deep, maybe four or five inches, but it could have easily been walked over if swept from the wrong direction. Bessy sniffed her out though. I wasn't the one to score big that day though. Steve and Mark both got Barber dimes and buffalo nickels. What are the odds of that?!
Yesterday several of us met up again at Logan to try the area where Mark found his goodies. Steve scored again with a 1930's merc and yet another Buff. Mark got a small silver pendant, Tim unearthed an '87 V nickel which is a bit older than what we're used to seeing, and I nailed a large eagle button within a few minutes of turning on my machine. This one was manufactured in London, my first foreign US button. Not that that makes any sense at all. Later I worked out a small US Army shirt button next to a pile of iron pieces but it was so worn it wasn't worth keeping.
|
|
