Welcome to Dirt Journal.com!  This site, formerly known as Tim's DFX Logs, is a journal of my experiences with my White's DFX metal detector since I began detecting in June of 2005.  I make some specific references to the DFX read-out and controls to benefit DFX users, but I hope everyone will enjoy browsing through my journal.  I write my logs in story-like fashion because that's the way I enjoy reading other people's finds.  It makes me feel like I'm along for the ride, looking over their shoulder as they dig up that next solid tone.  Hopefully you'll feel the same.

So let's go treasure hunting!!

Clad this month: $4.51  Clad to Date: $161.09

08/04/06 - Four Location Hunt - TXTim talked me into hunting today (a lot of talking that took). While doing some research, I had found a very old park that deserved some attention, so that's where we met first at 8 AM. This place was absolutely trashed and it had been filled to boot. It'd be a lucky day to find a good coin in that mess. We moved across the street to a lot where apparently a house had been dozed. More of the same there, trash and more trash. I'm still using the 1400 DD coil which seems to magnify the trash beyond believability. We got out of there pretty quickly.

Next stop was a new area in Memorial Park that Tim had been eyeballing on the plat map. Tim found this keeper silver ring right off the bat, although it wasn't really what we were looking for. Probably a kid from the nearby neighborhood had lost it while playing in the woods. I'm not sure I'd let my kids play in these woods. I was digging a hole and not really paying any attention when two dogs about five feet away started barking at me. I thought I was about to be mauled by wild canines but they turned out to belong to a passing walker on a trail.

The area was turning up a big dry one so we drove over to the usual spot and worked around an old road to the north. We came upon this neat looking hole in the ground that we surmised was some sort of sewer deposit area. It looks great, but it sure didn't put any silver in our pockets. We found traces of previous hunters which leads me to think that this particular area is just about dry. If so, it would be a close to a great chapter in my detecting experiences. Fortunately, the park is so huge and there are plenty of wooded areas just like this one, that the next "honey hole" may not be too far away.

08/09/06 - Early Opportunity - Tonight after Ab gets off work, her and I are going to the Astros game. To keep from having two vehicles, I drove her into work this morning and I brought my DFX along to do some early morning hunting. I went to Memorial Park...again...and worked through a patch of woods where I found my first USNG button several months ago. I was certain there was another one close by.

I ended up disconnecting my DX-1 because the short in it is really causing some annoying instability. I'll have to get it fixed one way or another.

It took me a couple hours, but I finally ran across a great-sounding, deep target. It was singing in the +79 to +82 range and "felt" small. I knew I had a keeper. I took some pictures to document the occasion...

Althought it isn't a silver dime, it's a great find. This large eagle button appears to be the same style as the first one I found, but this one is a lot thicker. Once I got it home and cleaned it up, the back mark confirmed the different design.

"W.H. Horstmann & Co. - Phila, PA" A nice addition to my growing button collection.

Not long after, as I was searching closer to one of the park's main roads, I noticed a police SUV drive by slowly and stop about thirty yards down the road. I figured he had paused to talk with someone, and I continued to make my way through the woods. A few minutes later, a German Shepherd went walking by the tree line about twenty feet from me, sniffing at the ground. Again, I thought nothing of it. Then I noticed a human figure walking a ways behind the dog and I realized it was a K-9 unit checking me out. I'm not sure what they thought I was doing, but after he saw that I was metal detecting, he went back the way he had come. Glad he didn't think I was swinging an assault rifle....not to mention the DX-1 slightly resembles a pipe bomb.

08/12/06 - A Good Day - This morning I thought I was going to be hunting Memorial alone, but Tim called me just before I was leaving. He had done some scouting around a different area of the park and had found some concrete bridge pylons rising up from a creek gorge. It sounded pretty good to me so we went in that direction.

We started around a park restroom which was no longer being used. He had found a 50's wheat and a small eagle button here so there was a possibility of finding a few more keepers. I thought I had found an old nickel at first, but it turned out to be this "Wonder Money" token. I'm not sure how it got down to four inches deep.

A few feet away, I found a "Freedom" token. I walked in Tim's direction to let him know that I think we should move down to the bridge area. As I was about to step over a log, I saw a one-gallon plastic container with some strange tape on the lid and some things inside. I swept it with the detector but didn't get a return. I picked it up and unscrewed the lid to find my second geocache. It contained some toyish things and a one-dollar bill which I was tempted to take, but decided against it as I had nothing that I was willing to replace it with. I set it back down and we moved on.

The gully that the bridge went across started near where we parked so we could easily access both sides. Tim started on side and I on the other. It didn't take long for me to hear a satisfying tone in my headphones. When I pinpointed it at six inches, I knew I had a good one. I knelt down to dig but when I reached back for my Lesche, I felt nothing but an empty sheath. Dagnabbit! I kicked a spot in the ground so I could find the target again and ran back to my last hole which was about thirty yards away and retrieved my digger. Now to find out what this lovely sound is. Six inches later, I had my third large eagle button and this one looked to be in great shape! Score one for the good guys!

I kept working the faint trail I was on and soon heard another satisfying tone in my headphones, although this one only pinpointed at three-and-a-half inches. I didn't expect much but I was pleasantly surprised to see this between my knees...

My seventeenth silver coin to date, my eleventh for the year, and only my third rosie! Not bad at all! I yelled across the gully to let Tim know about the two keepers I had found and I continued my hunt. He soon came over to hunt in my vicinity but we didn't yield much more. I was only able to come up with a '44 D wheat to add to the pile. We soon called it a day at around 10:30.

When I got home, I cleaned up my button and was very impressed with how great of condition it is in. The loop on the back is intact and straight. I am also happy that this is my third unique backmark out of three large eagle buttons. New York City!?!? :)

Monday, I will be driving to Seguin to hunt with Jarry (Git R' Done) and maybe Carl (Xporter). I imagine we'll be hitting some old churches so I'm really looking foward to it and I hope I can bring back some keepers for you guys to drool over!

08/14/06 - Hunted Out - I drove to Seguin early this morning and spent all day with Carl and Jarry hunting churches from the 1800's. We must have hunted five of them, but we only found four wheats between the three of us. Mine was a '40 S, the first of that variety for me, so it wasn't a total skunk.

However, it got me thinking about how fortunate I am to have a great hunting location just down the street that I can go to whenever I want, and no matter how much I hunt it, there will always be area that I have yet to cover.

If you're thinking about getting into this hobby, take note. It is a lot of work with little payoff. It takes a certain type of person who can find enjoyment in the little things. It takes persistence and patience. You think you know of an old spot to hunt? It's probably been hunted before. It may have been pounded to death for years. However, every once in a while, one of us gets lucky and through a lot of hard research and permission seeking finds themself in a virgin site loaded with coins and relics. These sites are becoming harder to come by, but they are out there.

Unforunately, some places we just won't be able to hunt. Today I received a response from a pastor whom I had asked permission to hunt his church...

My original email: Brother Gary, My name is Tim Herschbach and my wife and I attend West University Baptist Church in Houston. Furthermore, I am an avid metal detectorist. Earlier this week, I was driving around the Sandy Point area looking for prospective sites to detect when I saw your old church building next to the newer one. I'm in search of old coins primarily and from the looks of the church, I think there may be some there. Could I get your permission to look around the yard with my detector? Any trash I find, I always take with me; and if I find a piece of jewelry that can be traced to the owner, I would be happy to return it. I look foward to hearing from you! Thank you! His response: Dear Tim: I apologize for not getting back to you sooner. I have been out of the office for several days. I will need to clear your request with the leadership of our church. We meet every Sunday morning so I should have an answer for you by Monday. I hope that will be alright with you? My response: Thank you very much for taking time out of your schedule to check on this for me. I'm not in any hurry but I do hope that they will allow me to hunt. If there are any questions or concerns, please let me know and I'll be happy to address them. Thanks again! His response: Dear Tim: I talked with our Leadership board on Sunday and shared with them you request to use our grounds as a metal detectorist playground. They did not give their permission. I'm sorry about that. There were many reasons given but the general consensus was that they didn't want anyone walking around the grounds digging holes in the yard and that there were plenty of other places to hunt. I'm sorry.

"A metal detectorist playground??" I feel like I should take offense to that, but I digress. "Plenty of other places to hunt?" Please, point me in the direction of these abundant pastures of plenty! I did all that I could with this one and all I got was one "no" closer to a "yes." Thus is the life of a detectorist.

08/15/06 - Mission #5: Last Chance - It takes a loving wife to put up with a man. We always seem to be the cause of some innocent mishap. Josh's situation was no different. He had already lost his first wedding ring while net fishing. His better half managed to forgive and forget that one, but how would she handle number two?

Josh was one month from finishing up an internship at a petro-chemical company in Texas City when he felt the urge to do some net fishing, one of his many hobbies. Josh is not the kind of guy to make the same mistake twice, so when he got down to the water's edge behind the dike, he slipped off his ring and dropped it into his back pocket. He fished a few different areas and went home. When he remembered his ring, he searched in his pocket and found nothing but a hole in the bottom, big enough for a ring to fall through. How was his wife going to handle this one?

After a few weeks of considering his options, he was getting desperate for help and time was not on his side. After his last internship meeting on August 15th, he would be driving back home to Atlanta and wouldn't be returning. Josh's desperation drove him to creativity and he posted his cry-for-help on a few popular metal detecting forums, even including a reward of one-hundred dollars.

On Sunday August 13th, two days before Josh would be leaving the state indefinitely, Mr. Schreckengost, a member here at dirtjournal, saw one of Josh's posts and fowarded it to me knowing that I was close by. Of course, my schedule is wide-open at the moment so I was happy to give it a shot. Today was the only opportunity that we could meet so it was all or nothing. In a few hours, he would be leaving for Atlanta and we wouldn't be getting a second chance.

I met Josh in Texas City at 2 PM and we drove across the dike to his fishing spot. Upon arrival, he couldn't believe what he saw...

08/26/06 - 08/29/06: Homeward Bound - Hello again! I just returned from a trip to my parents' house in Grove, Oklahoma. My Dad and I made some needed maintenance to the Blazer and it didn't take nearly as long as we had expected, so by Sunday, we were already out detecting.

Our first stop was near their house in the neighbor's field. A part of our old house used to sit there so we knew it had seen some human activity in the first half of the twentieth century. We only found a few pieces of trash between the many iron signals and gave up on the site in about an hour.

We then went to an area where a railroad once crossed a dirt road. My Dad's cousin had recently eyeballed an Indian Head on the ground so we figured we stood a decent chance of finding something. As I was working the ditch, I spotted a five-dollar bill which is five dollars more than we found with our detectors at that spot.

We went into town and hit an alleyway between some of the old downtown buildings that had been scraped for utility work. Dad found a 1950's wheat and I found a no-date wheat. Nature was calling me so we called it a day...a not-so-productive day.

Monday morning, we dropped my blazer off to have it aligned and we went to my sister's father-in-law's business to talk to him about hunting on his property. He owned a house that we had hunted back in December. It was a productive hunt and we were hoping he had some other places that would be equally productive. He told us of a few old houses and an Indian cemetary that we could hunt. He also said we could use his Polaris to get around the property.

Of course we took him up on his offer. Talk about a metal detecting wagon! Anyway, our first stop was a small shack which had collapsed; but there weren't any non-ferrous targets there.

The second stop was the cemetary. The dates on the tombstones went back to the 1870's which made our mouths water. Plus, this place was out in the middle of nowhere, bordered by woods on three sides and a field on the fourth. It didn't have road access so there wasn't any modern trash. There weren't any old coins either. I guess mourners don't carry silver.

We worked the area pretty hard but came up with nothing. Dad made his way out into the field and I walked toward another nearby collapsed house, this one much larger than the first shack. I spotted another structure through the trees - this one was still standing. I jumped in the Polaris and picked up Dad, who was now working some strange mounds in the middle of the field. We drove over to the structure I had seen.

This appeared to be a full-blown homestead. The house was collapsed, but the grain house was still standing on top of its rock foundation which housed a cellar underneath. Nearby was a cattle loading ramp. This place looked great. We didn't waste much time getting down to business.

I found the first keeper of the day, a Missouri Sales Tax Token in very poor shape. It was only a few inches deep and hit like a crusty zinc penny. Dad wasn't having any luck so I talked him into checking the cellar. It really looked like copperhead heaven in there, but he took it like a man and walked down the steps into the cool darkness. Well, it really wasn't that dark.

I worked my way to the frontyard of the house and hit a nice sounding shallow signal. It bounced around a bit but it was a no-brainer to dig. My digger pried out this gem...

My first silver spoon! Well, the business-end of the spoon anyway. It's really beat up and almost flattened, but it's a nice fat piece of clean, antique silver. A keeper for sure. I figured there may be something else nearby so I worked a grid of the yard. I came across a bouncy +40's signal and dug up a strange looking ring that I'm still puzzled about. The outside has some sort of green coating on it while the inside has a clean copper shine to it. There is a "14" stamped on the inside next to what appears to be a jewelry mark, but it doesn't look like gold. It looks more like polished copper. But wouldn't copper have corroded after being in the ground so long? If it is copper, what does the "14" stand for? But how can it be gold when it has a copper color? I'm baffled! What do you think?

Shortly after, we packed up and went for lunch, followed by a visit to an older swimming hole on a creek where I can remember swimming when I was six or seven. That proved unproductive and we called it a day.

Tuesday was our last day to hunt, and although I was happy about my finds from yesterday, I was still hoping to find a nice coin. It just wasn't looking like that wasn't going to happen. We hit the county fairgrounds where Dad found some nickels. We then drove to the nearby sports complex where I had found my first silver ring on November 26th of last year. We we're hoping to find some gold but I quickly lost patience digging pull tabs.

We stopped by a guy's house to ask for permission to hunt two old houses on his property but he wasn't home. We had actually stopped by three times throughout the weekend hoping to find someone there. Dad even tried calling but it just wasn't meant to be for this trip.

On our way home, I asked Dad if he wanted to try Dodge again. Dodge is a ghosttown a few miles east of my parents' house. It has one dirt road that goes through it, parallel to where the track used to be. We'd hunted the town mill last July, before I bought my DFX, but couldn't get anything to come out of the ground. I was hoping to get permission to get back on the property so we could try the mill again, but the property owner was not there.

Dodge, OK: The railroad grade can barely be seen here on the right side of the picture running parallel to the road.

That was a bummer, but I wasn't ready to give up just yet. I decided to take a shot in the dark and hunt the road. I took the left side and Dad took the right. There were plenty of trash signals which I had dug and they turned out to be....trash. But about fifty feet down the road (past the driveway in the picture) I found a jumpy penny/dime signal that pinpointed at three inches. "More trash" I figured. "Oh well, why not?"

I pried out some dirt in which I could see that wonderful silvery edge that we all know and love. "Silver!! SILVER!!!" Dad looked over his shoulder from across the road and pulled his headphones off. This dime wasn't going to play the "guess-the-date" game with me. Although both sides were covered with dirt, the date was clean and easily readable. "1898?!?!? 1898!!!!! MY FIRST 19th CENTURY COIN!!!" I threw my hands in the air and ran a ways down the road, then turned around and came back, jumping in the air. It was as exciting as finding my first silver coin, only this time I had a witness. Dad couldn't understand why I was so excited. To me, it's not just about finding an 1898 coin. It's about having set a goal to find a 19th century coin this year and accomplishing that goal. It's about crossing a great milestone that promotes from the "Amateur detectorist" category to the "Almost intermediate detectorist" category. No one will ever appreciate this coin as much as I do.

The dime was in terrible shape. It was not greatly worn, but damaged from one hundred years of being ran over and scraped away. It was bent and gashed on both front and back. But it was mine.

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Tim Herschbach