From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: Metal detector
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 03:07:43 -0400
Message-ID: <iosue3plv82l09qknngm1fmj74fpqbsleg@4ax.com>

On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 01:06:17 -0400, bill horne <redydog@rye.net> wrote:

>FMB wrote:
>> "bill horne" <redydog@rye.net> wrote in message
>> news:022f9e6a$0$28430$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com...
>>> If I wanted the best metal detector I could get for under $200, which one
>>> would I buy? Why?

>I was hoping not to have to be busy. I was hoping somebody would say,
>"I got a Thisun 300 Mark II for $167.79, and it does this and that
>some other things, and depending on the mode you put it in, it'll
>find rings, dimes, belt buckles, Krugerrands, or Camaros down to 7.3
>inches below what you're walking on."

That's like asking "What's the best RV under $10,000 dollars."  Answer: "It depends.
What do you want to do with it?"

Rings:         White's
Dimes:         Whites's
Belt Buckles:  Whites's
Krugerrands:   White's
Camaros:       Uh, why bother.


>
>Or, "I've had and used a Thisun and a Thatun, and I liked the Thatun
>better because yadayadayada."

White's because it has the best metal discrimination (if you're looking for Camaros
you certainly don't want to stumble over a cache of Krugerrands), the best ground
rejection, the best auto-tuning, multifrequency (LF penetrates, HF gives location
resolution), the most precise targeting (you don't want to dig up the whole north 40
to find that camaro.) and probably the best ergonometrics.  They have the experience
(since the 60s), the technology and the patents.  Like they used to say about IBM,
"you can't go wrong buying a White's."

Here's how it usually goes, as with many purchases:  The lightbulb goes off in your
brain and you say, "Shazam!, today I want to go metal detecting".  You bop down to
the local big box store and look 'em over.  This is the cheapest shit that they can
put lipstick on and call pretty.  You select one that looks nice (nice packaging
usually) and trot home.

You fire the thing off and go out in your yard.  Wow! treasure everywhere.  You dig
one up.  A nail.  You dig another one.  A washer.  Yet another.  A pull tab from a
Dawg.  A few more times and you shoot it or plop it. Then you take one of two paths.

The first path is, you say "f*ck it, I didn't really want to go metal detecting
anyway" and then get another dawg before you sit down to bitch about metal detectors
in RORT.

The second path is, you do your homework, realizing that the price of the first one
was the tuition to the school of metal detecting hard knocks.  You look around and
see that just about everyone says "White's".  At that point you do one of two things:

You decide that you're different and that you don't need all those features like
everyone else so you pick another brand of metal detector priced where  you think it
ought to be.  It arrives.  Goto 4 paragraphs up and repeat.  You've paid your second
round of tuition.

Or you up your budget a little and buy a new White's or find a used one.  Then you go
have the fun you should have been having weeks ago, confident that you won't mistake
a chest full of Krugerrands for that buried camaro you've been searching for.  Just
set the switch to "reject anything worth a sh*t" and proceed.

A 30 year old White's will find more treasure in one outing than those Wallyworld
specials will in a lifetime.  Unless you're looking for Dawg tabs and camaros, of
course.

>
>And I hoped it would include, "...and I got it at WalMart."

The ones at Walmart probably WILL find that camaro if it isn't buried too deeply. And
the dawg tabs, of course.

John

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: Metal detector
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:11:27 -0400
Message-ID: <pccue3di4hsjs31tvcglnb9hv8e5bc19hh@4ax.com>

On Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:45:21 -0400, bill horne <redydog@rye.net> wrote:

>If I wanted the best metal detector I could get for under $200, which
>one would I buy? Why?

Assuming you're precious metal treasure hunting, White's.  There's really no other
brand to consider unless you enjoy digging up nails, bottle caps, pull tabs, chewing
gum wrappers and that kind of stuff.  Takes all the fun out of detecting.

I have a friend who's a fanatic treasure hunter and has a detector store selling
several brands.  I've gone with him several times and have tried various brands. Even
a 20 or 30 year old White's beats just about every thing else I've tried. Especially
here in the South with the huge amount of high iron content, highly conductive soil,
lesser detectors will drive you crazy.

I did a quick Google on "White's metal detector" and saw that several dealers are
offering the 'classic' in the $300 price range.  You can stretch the budget that
much, can't you?  Or look for used detectors.  Treasure hunting is a LOT more work
than it looks and some of it isn't fun.  Such as hunting down property owners and
securing permission to hunt.  Lots of folks try it and don't like it.  Ergo lots of
used detectors on the market.

If you just want something to find buried pipes and the like then most any but the
very cheapest will do.  I have one for that purpose that I picked up at a flea market
for something like $20.

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: Metal detector
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 01:25:40 -0400
Message-ID: <dlb1f3h7350n9b14vca0n73ff8oj8numvq@4ax.com>

On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:39:45 -0400, bill horne <redydog@rye.net> wrote:

>You may have failed to notice that I said "buy" a MD - not "invest"
>in one. Looking for shells and odd driftwood on the beach doesn't
>increase my net worth, and I have no illusions that pushing a MD
>would either.
>
>If I had gold in my creek, I'd buy a pan just to see if I could slosh
>a little - with no expectation or even hope of finding enough to even
>pay for the pan. Beats watching TV.
>
>I've so far spent about $1200 getting my TT in shape for the road
>again. Do I expect to recover that in some sort of savings? No. But I
>do expect it to buy a little fun. And I won't even care if doesn't
>buy $1200 worth of fun. "Profit" is no longer in my working vocabulary.

Well, you didn't exactly tell us what use you had in mind.

It's all fun if you don't allow it to turn into w*o*r*k.  Finding War for Southern
Independence relics is fun - lots of 'em around here, but finding precious metal
trinkets is fun-er.

I spent a lot of time with my buddy in PA metal detecting, mostly looking for
precious metal.  We'd hit the lakefront beaches after a long weekend and pick up all
manner of gold jewelry.  No w*o*r*k involved in sifting the sand under each hit.

He was pretty big into the hobby so he did a lot of historical research to find old
homesteads, especially in the coal mining parts of PA.  I was with him one day near
Mt Carmel when he hit the proverbial pot of gold.  Well, perhaps the demitasse cup of
gold.  A glass-top quart mason jar about half full of gold and silver coins.  Dug
from beside where his research said the back porch of an old miner's house had been.
Obviously the guy's savings.  Now THAT was fun.

It's NOT fun digging up a plethora of iron and aluminum scrap (cheap detectors can't
distinguish between the non-ferrous metals).  It's not fun to get only a vague
location of the goodie so that you have to move a lot of dirt.  Leaving an area
looking like the aftermath of an artillery barrage gets people kicked out of
promising locations.  That's where the quality detector comes in.

Getting a precise location and depth on the goodie so that the ground can be slit
with a bayonet, the goodie extracted and the grass stomped back into place, leaving
no signs, is the right way to do it.

I'm getting interested in treasure hunting again so I'm on the lookout for a used
Whites.  Lots of very fertile territory here.  I learned two things of interest last
week.  The exact location of a German WWII POW camp that I knew had been in the area
and that a friend of mine owns the property.  I can hardly wait to metal-detect that
area.

There was some excitement here a couple of weeks ago.  A guy who was gold dredging in
Coker Creek (scene of a mini-gold rush at the first part of the last century) found a
thumb-sized gold nugget.  Bet he was having fun!

John