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    The Successful Treasure Hunter’s Essential Guide
    The Successful Treasure Hunter’s Essential Guide
    The Successful Treasure Hunter’s Essential Guide
    Ebook161 pages1 hour

    The Successful Treasure Hunter’s Essential Guide

    By David Villanueva

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    About this ebook

    Having been involved in the hobby of metal detecting or treasure hunting since the early 1970s I have a good idea of the problems metal detectorists face. A couple of years ago I asked a large group of detectorists what their biggest problem was with regards to the metal detecting hobby. I have to say the results didn’t particularly surprise me. One quarter (25%) of respondents replied: obtaining search permission and almost as many (24%) said: research and finding sites. Archaeological and Establishment interference accounted for another 13%, while choosing a metal detector and overcoming detector limitations accounted for another 10% each. The remaining 18% of the group were fairly evenly split amongst a number of concerns, which included: identifying and preserving finds, ethics, coping with buried trash, choice of coil and techniques for locating finds and gold.
    Although I have written books on site research and obtaining permission, I was interested to read an article by Ryan Williams in Treasure Hunting, June 2009. In his article, Ryan said: “When I first started detecting, I thought that the most difficult thing about it must be listening to the sounds the detector makes – interpreting them and walking around a huge field looking for a needle in a haystack. I’ve since decided the hardest thing about metal detecting is finding out who owns that lovely ploughed field and actually gaining search permission!” Nothing new there then!
    I feel your pain, so I have compiled this guide with the purpose of offering solutions to your main concerns and, as a bonus, I have included a few other useful ideas to help you to get the best out of your hobby. To start you on your way, here are my four super tips for successful treasure hunting.
    Get out and search. Equip yourself with clothing and footwear to cope with all but the most hostile weather conditions and include a waterproof cover for your metal detector in your kit. Build yourself a portfolio of different types of sites so that you have sites available, which can be searched throughout the year. Metal detecting sites you can consider are: allotments, arable land, beaches, building sites, camp sites, footpaths, foreshores, gardens, meadows, orchards, parkland, pasture, set-a-side, watercourses and woodland. Arable land is often only available for a few weeks in autumn or spring, whereas beaches, foreshores and watercourses can be searched all year round. Orchards are generally searchable between autumn and spring, while pasture and woodland should be searchable most of the year.
    Research, research, research! If you habitually go metal detecting where nothing much happened in the past then all you are likely to find is – nothing much. You need to concentrate on searching sites where there was human activity in the past and the more numerous and wealthy the humans the more you are likely to find with your metal detector. You can start by visiting your local library and reading about the local history of your neighbourhood.
    Learn to dowse. According to the British Society of Dowsers anyone can learn to dowse. Traditionally dowsing has been much used for finding water, however in essence dowsing can be used to find anything, unknown, lost, buried or hidden and so lends itself well to metal and mineral prospecting, treasure hunting and metal detecting. I personally have found dowsing invaluable in saving enormous amounts of time by avoiding areas barren of finds and by developing the technique of using just one dowsing rod I can guide my metal detector swiftly to good finds.
    Look after your finds. You’ve worked hard to recover your finds, the last thing you want to do is to throw them in a box and leave them to corrode to dust, for if you don’t take a few basic precautions that is what is likely to happen.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Villanueva
    Release dateAug 5, 2014
    ISBN9781311749727
    The Successful Treasure Hunter’s Essential Guide
    Author

    David Villanueva

    David Villanueva (1951- ) was born in Birmingham, England, where he grew up. In the early 1970s his mother bought him a copy of Ted Fletcher’s book A Fortune Under Your Feet, which, together with David’s great interest in history inspired him to buy a metal detector and take up treasure hunting as a hobby. Family stories about the origins and history behind David’s Spanish surname also spawned the hobby of genealogy. A career move brought David to Whitstable in Kent, England, and it was here that David’s love of history research developed into great success both in metal detecting and family history research. A little later David felt the urge to put pen to paper and started writing articles for the two British metal detecting magazines - Treasure Hunting and The Searcher – which have published more than two dozens of David’s articles between them. Success in writing articles soon led to David’s first book: The Successful Treasure Hunter’s Essential Dowsing Manual: How to Easily Develop Your Latent Skills to Find Treasure in Abundance, published in both digital format and paperback. To date, David has written over a dozen books in the metal detecting, treasure hunting and family history genres.

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      Book preview

      The Successful Treasure Hunter’s Essential Guide - David Villanueva

      INTRODUCTION

      Having been involved in the hobby of metal detecting or treasure hunting since the early 1970s I have a good idea of the problems metal detectorists face. A couple of years ago I asked a large group of detectorists what their biggest problem was with regards to the metal detecting hobby. I have to say the results didn’t particularly surprise me. One quarter (25%) of respondents replied: obtaining search permission and almost as many (24%) said: research and finding sites. Archaeological and Establishment interference accounted for another 13%, while choosing a metal detector and overcoming detector limitations accounted for another 10% each. The remaining 18% of the group were fairly evenly split amongst a number of concerns, which included: identifying and preserving finds, ethics, coping with buried trash, choice of coil and techniques for locating finds and gold.

      Although I have written books on site research and obtaining permission, I was interested to read an article by Ryan Williams in Treasure Hunting, June 2009. In his article, Ryan said: When I first started detecting, I thought that the most difficult thing about it must be listening to the sounds the detector makes – interpreting them and walking around a huge field looking for a needle in a haystack. I’ve since decided the hardest thing about metal detecting is finding out who owns that lovely ploughed field and actually gaining search permission! Nothing new there then!

      I feel your pain, so I have compiled this guide with the purpose of offering solutions to your main concerns and, as a bonus, I have included a few other useful ideas to help you to get the best out of your hobby. To start you on your way, here are my four super tips for successful treasure hunting.

      Get out and search. Equip yourself with clothing and footwear to cope with all but the most hostile weather conditions and include a waterproof cover for your metal detector in your kit. Build yourself a portfolio of different types of sites so that you have sites available, which can be searched throughout the year. Metal detecting sites you can consider are: allotments, arable land, beaches, building sites, camp sites, footpaths, foreshores, gardens, meadows, orchards, parkland, pasture, set-a-side, watercourses and woodland. Arable land is often only available for a few weeks in autumn or spring, whereas beaches, foreshores and watercourses can be searched all year round. Orchards are generally searchable between autumn and spring, while pasture and woodland should be searchable most of the year.

      Research, research, research! If you habitually go metal detecting where nothing much happened in the past then all you are likely to find is – nothing much. You need to concentrate on searching sites where there was human activity in the past and the more numerous and wealthy the humans the more you are likely to find with your metal detector. You can start by visiting your local library and reading about the local history of your neighbourhood.

      Learn to dowse. According to the British Society of Dowsers anyone can learn to dowse. Traditionally dowsing has been much used for finding water, however in essence dowsing can be used to find anything, unknown, lost, buried or hidden and so lends itself well to metal and mineral prospecting, treasure hunting and metal detecting. I personally have found dowsing invaluable in saving enormous amounts of time by avoiding areas barren of finds and by developing the technique of using just one dowsing rod I can guide my metal detector swiftly to good finds.

      Look after your finds. You’ve worked hard to recover your finds, the last thing you want to do is to throw them in a box and leave them to corrode to dust, for if you don’t take a few basic precautions that is what is likely to happen. A useful FREE guide to conservation is available from the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) http://www.finds.org.uk/conservation/ or your local Finds Liaison Officer.

      This book is only available as an E-book, however a similar but much more comprehensive guide is available:

      METAL DETECTING MADE EASY

      A Guide for Beginners & Reference for All

      (True Treasure Books, 2014)

      METAL DETECTING MADE EASY: A Guide for Beginners and Reference for All, Soft Cover, 210mm x 146mm, 132 pages, (True Treasure Books, 2014) ISBN 978 0 9550325 7 8 (Also an E-Book)

      http://www.truetreasurebooks.net

      METAL DETECTORS

      In the case of recovering metallic treasures there is an overwhelming array of metal detectors to choose from. If you already own a metal detector, then you have probably made a good choice and frankly any metal detector worth its name will perform the task reasonably well. For those of you who are not already in the metal detecting hobby I will make a few suggestions but the final choice of what to buy must be yours. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard the question: Which metal detector is best? The question should really be: Which metal detector is best for me? For the answer depends very much on you and your requirements. How fit are you? Do you want to search beaches, rivers, farmland, underwater?

      The vast majority of metal detectors are designed for finding coins, jewellery and similar sized artefacts in the top few inches of ground on inland sites while discriminating out the undesirable contaminants: iron and aluminium foil, for that is what most participants of the metal detecting hobby want. Iron is a major contaminant on farmland and aluminium foil abounds on dry beaches and recreational areas. Most popular machines work on a Very Low Frequency, Transmit/Receive system, discriminate audibly and/or visually and use the motion system of ground cancelling. Ground cancelling nulls effects from minerals in the ground and the motion system requires the machine to be kept moving otherwise desirable objects are also cancelled out. The system actually works a lot better than might be imagined. To pinpoint a target there is usually a selectable non-motion all metal mode although it is easy enough to pinpoint in motion mode by passing the head over the target in a cross pattern. Machines at the lower end of the market may be non-motion and may have little or no discrimination although by nature, these types are fairly insensitive to iron but very sensitive to aluminium foil.

      Within the motion detector range there are choices to be made regarding the desired amount of user control over the machines electronic operation. Manufacturers are clearly split between simple ‘switch on and go’ and fully programmable detectors; some manufacturer’s making only one type and some making both types. Logically the computer controlled programmable type will be better able to maximise depth and sort out the trash from the cash but you could spend a great deal of time messing about with the settings trying to achieve perfection instead of getting on with the searching. My own view is that if you are getting at all involved with dowsing then that will more than make up for any advantages of the computer control without the complexities but at the end of the day the choice between simplicity or bells and whistles is entirely yours. White’s have been the traditional UK choice for programmable types but Garrett, C-Scope and Minelab also offer programmable models.

      A less popular type of hobby metal detector works on a principle known as pulse induction which is a non-motion deep seeking system. These machines are notoriously sensitive to iron and very few discriminate between ferrous and non-ferrous metals (those that do discriminate tend to reject some desirable objects.) Pulse machines are firm favourites among beachcombers and underwater treasure hunters because of their ability to reach greater depths on most targets, typically twice that of many VLF machines, and to cut through severe mineralisation such as black sand.

      There are two types of very specialised machines generally available one being underwater detectors, which are sealed to keep out water and constructed to withstand the pressures encountered in deep water. The other speciality is the so-called hoard hunters, which are usually some sort of ‘two-box’ design, carried like a suitcase, rather than a forearm extension as with conventional detectors. Hoard hunters are designed to find only large objects, the size of a pint (565ml) pot upwards. They do not discriminate between ferrous and non-ferrous metals as treasure may be buried in an iron container (detectors cannot detect through metal) and they are very deep seeking capable of probing several feet into the ground.

      The standard coil size fitted to the majority of detectors is between eight and ten inches diameter, which is a compromise to enable the detector to perform reasonably well under a variety of conditions. Most manufacturers produce a range of optional coil sizes typically from 3.5 (89mm) up to 15 (380mm) diameter or more and these can be employed to improve performance under certain conditions. As a rule of thumb the larger the coil the deeper it will detect but they have their disadvantages too: less sensitivity to smaller targets, more difficult to use on heavily mineralised or iron contaminated ground and less accurate pinpointing. Larger coils are also heavier and more cumbersome to use although the weight can be compensated for by hip mounting the detector control box if the machine has that facility.

      In addition to size variation there are three different types of coil construction: concentric, 2D or widescan and symmetrical electromagnetic field or SEF. Concentric coils, usually fitted to metal detectors as standard, have an inverted cone detection pattern, which achieves maximum depth only at the centre of the coil. Widescan coils have a pudding basin shaped detection pattern and while they don’t achieve as great a depth as the same size concentric coil they do take in a larger volume of ground per sweep. If it’s fast ground coverage you are after, the widescan coil is better and if it’s depth you

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