Knowing how to leverage the Excalibur metal detector’s advantages increases the odds of more precious metal in your finds pouch at the end of the day. Here are three points that may help:
1. Always qualify a peripheral null!
This is one advantage of the Excalibur that often goes untapped. Investigate your nulls as you go over them. Particularly if you do not know where they were in your sweep. The Excalibur gives you a nice halo of sensitivity that radiates laterally from the sides of the coil. Sometimes targets will be outside of your sweep and the Excalibur will talk to you and null.
It might be a brief null or change in threshold frequency. But that slight burp of a sound is the machines way of saying... psst... over here you missed one! At this point you take a few steps back. SLOW DOWN and sweep even wider than you were before. I have been amazed at how far outside my sweep some of these signals have been. So by "qualify" I mean always know where the nulls are and go over them. If they are peripheral they will sometimes turn into a real (Non Null) signal that warrant a dig.
Underwater detecting with the Excalibur metal detector
2. Understand Salinity!
Salinity effects your detector more than you think. I had my Excalibur set up for a favorite beach. I tweaked and rode the controls but not much. The next day I was at the same beach, same spot and the same settings were not even close to usable. I heard two surfers walking by and one was complaining about how much saltier the water tasted compared to yesterday. Salinity can vary from day to day and the salt matrix makes the detector work harder to find the signal. When the water is saltier you have to be right over the signal to get a hit. This is also one of the reasons that Pinpoint is not always deeper than Discriminate on a saltwater beach.
It is another reason your settings will vary from day to day, beach to beach, etc. The takeaway here is to adjust your settings often. Some beaches let you get away with pushing the sensitivity more, while others vary from day to day. Also the bigger your coil the more pronounced the effect of the salinity. By being aware of this changing variable you can be vigilant to keep your Excalibur on its best settings for each beach and respective geography.
Some of my gold ring collection found with the Excalibur metal detector
3. Dig Everything (Almost)
When I did the Basic Ear Training CD for the Excalibur there was a bit of controversy about its application. 90% of the time I dig everything with my Excalibur, but I am very confident with skipping bottle caps. Recently it was the end of the day and I started skipping the pull tabs after finding clusters of them. A few days ago someone was throwing pennies in front of me as I detected. I was confidant to pass on them. Using time effectively is critical. It is also critical to know when to take advantage of this wonderful Excalibur advantage. Note I am very suspicious of signals that are by themselves. Especially a solo signal in the water. So it might sound like a penny or a pull tab, but if it is by itself I dig it. But on the other hand I might not want to spend 20 minutes fighting to recover a pocket spill in the surf when I can cover more area. So if I dig 3 coins and there are still 5 more signals in the same small area I might move on.
Especially when the coins are new and unblemished you know it is a fresh pocket spill. Do not underestimate the usefulness of this Excalibur Advantage.
Best wishes for lots of glitter in your scoop and safe hunting!
Tony Diana
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