A Grid Pattern to Find More “Stuff”
HAPPY NEW YEAR
I hope that you and your family have a GREAT and healthy new year. May the angel of treasure smile down upon your face and reward you with whatever it is that you are dreaming of or searching for.
Throughout the years I’ve had the pleasure to meet and metal detect/treasure hunt with many known pros as well as newbies to the hobby and with experienced searchers. From many of them, I’ve tried to learn techniques and ideas that would make my searches more interesting and rewarding. But I have also passed along information that would help them. Some were willing to accept my ideas and incorporate them into their hunts. Others though, kindly listened to my advice but went on their grumbling way complaining, “I never find anything interesting,” even though my ideas could help them retrieve more good “stuff.” One such fellow of the latter type was a childhood friend, “Craps”
We called him “ Craps” because as kids he would shoot street craps with us and was one of the luckiest winners of the game we’d ever known. Anyway, years ago “Craps” began metal detecting because he liked the “stuff” I was showing him that I found. But “Craps” wasn’t as lucky with metal detecting as he was with rolling those dice in “Back Alley” or the school restroom when skipping class as kids.
No matter how much I showed “Craps” he never used the ideas and thus ended up with enough pull-tabs to build a house. He complained repeatedly that he wasn’t finding anything good and said many times that he was going to quit the hobby. One of the easiest techniques I showed “Craps” that would have helped him find more than pull tabs was the “grid pattern.” However, “Craps” never used my idea, and soon after did quit the hobby. Unfortunately “Craps” passed away years ago and is probably now rolling the dice in the great above. (R.I.P. pal)
Cover More Ground and Find More Goodies
A grid pattern is a method of metal detecting that allows you to cover every inch of ground in a particular area. Use the “gid pattern” and you will locate items you would miss by using a haphazard method of just walking in any direction while swinging your detector. Using a grid pattern allows you to locate items that other detectorists have missed. A grid pattern forces you to become more efficient while detecting. Here's how it works.
Pick an area where you're going to detect. I usually use a 20 ft by 20 ft area. That's the area I'm going to cover with my coil before I move to another spot. To stay in line as you walk while detecting, pick an object like a tree or a bush, a fence post, or any object in front of you and walk toward it as you slowly swing your coil. Be sure to keep the coil level to the ground and overlap each swing. When you reach the object, turn around one-hundred and eighty degrees, find another object in front of you as a marker, and walk slowly while detecting toward that object. Again, it's crucial that as you swing your detector slowly, you overlap your swings. The overlapping of your swings gives the grid pattern its success. It ensures you are covering every inch of ground that you're detecting. It means you're optimizing your metal-detecting skills.
Continue to walk your grid, pick out objects to keep you in line, and swing your coil slowly as you cover the grid area completely. When finished with that area, move your grid pattern to the area next to where you just finished detecting. I grid off an area right next to where I finished searching. This way it ensures me that I have covered the entire area and hopefully have not missed any finds.
I know, like “Craps”, that using a grid pattern seems tedious. Many would rather get into an area and start swinging away wherever while missing the areas that may hold good finds.
Many times I have gone back to the same area seven or eight times using the “grid pattern” to be sure that I covered every inch of ground.
Try the grid pattern method. See if it helps to increase the number of good finds you recover.
New subscribers, if you haven’t seen my decade ago TV series, check it out.
My metal detecting/treasure hunting TV series, “Exploring History’s Treasures” EHT, was the first REAL, reality, show of its kind. There was no scripting, no planting or salting the ground with finds before we dug them. Exploring History’s Treasures can now be viewed here.
What a great suggestion! Just got down to the treasure coast of Florida. I'm sure the method will help.