Treasure Hunting With A Metal Detector  

                                          - by The BenchMaster

  
  Apart from computers, guess what other realm the microchip has improved
immensely?  Right: The new state-of-the-art metal detectors.

  Metal detectors have been around for a long time; about sixty years or so.
But until relatively recently, they've been severely limited as to the type
of ground they could penetrate.  All of the iron in the ground has been like
a solid wall to metal detectors, until now.

  The new wave of metal detectors can now penetrate these ferrous-rich areas,
and great discoveries await those who try.  

  The new technology has also enabled metal detectors to work correctly in
salt water.  The old styles worked, after a fashion, but not near to the
degree the new ones do.  

  I'll list out a few ways in which the current metal detector technology
can be used for fun and profit.  You don't have to buy the fanciest one on
the shelf (about a thousand bucks), but you'll certainly get more options,
the more you pay.  Mine cost $650, and can not only tell how deep a coin is
buried...but what type of coin it is!  Clever, eh?  It can also tell basic
metal types, such as "iron", "silver", "gold", and can even isolate and
identify pull-top tabs, the all-time bane of the treasure hunter.  So, a few
extra dollars spent now could save you endless hours later in the field.

                                      *

  Gold:

  We'd better get this one out of the way first.  Sorry, but gold, as a
metal, is really a bust with a metal detector, no matter how sophisticated.
It's way down near the end of the scale as far as metal detector sensitivity
goes, so if you're thinking of looking for gold nuggets, forget it.  Buy or
build a modern sluice box and go dredge a river like you're supposed to.

  Okay, that's it for the bad news.

                                      *

  The Submarine Bar:

  "Bartender!  Drinks are on me!", you holler, as you enter your favorite
pub after fishing three nice "nuggets" out of the ocean that day.  

  Diamonds.  With a spit and a rub, looking like the day they were born.  
The gold bands, themselves, have oxidized somewhat in the briny deep, but the
diamonds, themselves, are forever.

  And probably worth a pretty penny, too.


  Out in the ocean, around the place where the waves crash, is a trough that
runs the length of the shore.  Walking down from the beach, you first hit
shallow water, then the trough, then there's a small rise, then the gradual
decent continues.

  That small rise, where things like lost diamond rings get lodged against,
is called the submarine bar.  Belly up to the bar, boys!


  First you find out which local beaches are the hip beaches for the rich
crowd.  There's Mom in her big mansion, and she's finally allowing the kids
to drag her to the beach for the day.  There's always that one precious age
where the kids are big enough to go in the water, but not unsupervised.  So
there's Mom up to her waist, and there's that big fancy rock on her finger
that she NEVER takes off, not ever, and there she is in that cold water.  Her
fingers shrink, the suds and foam act as lubrication, and suddenly there's
little Billy tossing her the football or Frisbee, hollering "Throw it, Mommy!
Throw it, Mommy!  THROW IT!!"

  And she does.

  And that big rock flies off her finger and is just a glint in the sunlight,
never to be seen again.

  Or, so she (and the insurance adjuster) thought.


  And now here you are, bellied up to the ol' submarine bar.  You've got your
wet suit on and a metal detector in your hands.  Nearby floats a tethered
inner tube, with a sieve made from a wood frame and 1/4" screen fit into the
middle.  You walk the length of the submarine bar, dodging the occasional
wave and in general having a ball.  The weather's warm, the children play,
gulls cry in the overhead summer sky.

  Suddenly, you get a little beep on your headphones.  You center in on the
beep, grab the tethered scoop which was floating nearby, and dig out the area
you've got marked with your toe.  You dump it into the inner tube, and the
natural lapping motion of the waves sifts the sand through the screen.
Nothing is revealed except for some small stones and a few decaying shells.
Keeping your toe firmly over the spot, you grab your metal detector and try
again.  This time it seems to pinpoint a few inches to the right, so you grab
the scoop, make a big cut, and dump the contents into the sieve.

  Bingo!  Your eyes catch a glint in the sunlight and you reach down to pick
up a first-class nugget.  "Thanks, Mom!", you think to yourself, as you
pocket your first find of the day.  You believe the occasional emerald or
ruby is okay, but diamonds are really the best, holding their value like they
do.  All in all, you're quite the little realist.


  Happy little scenario, eh?  And very real, and very obtainable.  And you
don't need a very sophisticated metal detector to do it, just a saltwater-
proof one.  An old wet suit if need be, some cheapie headphones, an old
inner tube, some wood and screen; you're in business.

  The two basic factors involved in selecting the right beach are simply
"where the rich go", and "shallow slope".  Some beaches are too steeply
sloped, so that's where you need to do some homework.  And, of course, the
timing of when you hunt is important, meaning, low tide.  Or lower.

  You can also do this routine at what I call "Brown's Beach".  In the early
part of this century there were lots of small independently-owned beaches in
the coastal cities.  You'd pay your nickel and spend the day there.  Well,
ol' Brown's Beach is long gone, but those gems that flew off those fingers
aren't, so your mission is to dig up some old city maps, do a little triang-
ulation if need be, and find Brown's Beach.  It might just be part of some
vast public expanse of public city beach, or it may be behind some old
abandoned pier on the back side of some warehouse.  Either way, you know what
to do.  Dig in.

  And if you want to get REALLY serious, there's this:

  The neap tide is the lowest tide of the month.  Once, every so many years,
there's a special neap tide that goes even lower than normal.  There will be
a time when the tide is supremely low, when the offshore breezes blow stiff,
when there's a high-pressure area out to sea, when the moon's pull is just
right...

and then, just maybe then...

you just might reach the diamond-shooter's Sacred Ground:

  The second submarine bar.


  Yes, there's another.  What doesn't get caught on the first submarine bar
will most likely get caught on the second.  By that time the water's getting
deeper, and there aren't any waves crashing on top of it to upset things.
The diamonds lying there that you don't find may very well lie there forever.

  Good luck, sailor.
 
                                      *

  Lakes and rivers:

    This would basically be the same situation, except that you'd probably be
actually diving, so you might need some scuba gear and weights.  You'd search
below active swimming and diving (look out!) areas, and if you could perfect
an underwater sieve, that would be outstanding.  Otherwise, you'd come up to
the surface for sifting your catch.  If the little imps puncture your inner
tube while you're down below, well, that's just part of the game. :)

                                      *

  Key coins:

  Like to do a little coin shootin'?  With the new state-of-the-art metal
detectors around, you can hunt for coins like nobody's ever been able to
before.  This is a statement with immense impact!

  So, let's take it step-by-step:  First, a "key coin" is a coin that's
extra-valuable, usually 'cause a mint burned down that year or something, so
not many were made.

  Second, we redefine the term "Boom Town".  We traditionally think of them
in terms of gold, silver, even logging, but there were thousands of Boom
Towns in the 1800's, booming for a few years over bauxite or molybdenum or
zinc, then abandoned, becoming ghost towns.  But Boom Towns were what made
Big Industry thrive, and what made Boom Towns thrive was cold, hard cash.  
So the Boom Towns always received their share of fresh coinage from the
mints, even during times of shortage.

  Now let's take a map of the western half of the United States as an
example, and make our first overlay just those areas that are rich in ferrous
material; those areas that have defied successful metal detecting for more
than half a century.  In general, that means California, Nevada and Colorado.

  Then we overlay the dates of the key coins over our map.  Then we overlay
the dates of our Boom Towns.  Voila!  Here and there will be matches.  Let's
say Rockdale, Colorado, boomed during the years 1871-74, until the bauxite
mine petered out.  But lo and behold, the Denver Mint burned to the ground in
1872!  Rockdale was a full-fledged "industrial town on the rise" by then, so
when the San Francisco Mint doled out the cash, Rockdale got its fair share.

  Now it's today, and here you are with your trick metal detector, and for
the first time this ferrous ground, that has been gone over by hordes of
treasure hunters in the past, will finally yield its secrets.

  Examining ruins, themselves, is kind of a bust, just because there's so
much iron junk around.  These metal detectors are good, but not THAT good.
And while the old "coin falling through the crack in the wooden sidewalk" is
nice, there's much more to gain.

  One axiom all treasure hunters focus on is, "Until relatively recently,
the GROUND has been the bank of the common man".  In the 1800's, banks were
constantly getting robbed (and the bandits were burying the treasure, and
getting killed later in gunfights, and never reclaiming the treasure, and
we're going to find it...but that's later), so the average man did what man
has always done with his most precious possessions, he buried them.

  Another thing treasure hunters key in on is the idea of "putting yourself
in their shoes".  Okay, there you are, you finally hit it big in the saloon's
casino, you've got $220 in gold coins in a small iron box, you live on a
little farm a mile from Rockdale, Colorado, it's 1873, the family's asleep,
and you want to hide your wealth.  What do you do?

  Well, it's got to be outside, 'cause the house may catch on fire or
something, and you can't rip up boards or whatever while the others are
asleep.  We're figuring you might want to stash this for a while, so just
walking out the back door and burying it behind some bush won't work.  You
start walking down the fence line.  Maybe part of the fence is stone, maybe
the fence posts are buried in the ground and supported by a pile of stones.
You walk to the third fence post, dig a hole, bury the loot, then promptly
die from some sudden, nameless disease three months later with the location
of the treasure unrevealed.

  And now it's today.  Surprise!

  You walk out in straight lines from the ruins of the foundation, looking
for signs of fence posts.  You find in the undergrowth an old pile of stones.
You rope off guidelines, then proceed to methodically inspect the area, from
house to stones and beyond.  Twenty feet further, you find another pile of
stones!  You start carefully sweeping the area with the detector, side to
side, a couple feet at a time.

  Suddenly you get a different sound coming out of the squawk box.

  A sound that says "Here.  Buried Deep.  Find me."

                                      *
  
  The infamous "treasure map" notwithstanding, there are lots of tricky ways
to stash loot in a non-obvious place you want to be able to find later.  For
instance, a large tree with a dipping, crooked branch would serve quite well.
You throw a rope over the dip in the branch, then walk a straight line from
the tree trunk through the rope, out 30 paces or something, and dig.  Maybe
half-bury a big rock there to mark the spot.

  A hundred and twenty years later, that gnarly old tree may very well still
be there, and with a little extrapolation for growth, you should be able to
mark off a fairly credible line to try.  Or just check around any boulders
within 50 paces of a likely-looking tree stump.

  Always, of course, the best places are those that are way off the beaten
track, to minimize the amount of junk in the ground.  The more out in the
wilds you are and the less you hear sounds on the detector, the more
thrilling they are when you hear them.

  Happy shootin'!

                                      *

  Bad Bill:

  That's what I call him.  He's not "Jesse James" or "Billy The Kid" or
anybody famous, he just robbed a few stages, hid the bread up by his camp in
Red Bluff Canyon, got in a big shoot-out with the posse and died with the
location of the strong box unrevealed.  Over the years, thousands of treasure
hunters have hunted for Bad Bill's treasure, but nobody's ever found it.

  And now here you are, in the little town library in Blanch, Oklahoma,
reading through the journals the pioneers kept, looking for clues.  Suddenly,
you read something about Red Bluff Canyon being "acrost the rever", but Red
Bluff Canyon is SOUTH of the river!  The topographical maps are WRONG!  Some-
how, in all those canyonlands, Red Bluff Canyon was mixed up with Deer Creek
Canyon by the government surveyors!

  You hustle out to desolate Deer Creek Canyon and start investigating.  You
patiently mark the checked areas off with rope as you carefully examine
likely-looking places to bury loot.

  Two hot, dusty days pass, and your arms ache from holding the detector,
even though you're using the special arm brace, making it MUCH easier.  Your
feet are sore, you're tired, you'd just as soon give up.  You haven't heard a
buzz for hours, and what detections you've had have turned out to be unident-
ifiable pieces of rusty iron or decayed tin cans.  The sweat drips from your
brow as you carefully sweep a likely-looking area behind a big boulder.

  Suddenly, you hear a low, pulsing tone issue from the speaker.  Even though
it's hot out, you feel the hairs on the back of your neck start to rise.

  You dig into the earth with your pick and, two feet down, it thunks into
something solid.  Something not made of stone.

  You pick your way around the object, and brush off the loose dirt from the
top of what appears to be a box.  Under your fingers appear the letters:

                               ..LLS FAR..


  Could there be a greater moment in a man's life?

  You lift the heavy Wells Fargo box from the ground and stand over it.


  And I'll just leave you right there.  The lesson learned is "Research".

                                      *

  Caves:

    Pick a stagecoach trail that leads between the local federal bank and the
local Boom Town.  The cash must go through!  Except that Bad Bills' brother,
Bad Sam, has other ideas.  He robs the stage, runs off with the loot, and
ponders where to hide it.  Unlike his brother, who's got that neat canyon
hideaway, Bad Sam's on the move.  But he knows of a secret cave up in the
mountains, so he goes there to stash the cash.  He hides it in the wall of
the cave, not the floor, clever him.  Too bad he wasn't clever enough to
avoid that hanging posse two days later.

  And clever you, here you are.  You did your homework; enthusiastic you even
joined the local spelunkers club, and you've got maps of hundreds of caves
in this part of the state.  You checked your key coin dates and Boom Town
years, the stage route to Rockdale, and Bad Sam's known locations.  Off you
went, metal detector in hand, searched a number of nearby caves, and...


                                      *

  Today:

  Okay, how about today?  Now it's 1995, through some incredible happenstance
you suddenly own a big box of gold or something, and you want to stash it for
a long time.  Like, until things cool down, heh.  A bank safety deposit box
would involve keys and names so you don't like that idea.

  You decide to bury it.  Clever you.

  And you never can tell when some crazy thing will happen, like the power
company will come rolling through your back yard to put in a new line, so you
decide to bury it far, far away.

  But where?

  First off, you may not want to dig this thing up for twenty years, so it's
got to be some place semi-permanent.  Since you never can tell what vacant
lot will suddenly burst into a shopping mall, your natural inclination will
be to head outside...perhaps WAY outside...the city limits.

  You can't take the chance of being seen while burying it, so the open
desert seems kind of risky.  Besides, all those canyonlands look the same,
just ask any government surveyor.  

  You start thinking of the woods.  You can't just drive aimlessly around,
stopping at "the third hairpin turn" or something.  You're smart enough to
know you'll never remember THAT in twenty years, it's got to be someplace
distinguishable.

  Perhaps a landmark or monument.

  So you might think of something like some 1,000-year-old tree or some
famous local natural stone formation.  Fine, you go there, you walk past the
monument another thirty paces, stop behind the largest boulder and look
furtively around.  That scenario sound about right?  Your own variations on
the theme are more than welcome.

  You bury your prize and time goes by.

  And whoops, here YOU are, metal detector in hand.  Probing around this
boulder and that and...surprise, you get a faint reading.

  Four swings of the pickaxe later and it's a STRONG reading.

                                      *

  There are, of course, as many clever ways and places to hide things as
there are people, but it's also true that a smart person would realize that
certain places are "natural" hiding places, so he wouldn't hide anything
there, it being an obvious place for snoopy people to poke around.  Snoopy
people with sophisticated expensive microchip-controlled metal detectors, for
instance.  Hence, the crooked tree branch idea; something random.  There are
scads of books on all this; none of it's particularly new.  What's exciting
about the field today is our ability to penetrate previously unreadable
ground.  Just `following in the footsteps' of famous coin-shooters from days
of yore would turn up some ripe stuff.

  One random event you may not have thought about would be a once or twice-
a-year event, such as something occurring at the Vernal or Atumnal Equinoxes
involving the sun and some pointed landmark that would cast a distinct shadow
against a cliff or something on just that one day.  Better would be the sun
casting light through some natural opening in some rock (or two openings) on
only that one day when the sun's at it's highest lattitude, the Vernal
Equinox.  Best yet would be such an event that USED to happen, but due to the
stone formation's erosion, doesn't any more and nobody's made the connection.

  Just spitballing, you understand.

                                      *

  It might also be mentioned that going out into the wilds can be somewhat
dangerous, and you should give it the attention it deserves.  First-aid kits,
survival knowledge, adequate foodstuffs, spare parts, topographical maps, a
compass and rangefinder, the ability to orientate yourself, a strong vehicle
you can sleep in, at least one other person, high boots for snakes, a way to
recharge the detector's rechargeable batteries from the car battery, the
whole deal.  Optional equipment would include a long-range two-way emergency
radio, and <sigh> one of those neat location-finders that links up to satel-
lites and tells you where you are on the Earth within 9 feet.  Now THAT
would be the coolest thing ever when it comes to locating yourself on a
topographical map searching for some "lost" mine.


  Well, that's about it.  There are variations of the above, such as shooting
for coins in parks, abandoned or freshly torn-down buildings, under grand-
stands at ballparks, whatever turns you on.  The microchip has also vastly
improved the equipment used for sunken treasure.  You can make money looking
for lost items, such as jewelry or water pipes, and some people focus on one,
specific semi-famous lost treasure and will spend years researching it and
probing the hills.

  Myself, I like the Bad Bill scenario, the crook who wasn't Big Time, they
never found the loot, many tried (unfortunately, the ground was highly
ferrous, so their metal detectors didn't work very well, bummer), and now
here we are.  Hopefully that would stick us really off the beaten track so
we wouldn't run into too much junk in the ground.


  Or rather, you wouldn't.

  
  Me, I'm hangin' out at the ol' submarine bar, on the south end of Maui, off
some posh resort.  Sorry I tried to throw you off my trail, there.  Did it
from habit.


  Us old treasure hunters are sneaky that way. 

  
                                        Unca Benchie
    

Amiga-only BBS:
408) 238-5885
benchie@cup.portal.com