DetectingWales.com

i don't do a lot of field detecting,most of my time is spent on the beach[a few days a month] when on the beach i don't bother with iron finds,like everyone I've found it's a waste of time.I've always wondered if the field detectors amongst us ever find anything interesting that's iron !
if the finds are a bit scarce in your fields, do you dig all the iron sounds as well and if so has it  been successful.

Strange you should have made this posting banjo. I was showing my Son, who came for a visit, some of the unusual things I'd found since I started detecting, many of which are iron. It made me realise how much I am missing by not digging the iron signals as I used to. Now that I am disking out iron I often come home with almost nothing.
I have decided to go back to square one and dig more. The thing is, you never know what might come up and even some of the 'crud' can be interesting. It's easy to make the mistake of saying 'It's only iron' but just think what was made of iron and you realise what you might miss.
The only restriction I will make is size and shape, but that's easy to work out. If it's too big don't dig it.

Val

It's true - you never know what might come up.  If the signal is clearly iron I generally don't dig unless I've found nothing at all in that detecting session and then I might just have a dig just to say at least I've found something.

Sometimes however  you get a signal which is a bit 'is it, or isn't it, iron'.  Well, I had one of those signals and digging it up my first thought about the very heavy, iron coloured ball was that it was a cannon ball.

When I got it home and started to clean it there appeared to be a rectangular hole at the bottom and a round one at the top then mud started to fall out - strange cannon ball I thought!  I had a gentle prod with a tooth pick and then all the mud fell out - it was completely hollow.  Having had it examined by our local FLO it turns out that this cannon ball is actually a sword pommel from a 12th -13th C broad sword. I'm pretty pleased that I dug that iffy signal now!

cracking find, that sword pommel has probably  been walked over loads of times by  detectorists.It does make you think what we are missing!
 loads of stuff around that time was made of iron and it's only in the latter years that farm machinery got larger and left broken bits around the fields.
 i know lots of activities happen around the headlands on farms ie[fencing,bomfires burning stakes off the old fence,hedging,machinary repair]  these  litter the ground with metal or iron and can't be helped by the farmers involved,as we say the jobs need doing and they have to do them. perhaps if detectorists leave the headland and dig everything from 30 to 40 meters into the field in all metal, the iron finds from there in should,t be that bad.

Must admit I try not to dig iron as a rule, but having said that when the Mrs got her GM1+ we were doing some ground tests in the garden and decided to try it on a gold half sovereign, amazingly at a depth of about 6-7" it was coming up as iron on my T2, which was pretty surprising an disappointing. But just goes to show what you might be missing! :-\

There are good iron artefacts to be found, such as this Viking sword hilt found in the Vale of Glamorgan:

(http://www.cardiffscanclub.co.uk/albums/Members-Finds/viking_sword_hilt.jpg)

for years i used a c scope 5mx which was a great machine and found many good finds with it , unfortunately it was like a magnet and could find iron and hot rocks for fun , after returning to detecting after a long lay off and still using the 5mx i gotreally fed up digging iron and rocks , seemingly wasting valuable time digging junk , i never found any good iron finds .

i changed to an explorer xs in september last year i think and havnt looked back since , my find rates have increased dramaticly and i rarely dig any iron ( that is my choice ) and never hot rocks , i must of walked over something iron of interest but out of choice i dont dig them signals , but who knows what iv left behind

I have to admit that I don't dig iron either though most things that were cast in copper alloy has been made using iron such as the Roman fibula, Cut steel shoe buckles were the must have item of the 17th-18th century and were more expensive than their silver counterpart.
It would be great if we could arrange just one Sunday in the year to be a "Dig it all day" and all those members going out that day dug all the iron signal plus the usual. I think we could end up with some interesting exhibits of finds and also some eye openers of signals that sounded like iron but were infact non ferrous.
Anyone up for it ???

dont know about an all day dig it all , but a few hours on a known good site might be interesting

Just another day for me then..  :D

that gold sovereign story makes you think,doesn't it !
i do tend to think we rely on discrimination a bit too much, we think everything it sais is iron is iron, but as the story before shows, that's not true, it could be a sovereign !
it's a good idea about getting everyone to dig everything , all day. it could be on your own site, beach or field and all compare finds on the forum .
we will have to do it one weekend, it could be interesting. :)

I've got a site that would test the best. Old mine works, a couple of 1800's cottages, a supposed Mott, a little Civil War and Iron Age, all over 7 fields.
Knowing where the Iron Age defenses are, I headed for those fields one day with every intent of digging EVERY signal. Lasted about 3 hours, or so, and couldn't straiten up for days after. Dont know where the spear heads where hiding but I didn't find any, well none that I could recognise anyway. I did find some flint though, made my day.
To be fair, that was back in the early days. I am now armed with a better coil and more info. on what gravity does to things on hills so I've promised myself a return visit one day.
I like Geoffs idea. It's amazing how much you an learn about the history of a field from the crud that comes up. ::)

Val

True Mike, we may not make it more than a couple of yards from the gate  ;D OK how about an area 10m X 10M (100sqM) on, as you say a known good site.
Coincidently on Saturday, when I was out with Ferret and Steve Thomas, I mentioned to Steve about his knew Sovereign machine and how I missed digging up old Ox shoes, as all the sovereigns for some reason love them lol And as if to prove the point by the end of the day he was the proud owner of two of them  ;D
Now you can get fed up with digging them but as Val has said it does give you information about the land ie. the land was ploughed pre 1830's.

Well after the 'sovereign' experience I decided I was going to dig all repeatable steady signals just in case......that lasted about three outings, after which I was loosing the will to live :D but I did manage to dig a huge 14th century iron key, which I would of ignored otherwise.  :)

I think it could be a good experiment, as Geoff mentioned a 10m x 10m area, I could bring my PI detector if someone could bring a JCB :)

i'll bring the scrap wagon weehee have you seen the price of scrap lately ;D