Metal Detecting Finds Gold
Comments Off Has anyone been Metal Detecting?
Anyone do this? Professionally or as a hobby?
It looks like a fun thing to do, but seems kind of pricey to get into.
I like collecting old coins, and silver/gold metals. Anyone ever find anything like that in your metal detecting adventures?
Is there a high frustration to fun ratio?
I used to enjoy this some years ago, it can be a lot of fun. It can also be pricey but like most hobbies, you get what you pay for here. Better quality detectors will have more depth capability and can also filter out a lot of common “trash” items like screws, nails, and can pulltabs. Some of the better detectors will tell you the approximate depth and attempt to identify the object by it’s size, which helps in retrieving it.
The only downside to the hobby is finding a good place to go treasure hunting. If you have access to any rural areas you can often find some really interesting things fairly easy, in more populated areas you will dig up a lot of trash.
Perhaps try to find a good magazine on the subject and read up some. I’m sure there are also some good websites devoted to the subject, but I can’t recommend any as I’ve been out of the hobby for some time now.
Look into topics such as probing and “plugging” once you detect something you want to retrieve. Probing involves using a long thin instrument to slowly push into the ground to pinpoint the item. They make specialty probes but in a pinch you can use an old icepick with the tip blunted so you don’t scratch or damage the object. Once you pinpoint it, you dig it up using the “plugging” technique. This just involves using a hand spade to cut out a plug a few inches around the object (keep the probe in the ground to help with this). Then you pull the entire plug of grass and dirt from the ground and look through the plug for your object.
By using a plug technique you limit the damage to the ground and the grass will grow right back. Done correctly, you will not be able to tell that anything was dug up at all. This helps if you want to treasure hunt on private property – you can talk to the land owner and show them an example of how you dig something up so they can see it won’t mess up their property. If you were to ask someone permission otherwise they might assume you were going to use a large shovel and tear up their ground for example.
Good luck!
Metal Detecting Finds GOLD, SILVER, Half Cent, 1800′S RELIC
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