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Hodan Prospecting Picks


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21 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

OK, I'm not embarrassed to ask:  why is the point offset (side-to-side) / asymmetric?  (On my Hodan model it's centered.)  It seems that when that tip hits the ground, if the shaft isn't rotated just right, the pick will pivot, with assoicated loss of useable energy.

Also curious.  Nice looking pick.

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Reduced coefficient of drag 😉

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3 hours ago, rvpopeye said:

Different shape due to possible copyright issues ?🤔

Copyright is for writing. Patents cover hardware, and Hodan not patented. Looks to me like it was simply easier to make one cut instead of two, perhaps less material waste. Better for making perhaps, but not what I’d want as a user. I would not call this a Hodan style pick. This pick is its own style. It’s completely different than a Hodan. Nothing wrong with that though. I’m not knocking it, just saying it’s different, as are my other picks.

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I'd think it would be really difficult to get a patent on a pick. A patent has to satisfy two requirements. It has to be unique, and non-obvious.

No way I'd pay $170 for something I can make in a couple of hours. My pick was made from an old shovel, and a piece of scrap steel. Hard-faced the pick end. It's worked for over 10 years. Broke one handle, but easily replaced. Got a 1" super-magnet in the end

 

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I actually asked for it to be made that way to suit the endless salt and pepper we have over here in Western Australia.
Rarely now do I dig more than 200mm (8 bald eagles) to recover a nugget and the ground is mostly relatively easy digging laterite gravels so it is more scratching than swinging with force hence the 25mm (one bald eagle) offset on the point really has no effect on how I use it.
This offset means pointed side is 300mm (12 bald eagles) long so with two scrapes I can clear a 400mm (16 bald eagles) wide area to give me a decent swing with the standard 11” mono coil the 6000 comes with (and the Nugget Finder 16 x 10 that’s coming) or one scrape gives enough clear ground to swing my Nugget Finder 12” x 7”.
Then swing coil to bring up and relocate target, scratch up couple of bald eagles and flip onto short side to scrape the gravel out.
If it gets deeper than maybe 4 bald eagles I scratch out the gravel with the 2 bald eagle wide end.
Even in schist I use the pointed end as a gentle tap tap and pry rather than get a run up otherwise the nuggets tend to just fall further into the crevice or ping off into the heavens never to be seen again.
Having that much clear ground is not always necessary however with almost every piece of dirt here having had many many coils over it, being able to quickly clear the ground and determine between that faint sound being a target that needs digging or hearing damage from Led Zeppelin at full volume on the way out to the patch is critical to getting a good nugget count.
When you need 5 grams a day to pay the bills and the average nugget is now around 0.25 of a gram, that’s 20 nuggets to find each day in between the junk.
Also, walking 6-10 miles a day patch hunting I wanted something around the kilogram with a 600mm handle that will sit comfortably in a pick holder on my hip and easily cope with 99% of the holes I dig while providing very quick clearance of rubble on the ground.
Covering that amount of distance in one day usually has me digging well over a hundred holes and just today I collected 54 shotgun pellets.

If it comes down to it I can still dig a deeper hole in harder ground with it but that is very rare these days.
Its all about quantity of sub grammers now with anything over 10 grams weeks apart instead of hours like back in the good old days.
Having used it for two solid days now I am more than happy with how quickly I can scrape a clear area, have a decent listen and decide to scratchy scratchy the ground or scratchy scratchy my balls and move on.

Me calling it Hodan style really only relates to the head and therefore scoop end only being 2” wide rather than the normal 4-5” scoop width most Australian picks with a triangular shape have.
This makes it sit against my body better (no jab in the side from the wide scoop end) and I can easily wrap my hand around the head to poke the magnet on the end of the handle into a rubble pile. Lighter too.
No doubt Dan at Stumpy picks could make an exact replica of the Hodan style if desired rather than my retard version 🤪
Hope I didn’t offend John by attaching his Hodan monicker to this thing.

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