kac

Choice should be made on the type of grounds you dig. I have a digger I made for hand digging in parks/groomed grass and where my Lesche foot digger isn't allowed or areas too confined to use a foot digger. The diggers made for detectorists are designed for a small niche market. they need to be formed, welded and heat treated (often by hand) and use more expensive alloys or carbon steel to withstand the abuse they will encounter. Prices on them will naturally be higher than your average garden spade but will typically last much much longer. Check Amazon for costs on USA diggers and see if they are bit better on imports. Might be easier to purchase from that avenue than trying to import one on your own. I'm not an Amazon fan but in some cases they are handy. FYI my digger wont bout out for a while for mass production. You can't go wrong with Lesche.

The pin is probably not that old, stamped and had some plating on it, brass with copper and finish plate. Curious if it was a give away from the Ironsides in Boston. Think they did a lot of promotional stuff in 76. The musketball was pretty deep 12" or so and was in a dried swampy section. For some reason I couldn't gb the machine well there, was just out of range and everything was hot. For the coins I have been going to different areas that are close by so coins I find aren't all from the same patch of woods or fields. Just take my time and pick through. Slow pace seems to be paying off because these grounds get hit really hard by a lot of people. The other coin that it could be is an Irish Woods Hibernia which would put it back to the 1720's. Just too beat up to really tell but still a fun find. Thanks

PVC may be too flexible for a shaft and too heavy. You could look into carbon fiber. I had thought of making a telescoping shaft for a detector I want to build and looked at the stuff these guys sell : https://dragonplate.com/carbon-fiber-tubes/ There is also kevlar tubing there too that might be bit less money. No idea the costs so doodle out what you need then price it. Parts to hold the coil itself should be easy enough to get 3d printed on a fdm machine in ABS. Popular company for that stuff is 3d Hubs. They take industry standard .stl files. If your trying to make an S style grip you can use aluminum tubing and bench top tubing bender to form it. 6061 is usually a good choice for that with a fairly thin wall thickness, guessing 1/32 wall should be plenty.

Finally got a break in the weather and hit an old field with my tejon that I actually got the 10x12 widescan for. This place has been hit really really hard by a lot of people but I did manage to sniff out what looks like a King George. Not sure on the date, have to be careful with it. Might just leave as is. Also in the mix is an old 50 cal musket ball couple copper lincoln and a ship pin.

Nice find for a ball field, they usually get picked through pretty good.

This might help: http://meteorite-identification.com/streak.html Keep in mind many foundries use coal to melt their metals in such as the Capola Furnace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupola_furnace This is what I believe is a non magnetic meteorite piece I found, it is very dense 3.72g for it's size. I think it might be just a fragment that was left. It rings in on my detectors in the gold/nickels range. Too small to send out for confirmation as they want a USA quarter size sample which is bigger than the piece!

Hitting some the spots near where I found an old spill can came across this about 7" down. Usually don't dig iron but thoughts of a jar full of old coins crossed my mind. Old hunting trap, might do some reverse electrolysis to see if there are any makers markings on it as a clue for a date. There was a foundation nearby that looked like poured concrete so not sure the period it was made. Building might have been a garage or chicken coupe maybe, hard to tell. Nails around are all square with rounded tops.

Does a magnet stick to it? I believe most meteorites will be attracted to a magnet.

Does look like coke, find a lot around here as many of the old homes used coal for heat. From what I read there should be striation marks where it melted as it passes through the atmosphere. I only found one but it is unconfirmed as it's too small to sample. Nice collection you have.

Cool the kid found the necklace they planted for him. Wonder if it was on the surface? I have a hard time seeing my screen in the sun so don't think it will work very well in bright conditions. As my luck goes I would get some scam call telling my computer has a Wirus just as I'm over a good find. Don't think bluetooth will transmit through puddles. Average cell phone is close to $1k so having a dedicated phone with it you might as well buy a Nox or other machine in that range. Orx is less $$ than most cell phones these days. Think it's a similar to one that there is a DIY kit I have seen on ebay only larger. Might be fun for someone starting but XP is far ahead in that game.

Good link, thanks.

Thanks for that. I would have thought the T2 and F75 would have used same coils, guess not.

As a Garrett owner I like my machines but if your in heavy iron or high trash areas you will not do any better with them. For high trash areas I use the Tesoro Tejon which is analog and has no vdi. Tesoro is no longer but you can look at the Deeptech X as a competing product. I find that analog machines do very well but can have a steep learning curve. I find my Tejon able to snipe out a dime from a big chunk of iron without issue, can for the most part hear the difference between valuable targets from square tabs in the low conductor range by their sound but do have trouble in many cases with ringtabs that have been folded over. As a rule you should dig those anyways as I don't think there are detectors accurate enough to discern between many of those trash items and the good stuff as they simply conduct the same. Analog machine for me offers better audio. In your region you could check out the Blisstool Beast v6. It is made for harsh areas and lots of knobs to keep you busy for many years! If the Blisstool was waterproof I would snag one in a heartbeat. Bottom line for me I go with silent search method in trashy areas as I find it less annoying to sift through than having to fiddle with notch discrimination that tends to chop out good targets. I often make a few passes over an area and cherry pick ranges to snipe out good targets and once your in the low conductor (gold aluminum range) you should dig those iffy targets, more often than not they are rings or small bits of jewelry. I have found for me that a vdi really doesn't offer much more and often can cast doubt on whether or not to dig. The machines aren't necessarily wrong but I think too much information isn't always good.

Cool my guess was right then. Wonder if it's just really old, maybe had wood top and bottoms? Area dates to mid 1800 when it was active.

Nice! Mine the handle is 90 to the blade so your wrist is in a relaxed position. Seen a few others with T handles when i did my pat searches. I cold formed my blades from sheet stock and after all is done I temper them so the edges last. If it wasn't for the bayonet style that shipped with my Garrett I wouldn't have been inspired to do something better for the grounds I hit. I'm sure the straight handles work fine in softer soils but killed me here.

Found this one in a patch of woods where I have been finding some old coins. Not sure but looks like what is left of a harmonica, top and bottom seem to be missing and rivits long rusted away. I was able to snag parts of the center which was wood. Not sure why that held up and rest is gone. Maybe the owner had a drinking issue which preserved the inners? 🙂

Nice find!

So much tape it almost look's home made. Another couple rolls it would be water proof to 3m hehe

I use mine kneeling as I have a bad back so hunching over is not an option for me. I have a couple units left for field testing to just pm me and I will give you my email so you can toss me the address. I will be looking for dealers that want to sell them which I would prefer and I am trying to avoid direct sales. I do have a friend that has an Amazon account and right now with the tariffs I am looking at $40 with free shipping there. If the price of steel drops and the product goes through dealers I may be able to get the price down a bit. Dealers may be able to sell it for a bit less as Amazon fees stack up. I'm not sure if I will make the Xmas rush there but not worried, rather have a good product that will last rather than rush something out.

The digger makes nice clean plug or flap. Overall length is 12" and angle of the handle clears the plug at that depth. Blade is a bit wider than traditional bayonet digger and is a good balance of width for scooping without being too wide where it takes too much work to push into the ground. It is designed so you can put your weight into the cut. Handle works good for popping out rocks and to give you an idea I have been using mine on some old lost cobble stone roads (yes I put the stones back). Current model is approx 10.6 oz which I believe is lighter than most hand diggers. Grip is black urethane rubber and not a vinyl cast grip that is stuck on so it doesn't work loose. I know it isn't for everyone, we all have our own ways of doing things.

I have a Lesche Ground Shark I use for woods and fields but did develop this for parks as it is easy to cut a flap or small plug and use a 12x12 piece of rubber roofing for a digging mat. Park people here are pretty cool about me using the digger as I'm not leaving a mess. I can't speak for all parks, probably depends on the town etc. Many times I just use the hand digger so I don't have to carry as much and use it more around tree roots where any foot digger is just about useless.

I hear ya on the tone range. If I use custom tone on my Tejon the audio is flat with just a fade or pop on various targets and flat on pp/am. This is ok when looking for small weak targets like small jewelry or in low trash areas but find myself swapping to the default that in those high trash areas so I can really tell depth, size and target type. Even though the tone range on the Tejon is probably not nearly as wide as the other detectors that range really helps. I rarely disc when I hunt other than base line iron removal when needed.

I was doing quite a bit of spin casting for pins, key chains etc in pewter. I looked into plating but it was simply not cost effective. Scary stuff back then I bet. I did work for a plating and anodizing company and remember when one of his sulfuric acid tanks decided to burst leaving the anodizing room 3ft deep in sulfuric acid! His rooms were epoxy coated to handle the spills. Casswell and Contenti sell safer plating options that are more environmentally friendly for plating if that is even such a thing but at least they don't typically use cyanide. I thought cyanide was used when plating chrome but I forget. I don't believe it's needed for jewelry work. Monsanto is a very shady company. I remember when they would have gm soybeans and would sue local farmers that bee's had inadvertently cross pollinated adjacent farms under patent infringements. These small farms would go bankrupt through the courts. I could be wrong but believe they sold off to Bayer to avoid up coming lawsuits from carcinogens found in Round-Up.

No comments? This is a digger I started to develop about 3 years ago and finally happy with the current one. I will be looking for a few people who use a hand digger more than a foot digger and willing to put it through it's paces and give feedback on what they think. Still working out a reliable supply chain for materials and have a few possible tweaks. Also hoping the tariffs will get cancelled soon as they doubled my material costs. I plan on either manufacturing them myself or if possible find a USA based shop to make them. I also plan not to do direct sales and prefer dealer distribution. Thanks

They do sound good but not a fan on the inline audio control. Keep bumping it and not good when you run on a silent search machine. Wondering why the other day I was swinging and swinging and thinking, wow not even a bit of foil out here... Did a quick gb check and no sound and duh, bumped the switch 😞 Really threw me because shortly after that my batteries ran out Doh!