What Do You Guys Do When Not Detecting?

[davsgold]

It's still a couple of months away from going detecting here, so I made a couple more of these kitchen knives

Blades are made from Hitachi SLD Stainless Damascus Clad steel flat bar stock

Blade length is 160mm (just over 6") and 32mm high (1 and 1/4 inches) and weight is 130 grams

And handle is Rosewood and Ebony with a brass spacer, all sanded to 600 grit and finished with a Beeswax/Mineral oil 50/50 mix polished in

cheers dave

[Desert Dawg]

Well my latest adventure is a 2008 Klamath 16.5 ft dual console fishing boat with 50HP Yamaha, when not detecting I will be fishing the high country lakes for trout and kokanee and some crappie fishing and river fishing for stripers. Got in one trout trolling trip late last fall, very successful. I upgraded the boat a bit, added a Hummingbird Helix 7 Fish finder and also added a new front troll motor, Terrova 12V wireless controlled with I-Spot and auto steer.

 

[rvpopeye]

That boat looks downright comfy ! 

Probably gets out of it's own way pretty well too with a 50 . Fish ON !

It also will be great for raiding a beach or three.....👍🏴‍☠️ 

 

[davsgold]

Well it'll soon be time for us to get out detecting again but before that, I finished another kitchen/chefs knife yesterday, well it still need my logo laser etched onto it yet

Blade is Hitachi SLD Stainless Damascus clad, 155mm long and 37mm high, weighs in at 132 grams.

Handle is Rosewood and Ebony with Brass spacer and all sanded to 600 grit and polished with Beeswax and mineral oil 50/50 

cheers dave

[davsgold]

I finished another kitchen/chefs knife today, goes with the one from yesterday.

Same blade type as the last few but I tried a red resin inlay in the handle and it seems to have worked ok

cheers dave

[Rattlehead]

Man, those knives look amazing! Beautiful!

I have way too many hobbies. As of right now, I'm into leathercraft, motorcycles, shooting, guitar, drones, 3D printing, and my little side business of making metal detecting accessories (Hip-Clips & Carrot Clips)... I'm probably forgetting a couple. My wife constantly bitches at me because I spend all of my free time on hobbies.

[Steve Herschbach]

Late to chime in on this one. As a computer nerd I have been teaching myself 3D modeling and texturing by updating the graphics in 10-15 year old PC role playing games. Dungeons and dragons type stuff, etc. The new AI based upscaling tools available now are nothing short of magical when it comes to revamping old textures. A couple examples:

A castle door original

Castel door AI upscale

Wood and leaves original

Wood and leaves AI upscale

 

I'll get one of these old games and look for existing texture update mods and apply them. Then play and look for stuff that needs improvement. In the process I have to learn how to take apart the game files and reassemble them. That can get pretty interesting in itself needing specialized software tools as every game is different. The textures are usually three to five different files that create the 3D effects laid over a 3D model. So I've been learning how that all goes together. Long story short it is really no different than an old person doing crossword puzzles or jigsaw puzzles to keep the brain working. In my case I am customizing 3D environments for my own pleasure and tastes but it really serves no purpose other than I like figuring out and learning things. A weird side effect of this is I enjoy the old games the most as they need the most work. The new stuff is already getting photo realistic to the point that there is nothing that can be done to make them better.

[GotAU?]

@Steve Herschbach - pretty cool there Steve! I’ve been using tools like Topaz AI to increase the resolution of my own digital photographs, I’m curious what are you using for your sharpening tools?

[Steve Herschbach]

On 4/16/2025 at 10:36 AM, GotAU? said:

@Steve Herschbach - pretty cool there Steve! I’ve been using tools like Topaz AI to increase the resolution of my own digital photographs, I’m curious what are you using for your sharpening tools?

I own Topaz Photo AI and it is amazing with old photos for sure. I’ve used it for a few old mining photos I’ve posted. My texture work is done with a combination of Topaz Gigapixel AI for the most part with some supplemental hand editing work done in Paint.NET

The latest versions of Gigapixel AI 8 really took it up another notch over version 7 and earlier. Before it was basically just intelligent upscaling. Now it adds additional recovery and creative components that can produce truly stunning results.