I had a small pasture field available, which I had searched
in the past and made very few finds. The field had just been mown so searching
conditions were as good as they could be and I decided to use the field as a
test site for natural finds. I was now using a Detech EDS metal detector,
fitted with 12 inch SEF coil, which I had not used on this field before. I
baited the rod (see Trust the Greeks,
especially when they bear gifts) with silver and used the rod in one hand
and my detector in the other, the principle being that the rod guides the
detector to the finds. Bear in mind that the brass (copper-zinc alloy), which
the rod is made from, forms the largest sample or bait by far, so the rod will
naturally find copper alloys and should also find silver because of the added silver
bait. There may also be chance finds that you just happen to walk over.
The photo shows the finds made after a four hour search
(plus there were three lead objects that I couldn’t fit into the photo). The
top row of seven objects all have some silver content (the two George V sixpences
are 50% silver) and it is likely that the old lead objects contain traces of
silver as an impurity. The rest of the coins and artefacts in the photo are
copper-alloy. There was also some junk in the form of iron and aluminium
although this was minimal.
Next time, I’ll perform a field test using gold bait…
No comments:
Post a Comment