Outing with Jeff and Wendy.

We're been wanting to metal detect with our friends Jeff and Wendy for quite some time. I was quite jealous when they found a coin from the 1800's outside of Welland. I'm hoping their luck and skill would rub off on us when we go out with them. We set up a play date for today after Jeff and Wendy returned from church so we got our equipment together in anticipation. They picked us up in their van and we were off to our first location containing an old house foundation. Jeff and Wendy had separate detectors, pin-pointers and shovels and double teamed the site while Mary and I worked together. We stayed close to the ATV trail away from the tall grasses, pricker bushes and bumble bees. We mainly found metal bullet casings while Jeff and Wendy pulled up strange pieces of metal. Our best find was a 1950's quarter and a large rock that is metallic. I'm going to try to break the rock apart at home to see why it makes all the detectors go crazy.
We joined up and went back to the van to try another location. We went to a public school that has been torn down. Jeff had a theory the the boulevard in front of the school is where the children would have waited for the bus and probably drop things. Jeff said their four year Ian gave them the idea and it had payed off for them in the past. Jeff and Wendy teamed up and we left our big shovels in the van. As we hit the boulevard we started pulling up pennies. After awhile we found a loonie we decided to check out the empty playground stone beds. The only thing we found was the saw-cut pipes from the swing-sets.
We followed the path towards the overgrown baseball diamond where only a couple rotten players benches remain and the diamond was overgrown with dandelions. Digging was difficult through the strong grass roots, compacted pea-gravel and dry patches. We only pulled up a couple of pennies. Someone had a barbecue going and we quickly became hungry. We noticed that a resident had cross the street to talk with Jeff and Wendy digging on the boulevard. Soon after the two residents were crossing field towards us. We quickly recognized it was our friend Geocaching Mike and his son coming to see how we were doing. It turns out that we parked right in front of his house without knowing. After a brief discussion they returned home and Mary and I headed back to get Jeff and Wendy. We found a break in the fence at the far end of the school and decided to detect the boulevard that we missed before on our way back to our friends. We found a couple pennies as we returned to our starting point. I asked Mary to detect right behind the curb thinking that children might sit there and we were rewarded with a sweet spot that I pulled dozens of pennies from the surface. After we found a quarter we decided to pack-up. It was a great day of detecting especial to be able to spend it with friends.

New pinpointer at the school

For the past couple of times we've gone out, I've let Mary detect while I used the pinpointer. I've been noticing the pinpointer hadn't been preforming too well. The unit wouldn't turn on when I pressed the button, it didn't stay on while the button was press or when there was metal in front of it, the sound would whimper before it stopped working. I assumed it needed new batteries considering I haven't changed the battery that came with it. But after putting a new one in, none of the problems went away. It became clear that the 'on' switch wasn't making contact. I had to wiggle it around the right way to make the pinpointer turn on, now it hardly turns on at all.

Mary had I great time teasing me about breaking it. I'm quite handy at re-wiring things but I would have to get a special switch and the free time to work on it. We are both quite busy working on the house and have little time to detect let alone drop everything to take on a small re-wiring project. On the other hand, we can not detect properly with the Pinpointer and I enjoy the escape from house work to detect. I had to make an executive decision, so I bought a new one while I try to fix the old one. We have couple of friends that detect, so once I get this one fixed we could lend it out when we detect together. Maybe I could improve the first one with a big 'Frankenstein' switch on the side, a giant flashlight strapped to the top and a Swiss-Army knife that pulls out from the bottom!!!

But I digress...

We had noticed on Saturday when we were driving around that a soccer tournament taking place in at a public school we like to detect at. We were intrigued that the spectators were not sitting on the hillside nor on the edge of the running track where we had detected before but on the white line right on the edge of the soccer field. The next day we came back and detected where we'd missed before and found absolutely nothing much new (except some electronic circuitry. No new switch for the Pinpointer though).

We moved to the playground equipment after the small children left. Mary's mom, Pat and nephew, Dawson came out to visit us. Dawson was very excited about digging so we gave him a shovel. The only problem was getting him to stop digging.

Our friend Debby was walking her dog Saddie in the school yard and I stopped to chat with her while Mary and Dawson began to scan the playground. Between me talking to Debby and Mary waiting for Dawson to stop creating a tunnel with his hand shovel we didn't do very much. This should be Dawson's metal detecting blog, he did all the work. At the end of the day we had 4 dinky cars, 2 capacitors, a mechanical pencil, couple of zippers and buttons, too many pull tabs to mention and $1.22 in clad.

p.s. It seems strange that Dawson has used our new pinpointer more than Mary and I combined.