A different kind of lot......:) :cam:

[JB(MS)]

There's a parking lot between the highschool and football field that has a couple of inches of gravel and slag on it. It's maybe 25 by 40 yards long and used by students for parking during school and also for parking at home football and baseball games. A couple of weeks ago I asked two park and recreation guys who have detectors they seldom use if they had ever hunted it, they told me they usually hunted it after home ball games but never found many coins there.

The last couple of days I spent about 4 hours total hunting maybe half of the parking lot, switching between the Golden

 

[phinbolt]

Nice job it's funny every high school I have hunted is peppered with lots of clad guess kids don't think change is worth hanging onto. Oh well their loss right.

 

[Beale]

Congrats on the nice hunt! It looks like you did very well, Beale.

 

[dahut]

I love spots like that. They support my contention that there are really two kinds of detecting: Quality and Quantity.

Oh, some of us detectorists sneer at such things, looking down theri noses at those of us who are willing to trifle with that "mangy clad money." Such purists only hunt for the old stuff, only find silver and other true "relics".
And dont get me wrong - there is no thrill to the avid detectorist like finding such things.

But, if we are to be successful as opportunistic scavengers, we must be like the cockroach and take advantage of whatever comes our way. It's really about adapting for survival.

If we don't, then we are just one-trick ponies, merely hastening the day when we have nothing left to find. As you so succinctly put it it, JB: "...'Rather be finding silver, but sometimes we have to take what we can get."

Besides, a 2GB SanDisk Cruzer flash drive is an easy $20 item. And clad can add up to some sizeable amounts in a years time.
God love 'em, those hormone infected youngins' don't lose just clad, either; sometimes they lose a nice bit of jewelry, too.

SO, yeah, take what you can get, when you can get it.

 

[tvr]

It's nice finding spots that produce after someone else says there isn't much there!
tvr

 

[tabdog]

Thanks JB,

Youhave inspired me.

I am plannin, right now.


Look out Bryant Hornets, Tha Tab's on your trail.....

HH,

Tabdog

 

[JB(MS)]

I've come full circle with my detecting. I got my first detector in 1969 and for the first few years I was happy just to get out and hunt, and happy to find any kind of coins, then I began looking for older places and older coins. For a lot of years if a coin wasn't at least a wheatie I was disappointed, then I found a gold ring by accident and became primarily a jewelry hunter. I found a lot of gold and silver jewelry, pounds of junk jewelry and dug truck loads of low conductive trash. Then a friend asked me to go relic hunting with him in the mid 1990's and I found a few bullets, I still hunted coins and jewelry occasionally but wasn't really happy unless I was in the woods somewhere hunting relics. My 7 day a week work schedule pretty well put a stop to relic hunting and I began hunting silver coins and jewelry again in the afternoons after work. I retired at the end of last year but my wife has had medical problems that has kept me close to home so I've been hunting newer coins and jewelry around the ballfields and schools here in town. Now I'm pretty much the way I was when I first started detecting in that I enjoy just getting out and finding something, even new coins.

 

[JB(MS)]

Tabdog, I've found a lot of coins, and some other interesting stuff, hunting graveled parking areas. There's not many tot lots around here but at the ones I've hunted that had graveled parking areas I've found far more coins in the gravel than inside the play areas, and also a few nice jewelry thingies. The photo shows the homemade tool I use in hard gravel, It's a 9 inch screwdriver blade with a hard rubber ball with a hole drilled in it and glued on with JB Weld. It works well, I can jab the blade into all but the hardest hardpan under the gravel and pry out chunks without having to use something to hammer it.

 

[Tseeker]

congratulations! Nice you were able to hunt the site.

 

[dahut]

JB. The gravel parking lot has been the "red-headed step child" of the detecting world for years. Occasionally you read about someone who hits them, like you, but not very often. However, it seems those who have an affinity for it nearly always do well.

I'm gonna start keeping my eyes peeled for them. Thanks for the story about YOU, too. Your wife is in my prayers.

 

[JB(MS)]

I went back to the parking lot for a couple of hours yesterday, again for two hours this morning and got almost seven more dollars in coins total for the two trips. That makes a little over $16 in coins in about 8 hours of hunting there. That's a lot of coins as small as that parking lot is, hard to believe the two park and rec guys who said they hunted there after home games didn't find more coins than they say they did.

 

[dahut]

n/t

 

[tabdog]

Hay David,

I tried it today.

I thought it was fun.

It was a challange. But I

figgered a way.

I'm gonna look for more and

probably hunt tha one I did

today some more.

HH,

Tabdog

 

[tabdog]

[size=medium]I decided I needed to up grade my digger after lookin at your's.

I wanted one that is more comfortable than my screw driver and
a little bigger.

I went from a 10" screw driver to an 11 1/2" modified star drill
with a hickory handle.

The star drill fit so tight, it doesn't need glue, and goes real deep
into tha handle. Tha new shaft is a hair bigger with six sides.

I'll give her a go in tha field and see if she can hold up.

Thanks for tha inspiration,

Tabdog[/size]

 

[dahut]

I usually heat the end and pound it out a little, Dave, to make a slightly enlarged sort of spoon-like end. Then I grind and shape the tip to make it square and sharp.
Finally, I give it a whack to add about a 10 degrees bend about 3 inches above the tip. Into the quenching oil it goes and, Voila! ... a coin popper.

All you need for this is a butane torch and a medium flame tip.