Hiya, new here, based in Cape Town South Africa.
Biggest gold producing country and citizens are prohibited by law to have "unwrought" precious metals in their possession.
the Precious Metals Act 2005: It is an offence to acquire, possess or dispose of any unwrought precious metal if you are not:
The rest is just blah blah about license or jewellery maker provided it doesnt exceed a mass defined elsewhere by gov.
Anyhow it is what it is, so that pretty much leaves beach detecting as a main option. That said, metal detectors are nose bleed expensive (eg minelab manticore R39 5000 (ZAR)) here and it would take lifetimes to break even with most of cheaper MD's hovering around the 15K mark.
With that in mind, I wondered if it was possible to turn one of those security wand detectors into a pin pointer.
Enter the Super Scanner, seems to be a cheap BFO (MD3003B1) just 3 tiny transistors and a 78L05 to get 5V for the LM358.
So far just testing the open coil and pcb on the table seems promising, I wound a 8mm ferrite with 5 layers of 0.28mm enameled wire and it picks up a small 1948 silver tickey about an inch away.
Nice thing is, it has piezo buzzer, sensitivity switch, vibrate and led, all with a rechargeable 9V battery.
Biggest gold producing country and citizens are prohibited by law to have "unwrought" precious metals in their possession.
the Precious Metals Act 2005: It is an offence to acquire, possess or dispose of any unwrought precious metal if you are not:
The rest is just blah blah about license or jewellery maker provided it doesnt exceed a mass defined elsewhere by gov.
Anyhow it is what it is, so that pretty much leaves beach detecting as a main option. That said, metal detectors are nose bleed expensive (eg minelab manticore R39 5000 (ZAR)) here and it would take lifetimes to break even with most of cheaper MD's hovering around the 15K mark.
With that in mind, I wondered if it was possible to turn one of those security wand detectors into a pin pointer.
Enter the Super Scanner, seems to be a cheap BFO (MD3003B1) just 3 tiny transistors and a 78L05 to get 5V for the LM358.
So far just testing the open coil and pcb on the table seems promising, I wound a 8mm ferrite with 5 layers of 0.28mm enameled wire and it picks up a small 1948 silver tickey about an inch away.
Nice thing is, it has piezo buzzer, sensitivity switch, vibrate and led, all with a rechargeable 9V battery.