Has anyone done, or does this as a hobby? I just picked up a cheapy one to get started and looking at Garrett i think they are. Found sod all today though.
if its a Crown beach you can get a certificate type thing to take with you in case anyone ask you
Very interesting!that's pretty cool - everything up to the high water mark is crown property IIRC* so you could even do parts of a private beach
incidentally this is in effect not just in the UK - but for example the British Virgin Islands - for example you could (in theory) go have a beach picnic at Branson's private island if you wanted without having to pay him anything as part of the beaches are crown territory but in reality his security team might try and get a bit funny with you.
*except for Orkney and Shetland where some old school Norwegian system of law is still relevant.
About 10 years ago a technical relative of mine bought into a new handheld prospecting detector (venture) that seemingly was programmable - ie. could be set to detect more than metals - developed by a firm set up by a local academic. The retail sale price point they were considering was about 10,000 aud.
I tried to convince the relative to have one sent to him so I could test it out, without luck.
e: The relative died some years ago and I've neither read nor heard anything about it since. It would have been interesting if it could have detected land mines (from old conflicts), but that's probably a business for sensor-drones or similar these days. And he took the secret of exactly where in which north Queensland river he had found gold as an engineer 30 years earlier to the grave.
You can set most metal detectors to scan for certain metals, play around with the frequency setting.
The claim at the time was it could be programmed to detect diamonds, metals, most gemstones, etc. It wasn't just (apparently) a metal detector.
Did a bit a few months back. First haul here, https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/32872620.
I bought a pin pointer also which can be useful. You have to be an enthusiast i reckon which I just wasn't. Ended up finding it boring, you find 99% junk, bottle tops, tinfoil, nails, bolts, screws, other bits of rusty metal.
I may try again next summer in warmer weather but not in this freezing conditions.
Any questions just ask.
Acme went metal detecting once, he had a hole dug 20 foot deep, before he remembered he had steel toe caps in his boots.
Worth looking at that thread just for this gem