I was watching a video of a suction dredge and started wondering if it would work on an old swimming hole. I think if I were to build one I could just vacuum the sand under water and it should pull up rings and coins no problem. Just wondering if anyone else has ever thought about it or tried it and any opinions?
"That's me, on the beach side combing the sand, metal meter in my hand, sporting a pocket full of change"...... NOFX
You would have to have a spot that is very abundant with targets. Like right at the base of a water slide, or something like that. Otherwise the amount of sand to "process", for each target, is unreasonable. To simply dredge the bottom of random swimming hole spots, would be needle-in-haystack hunting, and you'd be better off hunting individual targets by wading, or snorkeling, or whatever.
Originally Posted by NOLA_Ken
I was watching a video of a suction dredge and started wondering if it would work on an old swimming hole. I think if I were to build one I could just vacuum the sand under water and it should pull up rings and coins no problem. Just wondering if anyone else has ever thought about it or tried it and any opinions?
Once I had an idea similar to yours, but it died of loneliness
HEH.... The spot I was thinking of is a man made beach, and it had a sheet pile wall that's disintegrating into little clumps of rust everywhere. My thought was to try the areas where the iron is the worst since a detector just goes nuts in that area.
"That's me, on the beach side combing the sand, metal meter in my hand, sporting a pocket full of change"...... NOFX
It can be very effective but is not a new idea as you can see from Worldtalkers post. Exaimo sold the Spartan 3" dredge from the mid seventies which was very similar to the one in the picture but used two innertubes with the pump at one end and a frame passing out over the other tube that held a mesh to do the filtering.
how deep is pot?
ever try snorkeling on bottom and fanning
gold sticks out like sore thumb usually
or try hookah - snuba or scuba and fanning
just other ideas
I knew a guy that made a large screen/sieve - with wood sides
he would sink it near slides of floating rafts (usually with a huge rock)
then dive under - using mask and snorkel and using a plastic scoop
fill the mesh then remove the rock and let it slowly rise and the material
would filter out - he used to pick up coins and jewelry that way
you got to be a good swimmer though - if you could get someone to work with you as a team
might be good
Most of the area is around 2 feet, it drops off about 30 yards out and hits around 8 or 9 feet. It's got a lot of trash in it, tabs, caps, cans....... I'm going to wade out with the detector and my new sand scoop and see what I can get, I was just pondering the idea of spending a relaxing day floating in a tube and vacuuming the bottom while I was at it. I might go ahead and build one over the summer just to see if I can make it work, (and because I have to use my new shop space for something other than fixing the toaster)
"That's me, on the beach side combing the sand, metal meter in my hand, sporting a pocket full of change"...... NOFX
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Originally Posted by NOLA_Ken
