What is a barreling machine? It is the same thing some call a tumbler.
They are normally used for tumbling rocks which used different grades of sand to clean and polish the rocks.
This method will mechanically scrub your coins and is bad for items made from precious metal because it actually removes the surface metal in places. Of course that depends on how long you tumble them.
Dont put in coins that you consider valuable.
They work well for cleaning up any of your “junk” coins though.
I went out the other day on a ‘farm quest’ as you do once in a while and found a farmer who was not only agreeable to my request to detect on his land but was also keen on local history.
First of all he showed me his recently harvested fields and drew his boundaries out for me on a piece of paper.
Next he marked all the footpaths on the map together with the ruins of a mill near to the river and finally he explained that he found two stone hand mills which were dragged up by his plough.
It goes to show that there are farms with friendly farmers out there somewhere. It’s just a case of ignoring the knock-backs (believe me I have had dozens) and soldiering on in your quest. The farm itself is next to a river and a mile away from a major road so I am hopeful of finding something out of the ordinary as oppose to my normal shotgun caps, broken pewter buttons, impacted musket balls and 20th century coins.
I am by no means gloating about the potential of this new site, I am just illustrating to the disillusioned out there that the next farm door you knock on could be the big one.
I just put a set of Ray-o-Vac rechargeable alkaline batteries in my old White’s 5000D. Son of a gun, it still works! The speaker is going to have to be replaced because it sounds like it has sand it when you tilt the detector to one side, but it works.
These are not new batteries. I’ve used them on and off in radios for over a year, so I have no idea how many charges they have on them already. I put in about an hour of hunting today, and according to the meter, the batteries are still at full charge.
These batteries come four to a pack for about $7 US per pack. So it takes four packs or almost $30 US to put batteries in the detector. That compares with about $12 US for regular alkalines. I don’t remember how many hours of operation a regular set of alkalines will give, but I’m going to guess at least 20 hours of operation with this old detector. If the rechargeables do as well, they very well could be cost effective.
I see right now that I’m going to have to buy a set of regular alkalines and run them out to see how much time they provide, and then compare that figure to one I get from these rechargeables. Ray-O-Vac provides a fast charger which will charge four cells at a time. That might seem like a disadvantage, but it only took me six hours to charge enough cells last night to run my detector. The advantage, as I see it, is that unlike 1.2 volt Nicads, I can get 1.5 volts per cell just like a standard alkaline. That should translate into more power for the system and longer life.
We’ll see. I’ll keep experimenting and will post about it from time to time.