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Thread: Using small metal detector to find lost brass

  1. #21
    Boolit Master

    Kraschenbirn's Avatar
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    Detector worked for me when I had my own backyard range but that was quite a few years back. Now, wouldn't work worth doodle-squat on our club range. Members, for the most part, are pretty good about policing up brass from the concrete firing lines but tend to let whatever drops in the surrounding gravel and grass lay where it falls. Club bought a pull-behind job-site magnet for the JD we use for mowing...collected something over 200# of steel-case .223/5.56, 7.62x39, and 9mm the first time they ran it over the grounds (we've six open multi-use bays, an 8-station conventional pistol line, and two rifle lines: 100 and 300-yard)...and that didn't include the grass areas areas around the rifle lines inaccessible to the tractor. Yesterday morning, during a 'cease-fire' for changing targets, I raked a couple hundred fresh, once-fired Federal .223s from the slope in front of my bench on the 300-yard line...don't shoot/reload the caliber so they went into the recycle bin.

    Bill
    "I'm not often right but I've never been wrong."

    Jimmy Buffett
    "Scarlet Begonias"

  2. #22
    Boolit Grand Master

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    With the style used in airports and security I can see being on your hands and knees to get them in "range". Even the heads on the regular one have to be fairly close to the ground.

    Common calibers and factory brass I dont mind leaving a couple for seed, but the wildcat that has to be formed by hand is a different story.

  3. #23
    Boolit Master
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    Sep 2010
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    some people spread out on the ground an old bed sheet to catch the brass. I have done it to find my 1912 STEYR BRASS. as it is made by FIOCCHI and is very expensive! and the pistol throes it into the next county, LOL!

  4. #24
    Boolit Mold
    Join Date
    Aug 2020
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    One of my other hobbies is metal detecting. Been at it about three years. Have three detectors, two Garretts and a Minelab. I am finding brass, fired boolits, j-words and live dropped cartridges everywhere. This is in city parks, public schools and other urban locations. Oh and old shotgun shells too. Have not used them at the range but that is an interesting idea.
    My Minelab Equinox 800 is the latest tech---- simultaneous multi-frequency. Serious kit. No brass or lead can hide from me. I do have handheld pinpointers also. The Equinox 800 finds targets the size of a primer anvil easy.
    Entry level detectors are cheap and will find brass and lead without issue. Garrett, Minelab, Fisher, Nocta Makro and others offer up inexpensive entry level detectors that pack up small and would work fine for policing up brass.

  5. #25
    Boolit Buddy gnappi's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wilderness View Post
    Has anybody used one of the small one handed metal detectors to find lost brass? And does it work on brass in grass?

    I am referring to the things they use on us at airports etc, on-line price $30 or so.

    I know we probably won't save enough brass to pay for a detector, but the annoyance of losing fire formed brass can be worth avoiding, and the detector might also be useful for other stuff.

    I am referring to brass loss in the course of hunting, notably for multi-shot encounters. Being better able to find brass afterwards might allow a less inhibited approach to mob opportunities (pigs).

    I have also been playing with shell catchers, but so far not satisfied.
    I feel your pain, as I REALLY dislike losing fire formed or expensive, hard to get brass.

    A local indoor range I shoot at is not very quick to sweep the brass off the floor so in order to recover my formed 9x25 or expensive .38 super I have to use two specific lanes and sweep the area thoroughly before shooting to get most of the brass I shoot.

    Outdoors nowadays I now either bring calibers to shoot and which brass I can afford (or suffer) to lose or just write the losses off.
    Regards,

    Gary

  6. #26
    Boolit Buddy
    Join Date
    Apr 2021
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    Lateral thinking - I decided to go with some sacrifice brass. This is for hunting, where the ground conditions are whatever is under your feet when the action starts.

    My good brass (.30-30) is blown out to headspace on the shoulder. I do this with the cases in circlips. Mostly, one shot is enough, but sometimes it takes two or three, and these have to be single loaded to get the gap in the circlip lined up with the extractor.

    The alternative is to expand .30-30s all the way up to .375 with a succession of M Dies - .31, .32, .33, .37 (sold the .35 die after earlier using then abandoning this method), and then size back to .30-30 with the shoulder in the right place. I have some orphan cases (different headstamps and history) that I have thus reformed and can use when I am expecting losses.

    This approach shortens the cases about .025", which must have been what put me off previously, this .30-30 chamber being about 2.120". A once fired case comes out of this treatment at about 2.000". I had imagined this would be a negative, especially with cast bullets, but recent tests suggest I might be imagining a bigger problem than really exists.

    I don't feel the same attachment to these orphans as I do to the main batch of cases formed "properly".
    Last edited by Wilderness; 12-12-2021 at 10:00 AM.
    It'll be handy if I never need it.

    Insomniac, agnostic, dyslectic - awake all night wondering if there is a Dog.

  7. #27
    Boolit Buddy
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    Jul 2005
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    Brass salvage starts before you shoot. On your own range the various posts suggest how to prepare for your brass landing and recovery. Paving, short grass, a tarp all help. We’ve all done the slow stroll hunched over the find piece number 20 or 50 to fill that MTM ammo box. Inevitably that last one is straight up with the empty hole providing some camo. Different perspectives over the same piece of ground often mean success and we all know that finding that last one is a relief, leave no brass behind. Steel case shooters should remove and trash their empties on any public range. I’ve seen rust in brass buckets ruin a lot of brass cases. I would think a metal detector is well worth trying. I keep an LE range clean and it’s amazing how much gets left on the ground including live rounds.

  8. #28
    Moderator Emeritus


    georgerkahn's Avatar
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    I purchased a Garrett metal detector exclusively to find my brass -- often obsolete calibres too difficult if not impossible for me to readily replace -- after the ground ALWAYS seemed to gobble a percentage! The two "good newses" are that I didn't pay too much for the (garage sale) unit; and, that it works great! HOWEVER -- at the two ranges I frequent there apparently are decades of others' brass -- mostly rimfire, I suspect -- well distributed in the ground about the shooting areas, in front of the concrete slabs.
    Generally -- on average -- I'd shoot lots of 20, and be able to find an average of 17 or 18. A thorough hunt might find that 19th -- but, dang it! -- where ever did that 20th go???
    Hence, the metal detector... Truthfully, it has not enabled me to find my missing brass enough to amortize its purchase. However, it has "friended me" many a time by others at range who -- like I did -- assumed their borrowing/using would also find their missing brass...
    An old sage at range always had a pair of thin-leather-bottomed moccasins in the bed of his truck, and would don them when done shooting. He professed that gently walking with these in a back-forth pattern upon commencement of shooting generally "found" 99% of his brass. I've tried it with well-worn sneakers, and it works such that is what I've been doing...
    geo

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