| Some
Jottings
Last month I told you about
an unusual bottle I purchased from my
friend, Mark McNee. It is a figural
bottle of a hand holding a bottle. A
guy drove up from Indiana to do some
detector business with me. From his
comments I could tell he was
knowledgeable about antique bottles.
I thought I would ask if he had any
idea as to what this unusual bottle
was. I was surprised at his remark. He
told me to contact a fellow named
Mark McNee!
In my quest for information
on that bottle I searched through a
Kovel's bottle price guide and I found
four or five bottles fitting the
description of mine. None were clear-- they were all colored. These
bottles
ranged from around $70.00 to
$700.00! What I wanted to see was a
picture of one.
I went to search their web
site. You have to sign up to create a
user name and password, but it is free.
Of course they now have my mailing
address and it didn't even take a week
for them to mail me something!
They sent an offer to mail me
one of their newsletters for free. And
then if I choose I can get 12
newsletters for $24.00. I might just do
it. The letter they sent to lure me in
was pretty neat. Here is a couple
excerpts from Terry Kovel:
"
Perhaps the most thrilling
"find" that Ralph and I ever stumbled
across was a silver sugar castor we
found at a house sale. We didn't know
how valuable it really was until later.
Turned out it was made by Paul
Revere--- not the patriot, but his
father! We paid $12.00 for it; today it
is worth about $15,000!"
"One of my favorite stories
is about a 7-year-old who bought a
mask for 25¢ at a church yard sale. It
depicted a blue hawk decorated with
red leather eye flaps, a beak and horse
hair. The child wore the mask every
Halloween. Years later a friend
thought it might be an authentic
American Indian piece, and took it to
an expert. The friend was right. They
sold the mask at auction for
$45,100.00!"
More Notes
New members and guests
at
the December meeting included: Troy
Yoder from Centerville, Trever Todd
from Alamo, George Skinner from
Rockford, Ian Mactawan from
Kalamazoo, Sarah Brock from Grand
Rapids, Tammy, Cody and Grace
Walker.
50/50 winners were: John
Newman and Carlisle Flegal
Silver dollar winners were:
Rick Burch and Bruce Wood.
The Silver Cache (Fish
Bowl) winner was not present so he
didn't carry home the cash. It was
Rod Cockeral whom we all missed.
Our big fat turkey winners
were: Linda Sherwood and Ron
Jenner! The turkeys were fat, not the
winners.
Our coin raffle winner for
the beautiful 1825 Capped Bust Half
Dollar was the very lucky Jack
Barnes!
Our name tag winner was
Greg Stonerock's much better half!
Detector Tips
One of our club members
came into my store hoping that I could
fix his detector. Of course I could, but
I told him that it wouldn't be easy and
that he would have to leave it with me.
Or, another way to handle the problem
was that I could tell him how to fix it
himself. He had a White's Surfmaster
II underwater detector that he
purchased used from a friend ours.
His problem was fairly
simple, yet very difficult at the same
time. He was flying out of Grand
Rapids to Florida for a couple weeks
vacation and he had hoped to do some
water hunting. The problem was that
he could not pack his detector in his
suitcase unless he could completely
break it down. This meant that the coil
had to come off the lower stem, and
the lower stem had to be pulled out of
the upper stem.
If you have a detector that
you use in the water, regardless if it is
fully submersible, or a land detector
that you use in the shallow water, you
need to take it apart every other time
you go into the surf, or better yet,
every time you do. That is because
thousands of tiny grains of sand find
their way inside your coil stem and
lodge between the outer and inner
stem sections.
Those grains of sand act like
thousands of tiny hands that do
everything they can to hold these parts
together until death do they part!
Years ago Fisher tried to find a
solution to the problem by making the
lower stem 3/4 round with 1/4 of it
flat. Their thinking was that better
drainage was the answer. Another part
of their thinking was that there would
be less surface area to trap sand.
Well, their idea seemed fine,
at least on the drawing board, but it backfired! The new lower stem
design
did offer better drainage, but it also
introduced more sand and it was
awful!
Some of the things that I
have used in my attempts to solve the
case of the lower stem lock-up
problem are these: one of the actions
that you need to use is a twisting
motion of the lower stem. The first
thing that you need to do to keep a
bad problem from becoming worse is
to remove the search coil. If you
don't, you will be tempted to use the
coil to hold the lower stem as you
twist the upper stem and things will
break! I'm talking about that
expensive coil!
With the coil removed, place
a rod or screwdriver through the coil
bolt hole in the lower stem and use
your feet to stabilize the lower stem
by placing them on the screw driver.
The next step is to force the spring-
lock into the rod with a small
screwdriver on both sides of the rod
(if you have a two-hole spring lock).
Don't worry, you can deal with
putting it back in place later.
With the spring lock out of
service, the only thing holding the two
stems together is that darn sand!
Sometimes holding the upper stem up,
and the lower stem down, you can
take something like a wood or plastic
screwdriver handle and gently tap on
the upper metal rod all around the
entire area where the lower rod is
inside. Not too hard now! It will take
some patience and a lot of taping and
9 times out of 10 it won't help.
If your upper stem is metal, it
is usually aluminum and it will expand
some with heat. Not too much heat!
Don't get out your propane torch! Use
nothing hotter than a hair dryer. If you
can get the lower stem to move some,
you may stand a chance of getting the
rods apart. If you still cannot budge it,
you need a hacksaw!
You cut the non-metal lower
stem off one inch from where it enters
the upper stem. Then you take the
hacksaw blade and insert it into the
rods through the lower stem center
hole. You might find that the spring
clip, the one you forced into the rod, is
in the way. If so, try to push it further
into the rod with the saw blade or
other long object.
Now, take the blade and
slowly start cutting through the lower
stem. Keep the blade
level so that
you will be cutting the same
amount all along the surface of the
inner lower rod. Once you feel
that you have reached the metal
outer rod, remove the saw blade
and take pliers and pinch the
lower rod together at the cut and
twist. If this doesn't free the lower
rod, you will need to cut the inside
rod on the opposite side of the
first cut.
Once you have
completely
removed what is left of the lower
rod, you will need to replace it.
Depending on detector brand, a
new lower stem will cost from
$10.00 to $20.00. One guy tried to
prevent this with a bright idea he
had and that was to use a lubricant on the stems. Forget it! It
only traps more sand.
Once you
have gone
through this nightmare, I'd bet you
will take your equipment apart and
rinse the sand out from now on.
Rinse everything with fresh water
if you have been detecting in salt
water . . . Everything!
I
may try to do a column
on detecting tips each month and
thereby build a data base to help
folks on both my web site and the
club's web site. If there is a topic
that you are interested in seeing,
let me know.
See you at the meeting
January 20th. Meeting
starts at 7:00. Happy
New Year!
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