All gear

Picks, shovels & hand tools: where to buy

Every trip starts with hand tools, and on most open public land hand tools are what the rules allow. For gold that means a sturdy shovel, a pick, buckets and a classifier. For rocks, minerals and fossils the classic tool is the rock hammer, or rock pick: a hardened steel head with a square face for striking and either a pointed tip, for prying in loose and hard rock, or a chisel edge, for splitting layered rock. A head of around 1 kg (2 to 3 pounds) is easy to swing all day, while a heavier hammer tires you out and makes the work less safe. Chisels, a small sledge for stubborn rock, brushes, a field bag, and plastic or wooden picks for digging crystals out of soft pocket clay without scratching them complete the kit.

Safety gear belongs on the same list: glasses whenever steel hits rock, gloves for sharp edges, a hard hat under cliffs, and a dust mask if you chip or grind a lot of rock. Strike away from your body, and carry pointed hammers in a sheath.

Good tools last for decades, while cheap chisels can go blunt or break after a few blows, so ask the shop what steel a tool is made of and what job it is built for.

5 shops across the US that sell picks, shovels & hand tools. Each one links to its own website, so you can compare them one by one.

• History Seekers Metal Detectors

  Dealer · Online or by order · Heflin, Alabama · Ships nationwide

  Online metal detector dealer run by Heath Jones, a relic hunter who has been detecting since 1992 and films his hunts on the History Seekers YouTube channel. Authorized dealer for Minelab, XP, Nokta, Garrett and Fisher, including gold detectors such as the Minelab GPX 6000, Gold Monster 1000 and Fisher Gold Bug 2, plus pinpointers, coils, digging tools and Gold Cube concentrators. Help choosing and setting up a machine by phone.

  Also sells: Metal detectors · Fine gold recovery

  historyseekers.net ↗Eureka listing →

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