08-29-2018, 03:15 PM
My neighbor called recently and asked me to help her find the buried iron stakes marking her boundary lines. I was happy to try and grabbed my detector from the basement where it had resided for over a year without use. I put in a battery and tossed the detector into the truck. When I got to my destination and pulled the machine out, I saw my coil flopping around and saw bits of plastic from the coil "ears" in the truck and on the ground. Somehow I had managed to push the shaft sideways against the ears and put enough pressure on them so that they shattered. First time for me, but surprising that it hadn't happened before, given how flimsy those attachments are.
I tried using super glue to reattach the pieces of plastic and that helped in getting them in place, but it was not very strong and one ear broke again when I nudged it a bit too hard while trying to figure out how best to repair the coil. I really wanted to cut the ears off flat and mill a new attachment from a solid block of plastic but I had trouble finding a piece big enough so I decided to try to reinforce what I had. I used JB Weld and tried to build up the thickness of the ears to the depth of the little ridges that run vertically on them. Inserting a lightly greased metal shaft of the same size as the fastener bolt allowed me to maintain the hole position and pack the weld into the area where the plastic was missing. As the epoxy dried I turned the shaft a bit to keep it from becoming part of the repair, and near the end of the curing I pulled it out altogether.
Once the repair dried I filed off the high spots on the outside, trying to maintain a nice slope and thickness near the bolt hole while keeping a thicker stronger base where the ears meet the coil surface. Some epoxy oozed past the metal shaft onto the inner surfaces as I worked, so I had to file that away as well so the the shaft would fit neatly into the space between the ears. A quick touch up with a 7/32 drill bit cleaned up the holes for the attaching bolt and a light spritz of paint hid the gray filed areas.
This might be of interest if something similar happens to one of your coils. It isn't very professional but it appears to be strong. I wish the manufacturer had considered how flimsy these thin plastic pieces are. It would have been so simple to add just a bit more plastic and I don't think the added weight would have been of any consequence.
[attachment=10709][attachment=10710][attachment=10711][attachment=10712][attachment=10713][attachment=10713]
I tried using super glue to reattach the pieces of plastic and that helped in getting them in place, but it was not very strong and one ear broke again when I nudged it a bit too hard while trying to figure out how best to repair the coil. I really wanted to cut the ears off flat and mill a new attachment from a solid block of plastic but I had trouble finding a piece big enough so I decided to try to reinforce what I had. I used JB Weld and tried to build up the thickness of the ears to the depth of the little ridges that run vertically on them. Inserting a lightly greased metal shaft of the same size as the fastener bolt allowed me to maintain the hole position and pack the weld into the area where the plastic was missing. As the epoxy dried I turned the shaft a bit to keep it from becoming part of the repair, and near the end of the curing I pulled it out altogether.
Once the repair dried I filed off the high spots on the outside, trying to maintain a nice slope and thickness near the bolt hole while keeping a thicker stronger base where the ears meet the coil surface. Some epoxy oozed past the metal shaft onto the inner surfaces as I worked, so I had to file that away as well so the the shaft would fit neatly into the space between the ears. A quick touch up with a 7/32 drill bit cleaned up the holes for the attaching bolt and a light spritz of paint hid the gray filed areas.
This might be of interest if something similar happens to one of your coils. It isn't very professional but it appears to be strong. I wish the manufacturer had considered how flimsy these thin plastic pieces are. It would have been so simple to add just a bit more plastic and I don't think the added weight would have been of any consequence.
[attachment=10709][attachment=10710][attachment=10711][attachment=10712][attachment=10713][attachment=10713]