Beltbuckles & Truppenfahrrad Parts

Today I spent about six hours in the forest. Cloudy weather, around 10 degree Celsius and a little breeze to keep the bloodsuckers away made quite the perfect conditions for metal detecting.

It is so good being out there with the complete absence of traffic noise. All one can hear there is birds, the river and a distant waterfall. And the happy beeping from the detector. Actually the Fisher makes more like a quacking sound, so it kinda falls into the bird category then.

I began the search outside of the Gebirgjäger camps stable area and had a few signals almost immediately. It was part of a liner band from a German helmet, but I was not lucky enough to find the helmet anywhere around. A few minutes later I dug up a nicely preserved karbid lamp for a bicycle, and together with it was a broken mirror, a razor made of bakelite and a Sprengkapsel No. 8.

The next hour I couldn`t find anything else than food tins, big nails, bolts, scrap metal and such but suddenly I knew I had an interesting item when I tried to free a long piece of metal from berry bush roots. The part belonged on a Truppenfahrrad, a military bike, and it was to fasten a MG34 barrel carrier to the bicycle frame. It looked to be in great condition.

Having it out of the ground I swung the detector around and a few moments later I had the second part for the rack, and the clamp to attach it to the frame with. The detector picked up another signal around the same place now and under a piece of moss and not even a centimeter of soil was a Heer buckle. It was made from steel , and denazified but still a very nice find for me.

After lunch I walked around digging up garbage and decided after a while to pick up the backpack and move a bit more into the forest. I gave the ground where the backpack had laid a sweep with the detector and there was a nice signal. It was another beltbuckle! This one had the leather tab folded over the front, and I haven`t cleaned it yet as Im writing this so I don`t know if its denazified or not.

Then I stumbled across a dumping pit that I could not resist opening up. It had lots of junk. A canteen, a whole pile of alloy food tins, bottles and wires. On the very bottom of the pit were two pedals from a vehicle so that I had something to put in the backpack for the work.

Detecting my way through the forest I saw a hare jumping away from me and I dug up a few more things that could go into the back pack. A nice German tent peg, a gasmask cannister, a spurr and the lid from a bunkerstove.

And even if I was now far away from the stables area the last signal I dug on today was a pile of horseshoes.

Back at home now and if it isn`t too late on the evening its time to go outside a plant potatoes and some other goodies in the garden.

Happy Days! :)