A search probe is a tool for checking land plots for the presence of metal objects, including voids. It is a metal (usually steel, high-strength) rod with a diameter of 5-10 mm, a length of 20 cm to several meters, which has a handle at one end for convenience to stick the probe into the ground, and a sharp tip at the other. Probes are divided into: short – up to 1 meter in size, medium – up to 1.5 meters, and long – over 1.5 meters. By design they are divided into: collapsible and solid. The advantage of collapsible ones is, of course, their compactness, but the advantage of one-piece ones is, of course, strength, since there are no additional fastening points. The principle of operation of the probe is quite simple: with the help of physical force, the soil is pierced, and they are searched for the presence of objects located there. A search engine who has experience working with a probe can quite easily determine the size of an object and the location in which the object is located in the ground, as well as the material from which the object is made – metal, wood, glass, concrete, etc.
Search probe
They began to use probes quite a long time ago; they were also widely used during the Great Patriotic War, and were often used by sappers. It was widely used by diggers in the 1990s -2000s, since that time is considered to be the starting point in the breakthrough of the metal detector industry. Because a metal detector at that time was quite a luxury, and not every digger could afford one, so search engines often carried probes. Often the probes were homemade, and they were made from torsion bars of Zhiguli trunks, sharpening one side, and attaching a handle to the other. The material from which the torsion bar was made had good strength and therefore was well suited for the manufacture of feeler gauges.
Torsion bar for VAZ car trunk
Homemade torsion bar feeler gauge
Nowadays, probes are widely used by scrap metal diggers, archaeologists, search engines who are involved in war digging and searching for the remains of soldiers, and less often by treasure hunters. The convenience of the probe is evident when excavating dugouts and trenches, since few people want to shovel an extra cubic meter of earth from the bottom and walls of excavated trenches, then the use of a search probe is relevant. It is also important to use probes, for example, when searching for gas pipelines.