Is it possible to make a living in the village by digging scrap metal with a metal detector???

Good mood to everyone. Oh, let's talk today about the economic feasibility of digging with metal in rural areas. To begin with, so that the reader does not have confusion, it is worth clarifying. For the purposes of this blog and the site hobby-detecting.ru, several authors write. Including me.

So, who am I? A simple man who lives in a large village in central Russia. I make my living by helping visitors who have bought old houses in our vicinity for their summer cottages. I am exactly the one who is usually looked for when asking neighbors. “And there is someone in the village who can put up a fence, cover a roof, make a gazebo,” and so on. The income, of course, is not constant, but it’s enough to live on; here, as in a small business, everything depends on how you manage yourself.

So, the last two years have greatly shaken this earning model. It was especially difficult in the summer of last year, people pressed tightly together, which is why there were very few orders for work, and those that were on the verge of price adequacy. In general, as a result, we had to live through the winter of last year on previously accumulated reserves. Which, as you understand, does not add optimism to life.

And, don’t, as all sorts of inadequate people often write in the comments under my notes, say stop doing bullshit and go work at a factory. I worked at a factory, no, at factories, there is nothing interesting there, I get along very poorly with all sorts of incompetent bosses. Moreover, please understand that under the word “incompetent” I included several obscene and derogatory epithets that Word usually highlights with the explanation “A word with a pronounced expression.”

Okay, I think we've sorted this out. Go ahead. In the spring of this year, I clearly faced a dilemma: stay in the village and hope that the pandemic will end and people will again want to spend money on a barbecue area, front gardens or fences for a rose garden. Or open Superjob and see what they offer, like me, the unfortunate ones, at construction sites in the capital.

It was spring. I went out once again to dig for coins in a plowed field. Coins are for the soul, it’s a good hobby that gives both the body relaxation and the brain a good workout. In general, I’m digging for coins, then another comrade in a Niva drives up and greets me. We talked to him, it turned out we knew each other before. Last year I saw him in the forest, he was digging for scrap metal on an old farm.

Word by word he suggests to me, let's go metal. This year the price for scrap metal is such that it is really interesting to dig for it. Oh, I’m like a princess, fi, yes fu, scrap metal is like climbing through garbage dumps, I disdain. To which, the comrade does not calm down: “Yes, come on at least once, you yourself will understand that this is real money.” At the phrase “real money”, something clicked in my mind and I answered. “Why look for it, it’s scrap metal, there are the remains of a brick factory at the edge of this field in that planting.”

What is a brick factory in rural areas? These are large pits in which bricks were previously fired. No buildings or communications. However, as it turned out on the spot, these pits were chosen by local residents as a dump for construction waste. In general, in three hours we collected, without straining, more than three hundred kilograms of scrap metal. There are beds there, barn doors, pieces of pipes and, of course, spare parts from agricultural machinery that were repaired in this place at different times. They took it to a metal collection center, handed over 20 rubles per kilogram, and the bottom line was 3,000 rubles for each participant in the action.

At that moment, I thought, I remembered a story when I installed a new porch for a pensioner, and in the end, in three hours of work I earned the same 3,000 rubles. It’s true that I’ve suffered through enough during this time, how nice it is to say abuse now. For three hours this old woman told me what a sweetie and coquette she was in her youth and how she was pressed, matsed and groped by the best guys in the area. As I remember now, I started trembling and feeling nauseous again.

In general, I stand, look at the real money in my hands and think. “Why not???” Although, this phrase should be written with capital letters A, WHY NOT!!! You don’t need to buy a metal detector, I have two of them, I have my own Niva, if anything. So, starting a business costs zero.

And so things went, we drove a comrade’s car with half and half gasoline, I look for and show places where to dig, spare parts and repairs of the Niva – his topic. On average, the trip cost was from 3 to 5 thousand rubles per brother. Yes, we had our own methodology and, first of all, it was having an understanding of where to look for scrap metal no longer makes sense. Since my partner has been digging for three years now, he has already worked out the main fatty areas. That is, we went out alone extremely rarely, maybe once or twice a month.

As a result, my partner and I separated after a couple of months of working together, but not because of disagreements over money, but simply because we had different methods for searching for metal. I loved to search and dig for various small things in already knocked out places, or to work in littered areas where simple and cheap metal detectors were useless.

Well, for example, I found a place in a plowed village where there was a blacksmith shop. There's at least a bucket load of metal there. Yes, just everything small, plowshares, hubs and fingers, I worked it out well in that place. Three hundred kilograms in four hours of coping. There are two walks a day. I invited my partner, he arrived, but he couldn’t do anything, he had a cheap metal detector, and in the littered area of the forge it was cracking incessantly. How can you tell whether there is a nail or a plowshare worth a couple of kilograms under the coil?

What do I want to say? The metal detector helped me out a lot this year. Here, again, the same principle is that I work for myself, I have free time, a flexible schedule, and if I received an interesting order from summer residents, then I could go on a wild night. And, yes, you don’t have to grab every small order, you can bargain, keep your price, and in any case, I’ll get no less on metal for the same time of work.

So, I will answer the question posed. You can make money by digging scrap metal, provided that this is not the only source of income. And, also, if you have understanding and consideration for this rather intellectual activity.