Many gold detectorists avoid touching the ground whilst swinging their coils and so never damage or wear out their coils skidplate. I am not one of those persons. I reckon you should get as close to the ground as possible and scrub away as this increases your potential to get signals that hovercrafting types miss. The downside of this is that some skidplates are of a very flimsy nature and cost between $15-25 each to replace. I have seen my mate Uncle Russ wear through a skidplate in 3 outings so it is his highest recurring expense apart from fuel. Luckily Uncle Russ has another mate who likes tinkering and designing and such. He has moulded some skidplates from a hardwearing type of plastic and is gunna sell them to a few of his mates, including me. Ive offered to pay 50% over the retail of the Brand-name skidplate, because I know it's the last one I will ever need to buy. He has also recently made some ripper detecting picks from different guage steel....his latest are from ploughshares, but he has also made lighter guage varieties to suit shorter handles and one handed operation. He also lathe-carves the pick-handles from native hardwoods.
[imgz=http://forums.silverstackers.com/uploads/2939_dscf7145.jpg][/imgz] This one is made by Walco. Its pretty good, but the home-made ones Uncle Russ's mate makes are better refined and balanced. Will try and get some pics of his skidplates and picks to post.
If they're as robust as you say and can be produced cheaply enough, I know a few guys who might be interested in buying these. Squiggles.
