The other day I was inspecting a chained SS dagger I had purchased and another way of determining if the components were made of the original materials (steel or nickel-silver) came to me. I knew it needed to be non-destructive and done so the parts wouldn't have to be dis-assembled from the dagger.

At first I used the tried and true magnet test. However, the only thing it told me was that the part was non-magnetic. It would not tell me if it was lead, silver, potmetal,or a nickel alloy.

It then dawned on me, I owned a high-end metal detector that could tell the diffence between different types of metal. This particular metal detector, a Minelab Explorer with an after market probe, can measure different amounts of induction and conduction in metals. Most metal detectors only detect conduction. Also, the metal detector is able to discriminate out metals you don't want to detect by choice. The discrimation feature will allow the steel in the scabbard to be relatively ignored (since the parts are touching, there is some effect on the other parts).

This said, I turned on my detector and began to scan various parts of the detector such as the chain components, scabbard parts, and even grip eagle.

To help estabish a baseline for comparison, not neccisary but helpful, was done by detecting various components of early and late SA daggers.

With a baseline in hand, I detected the different parts of my dagger. I was able to tell the difference between plated parts (easy with a magnet) By sweeping the detector in different directions, I was able to determine the scabbard ball was magnetic steel and sweeping the other way could detect the lead weight under it.

I was also able to tell that the non-magnetic chain was not made of the same material as the other non-magnetic scabbard parts. The chain has more alloying that keeps the induction simular to nickel but the conductivity has less. I would imagine it is to make the chains wear better.

To make a long story longer, if I had an evern smaller detecting coin, I would probably check individual links of the chain and other small closely positioned parts.

This method wouldn't help much unless the parts are made of different material compositiona and close to the same size.

I though some of you would be interested in hearing this story.

Interesting indeed .