| Sampling
Tools
Many sand collectors manage just fine without any
specific sampling
tools, just using their fingers or a old 35 mm film canister
to scoop sand into their
sampling bags or containers. This is fine when the sand is nice and
dry and the weather warm. Not so nice during the winter when
the weather is sub-zero and your working frozen 10,000 year
old compacted glacial sediment!
Personally, I never go sand collecting without my humble
sand-collecting spoon, or rather spoons, a teaspoon and a
larger tablespoon, both in non-rusting stainless steel. They make it much easier to collect samples,
particularly when you only want sand from a specific area,
such as a very thin band of sand exposed in a river bank,
excavation or
quarry face. Many of the most interesting sands can be found
this way and some fine control may be required to collect a
clean sample. I've yet to find anything that does the task
better than a spoon.
As far as the spoon itself, what it's made of doesn't
really matter although metal spoons are by far the strongest
and a non-ferrous metal such as stainless steel or aluminium
is preferred. Plastic spoons tend to break too readily but
will pass through airport luggage scans when
travelling by air. You can even get spoons made from
titanium, if that takes your fancy - usually available from
outdoor equipment and camping stores. The Rolls Royce of the
spoon world, I would guess?
There are occasions, however, when the tablespoon
just does not hack it, for example, when working glacial
till or similar exposures that are compacted hard. The spoon
does work after a fashion but tends to bend too easily and is
tough on the hands with the hardness of the
exposure making getting samples quite
difficult. I got round this by raiding my builder's tool
box for a small pointing trowel. It makes short work of compacted
exposures. However, do take care where you carry the trowel
as the sharp edges will easily puncture your samples. Make
sure you get a good quality trowel as cheap trowels from a
budget shop don't last
very long and are prone to break easily. Good quality
trowels can be bought from archaeological equipment
suppliers. And getting a little bit more serious, I've often come
across very small samples of sand that are difficult to
extract, usually due to large rocks and stones getting in
the way. Lately, I've taken to keeping a bricklayers hammer
in the boot of the car, of the type with one square head and a chisel head.
Makes removing rocks that much easier and is also useful
when working exposures of glacial till. |
