Collecting soil bulk density samples Collecting soil bulk density samples. We have a special corer for this sampling. In the picture upper left corner we are preparing to take a sample. You can see in the blow up just below this picture that the metal ring (#4) screws onto the sampler (#2, long shaft object). Inside of the metal ring is a plastic sleeve (#3). Once assembled, you drive the sampler into the soil (our sampler is 3” diam x 6” length). It has a special head on it for hitting with the ‘dead blow’ hammer (made of rubber has sand or something in it so it doesn’t kill your ears or arms). The sampler is then pulled out of the soil, the metal ring is unscrewed and the plastic sleeve is extracted, capped (pictures not shown) and brought back to the lab where we measure the length of the soil in the sleeve (if it is not totally full….we attempt to get a full sample), weigh the soil, place it in an oven at 105C for a few days until dry, cool, weigh again and calculate bulk density as g dry soil/vol of soil (where the volume is measured in cm3).