Rust Soup. I've found that plastic ice cream containers are good containers for doing electrolysis on small items. They come in a variety of shapes. I find the rectangular shaped ones like this one most useful.
You can find instructions on the web on how to create and use an electrolysis system.
Electrolysis is not the best method for everything, so study a bit before deciding to use electrolysis. It can severely damage some items. I would not use electrolysis on nice coins for example.
One of my first experiments with electrolysis was with a Buffalo nickle. I damaged it pretty well. It was no big deal, but be careful, and do your first experiments on things that don't matter.
You might want to look at Bill's coin cleaning instructions in my treasure reference link list. Bill tells how to use muriatic acid to clean treasure coins.
Some coins should not be cleaned at all, so again, study before proceeding.
Yesterday I showed a copper object that I needed help in identifying. I cleaned it and got some better photos. Here they are.
The item in the rust soup above turned out to be a spike. I'll show it when it gets cleaned better. It was found not far from the unidentified copper object on the same day.
I thought I was going to show a video today, but that got more complicated and time consuming than I had time for. Hopefully I'll get that mastered some other time.People sometimes only think of gold or silver coins when they think of treasure, but relics and artifacts can be interesting too. For some, they are more interesting than coins. They can tell something about the daily life of the people who once owned and used them.
I noticed this set of nails for sale on eBay. They already have a bid of $25 and haven't been listed very long. I bet some people have found old nails like this and thrown them away. That would be a shame. One thing I try to do in this blog is provide some education about such things. People need to be aware of the possible value and interest of the things they might find.
Nails From Whydah for Sale on EBay.The value of these nails undoubtedly comes in part from the fact they were found on a famous shipwreck - The Whydah, which sunk in 1718, and the seller says is, "... the only known pirate wreck on the us mainland."
My main point here is learn to recognize a broad range of the various types of artifacts that you might see on a beach. The more you learn about things like this, the better chance you have of being successful. Items like these can provide information and clues that will lead you to other finds.
Forecast and Conditions.
As I've bemoaned, conditions are poor. Yesterday I expected to dig up some things I detected on another day but couldn't get to. Well they were even deeper yesterday so they remain to be dug some other time when conditions improve.
The wind is out of the north/northeast today and the seas remain calm. Tomorrow the seas are going to increase to 5.5 feet. That could stir things up a bit. At least that is what I'm hoping.
We'll see.
Happy hunting, cleaning, examining, and identifying.
Sheeesh. How do people ever find time to get bored?
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