Showing posts with label Jacksonville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jacksonville. Show all posts

Friday, April 17, 2020

4/17/20 Report - Big News! Some Florida Beaches Opening This Evening. Using Metal Detecing Conductivity Numbers. Kirlian Photography.


Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Beach.

This is a beach.  I thought I'd post a picture of a beach in case you forgot what one looks like.  Those were the good old days.  You never know what you've got til its gone (Joni Mitchelle song).  It isn't a new beach photo, just reminiscing.

Just after I posted this photo, I saw the mayor of Jacksonville on TV saying that he was opening beaches at 5 PM Friday.  He said he wanted people to have more space to distance and the ability to get some exercise.  He asked people to continue observing social distancing and safe behavior.

6:15 PM Update: Happy beachgoers at Jacksonville beach are delighted to have their toes in the sand once again.

In St. Lucie and Martin County today, the beach accesses were still gated or barricaded.  The boat ramps are open, and there are good numbers of people out along the river.

There is word that DeSantis will start opening Florida beaches this evening.  I don't know if that is a sure thing or how many will open.

It seems there are people starting to petition for the beaches being opened.

I did a little mucking around in a real trashy area with the Equinox, and was using the conductivity numbers to pick through a small range of items.  They were fairly high conductive items of fairly small size.  A lot of them were copper electrical components, like the ones shown below.  I was able to avoid tons of aluminum and iron.


I did pick up a copper penny that was corroded down to about half its original weight.

The conductivity numbers can be used to pickup a fairly narrow range of items, which can be helpful.

I'm also trying to get my homemade Kirlian photography kit setup so I can get some good pictures of the coronas (not the bad type).

I did a post about that before.  Here is the setup installed in an old brief case.


Polaroid film can be used to capture the aura of objects, but I'm going to attempt to do it digitally now.


See https://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/search?q=Kirlian for more about that.

I think I might be able to correlate the aura or discharge pattern with what detectorists refer to the item's halo effect.

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A lot of people read and contribute to this blog, including some of the very top salvage people to people who are thinking about swinging their detector for the first time.  I've finds showed finds from both ends of the continuum.  You might be surprised by who they are and their accomplishments.

Different types of people visit this blog and for different reasons.  Some only want to see what has been found and want to find more themselves.  But there are some, that come for other reasons.

One person, who was a salvage diver on one of the biggest and most important 1715 Fleet finds of all time told me he doesn't visit the blog to learn about metal detecting.  He said he reads the blog to learn more about living.

Another person, an author, told me how she is often inspired spiritually by the blog.

Unlike the fine authors who acknowledge this blog when they use it as a source, there is one that comes here to get ideas for his books but never acknowledges the source.

So its a very mixed bag, probably much more than you could imagine, and although I never hear from some who read this blog, I do hear from a lot of them.

Just this morning I heard from a practicing MD who has contributed to some of my featured posts in the past, and he said he found his first Barber Half this year, and found two half dollars in the same day for the first time.  Congratulations on the Barber half and double half day!

If you are easily triggered you might want to cover your eyes for the rest of this sentence, but he also lamented how people are voluntarily giving up their freedoms.  You probably won't hear me talk about that topic much in the future since it seems that some of the authorities had a change of heart and are ready to let things begin to open up before long.

The readers of this blog are varied, as am I.  Professionally I started out as a college psychology instructor.  I moved on to psychophysiological research, which included among other things a research grant from the Heart Fund to develop a constant-cuff blood pressure feedback system like ones you see in the pharmacies these days.  As computers evolved, I moved from batch processing and using keypunch and punch cards for statistical analysis, into interactive computing ( using a teletype which had a delay of a second or more between each keypress and response ) and developed what I believe to be the first programmerless CAI authoring system, Next I went into consulting and training development for about ten years, which included consulting for a variety of large organizations, including airline companies, the Navy, Federal Express, Martin Marietta and a variety of other schools, non-profits and other companies.  Eventually I returned to academia and taught computer science and education before moving to the Treasure Coast.

Here is the point of that - I always, whether in computer science, education or consulting, or metal detecting, employed the same type of analysis  and problem-solving skills. I brought the very same principles to my metal detecting that I used in my career, which is one thing that makes my approach to metal detecting a little different.  I hope that helps you understand a little better where I am coming from.

It might seem to you that I am off-topic when I am illustrating the use of the same analytical and problem solving skills in other areas.  But one of the things that is important to me is illustrating thee same types of skills as applied to a variety of situations and problems.

I am considering making some changes, but they might not be big changes.   I'm not sure yet exactly what I am going to do differently yet.

It sounds like it might not be forever before we can go to the beach again.

Trivia question:  You might have heard that Battelle is developing technology to sterilize facemasks to they can be reused.  What put them on the map?  See answer below.

Good time to research and study.
TreasureGuide@comcast.net



Battelle developed the Xerox copy machine.

I did a little work with them (very little) back in the seventies, I think it was.

Saturday, December 9, 2017

12/9/17 Report - Hoard Uncovered by Roadwork. Finds: Tools of Sailing Ships and Sail Making. Jacksonville Area Conditions.


Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Hoard Uncovered by Road Project.
Source: See RT.com link below.
A Swedish farmer has been awarded thousands of dollars after roadworks on his land uncovered a Viking treasure trove that included hundreds of silver coins.

Here is the link for more about that.

https://www.rt.com/news/412305-viking-treasure-coins-sweden/

Thanks to Norbert B. for submitting this link.

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Chris N. said, Here is the rather large needle either Upholstery or a Sail Needle, it was rolling in the surf whence I found it. 


Broken eyelet curved needle point, some corrosion, especially on needle point end. I cleaned up best I could with out destroying item.  

Below are three pictures Chris sent of that needle.

 Found Needle

Pointed End of Same Needle.

Other End of the Needle.
I don't know much about sail making tools, neither new or centuries old, but because of recent posts I've been doing some research and learning a little.  

I found the following on a site having to do with sail making.  The author used the name Savage24.

A sail needle has a 3 sided point, like a leather needle, except the edges are rounded off.
They slip between the fibers of canvas or heavy sail cloth without tearing the fibers...
A properly tempered sail needle will last for years I have some that I have been using for 10-12 years. 
They will cost you a couple of dollars each for the larger sizes, but you get what you pay for.
I would recommend from size 12 - 14 for general use. That's about a 3 to 3 1/2 inch needle that will take the inner strands of 550 cord.
As a sailmaker I use them for sewing sails and sailor stuff, they also make a dandy vent pick for your flintlock. 

Savage24 is talking about needles that you can get today, so they might be a bit different than those used centuries ago.

Another source said,

Sail needles are used for canvas repair work by hand sewing, it is generally much thicker as compared to normal machine needles to provide a comfortable finger grip. The body of the needle is triangular in shape with a sharp triangular point for sewing onto the fabric using minimal force. The eye of the sail needle is also ...
While sails were made on land, I would expect tools for maintenance and repairs to be carried on a ship or brought in after a wreck for various uses.

Here is a good list of sail making tools from the boat-building.org web site (See link below.).

The additional hand tools used by a sailmaker are:
  • Sail needle: a strong needle with a sharp triangular point.
  • Sailmaker’s thread: strong thread for sewing up the sails, leech ropes and grommets.
  • Sailmaker’s palm: a strip of leather with a metal pad with an indentation that is used to force the needle through the sailcloth. The strip is strapped around the palm of the hand.
  • Awl, to create a hole in heavy sailcloth or multiple layers of sailcloth before inserting the needle.
  • Pliers, for pulling through a needle inserted into heavy sailcloth or multiple layers of sailcloth.
  • Seam-rubber: a wooden handle with a strong 'scraper', made from strong lignum vitae (tropical type of wood) for creasing down seams in the edges of the sailcloth.
  • Fid: a cone-shaped piece of lignum vitae for splicing rope or opening up holes in the sailcloth. The fid is inserted between the strands of a rope in order to create space through which another piece of rope can be inserted. The fid can also be inserted into a hole in the sailcloth and will open it up wider, so that the hole becomes larger.
  • Marlinspike (also known as a marlingspike): a wooden handle with a piece of metal that tapers to a point in the form of an awl and which has a hollow in it and which is intended for splicing stranded rope. The marlinspike is inserted between the strands of rope, a strand is inserted through the hollow section of the marlinspike and is thus fed through the gap in the rope.
  • Hollow punch: a metal pin with a round hole at one end with a sharp edge and a flat face on the opposite end so that it can be hit with a hammer. Hollow punches are available in various sizes and diameters to make small and larger holes.
It appears that one of the diagnostic features of a sail making needle would be a triangular point.  I can not usually see that in pictures of either new or found needles.

Although I've learned a little, I'm not yet able to say if the needle in question today is a sail making needle or an upholstery needle or how old it might be.  Perhaps somebody more familiar with those types of items can say.  If so, please let me know.  Perhaps the above information will help some one identify the item.

Here is the link I mentioned above.

http://www.boat-building.org/learn-skills/index.php/en/wood/sail-making/

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Chris N. also sent a beach report from up around the Jacksonville area.  Here it is.

Went out a little bit today,, not very much.. Very sanded in.. this storm is bringing the sand up and covering were all the good material is, except down by the very low water tide line.  I did not stick around to wait.. really early out in the surf in and around Jacksonville. I bet although Anastasia Island and further south conditions may be better...

Bad weather still on the move unfortunate for folks who live in homes by the ocean... Major construction all over Northern Coast from Irma.. there finally establishing Sea Walls for folks who pay for it..

Note* When I find a lot of fossilized bones, larger sharks teeth etc Items I usually get good hits on my detector... "Just a thought".. 


On the Treasure Coast there is lot of thunder, wind and rain this morning.  It looks like we'll just have a two foot surf for a couple weeks on the Treasure Coast.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net