Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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Eight Reale Found About a Year Ago.
Find and photo by Terry S.
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One of the main points I want to make today is that all encrustation is not the same.
Another thing I want to mention before I really get started is that Bill P's method of cleaning silver coins first appeared in this blog about ten years ago. It somehow got deleted and so I was glad he wrote it up again for posting this year.
I have used Muriatic acid for cleaning coins for I'd guess at least thirty years. The first instance I recall, I ruined an upholstered dining room chair, which is what made it so memorable, I guess. Although Muriatic acid (hydrochloric acid) will ruin things like that, I have never done damage to a silver coin or medallion using that acid. Bill assured me it was safe on silver before I was sure of that. It has proven out like Bill said, but you have to make sure the object is silver, because other metals will be affected differently. For example, Muriatic acid will eat away at the surface of a bronze item, but my experience has proven Bill right and I have left silver items in Muriatic acid for days with no bad result. However, just to make absolutely sure nothing bad is happening, I still monitor progress. It is possible, for example, to have an object made of some other metal or alloy and not know it.
Terry took this encrusted eight-reale that had been sitting around for a year of so and "dipped" the coin in a 50/50 solution of Muriatic acid, followed by a water rinse and then used a baking soda paste. Below are the results.
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Same Eight-Reale Shown Above But After Cleaning.
Photos by Terry S.
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With a quick dip producing such good results, Terry was ready to try the acid treatment on his more recent find.
Terry said, Here is the early 1500’s coin after we dipped in the muriatic acid. When we put the first coin in the solution it bubbled like mad and the solution even changed color. When we put this coin in there was very little action and very few bubbles. I even tried the saliva and tin foil and didn’t see much improvement and finally resorted to a baking soda paste and a tooth brush with some results but no where near the results we got with the 8 reale.
Some more of the encrustation came off but no where near what needs to be removed...
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A Recent Find Uncleaned.
Photo by Terry S.
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Some coins will require a longer immersion than others. Many, if not most, will require more than a dip. I've had some that required days. It depends upon the type and amount of encrustation.
I've also had coins that were not affected at all by immersion in Muriatic acid. They had a dense clay crust that the acid would not penetrate. But that is unusual. When the crust was broken, it fell off nicely and showed the impression of the features of the coin as if the crust had been a plaster cast. To repeat the point I started with, all encrustations are not the same.
I personally feel very confident about immersing coins known to be silver in Muriatic acid for long periods, but just to be sure I didn't make some kind of mistake or something, I still check the progress occasionally.
The coin shown immediately above would probably benefit from a longer soaking. Assuming the coin is really silver, I'd be more concerned about a toothbrush than the acid.
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Just to give credit where it is due, Bill P. is the one that wrote the detailed instructions I posted for using Muriatic acid to clean silver coins. I originally posted those instructions about ten years ago but lost the post, so republished the instructions again in this blog not long ago. When I was still occasionally using other methods, including electrolysis, Bill encouraged me to use Muriatic acid instead of electrolysis. After years of additional experience, I can say Bill was right all along and deserves much credit.
Thanks Bill!
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Social media sneezes words, images and ideas into the infosphere. Some catch on and get retransmitted and become part of the common vernacular. Some are used only in smaller specialized communities.
I've always been interested in psycholinguistics and trends in language patterns and usage. I've mentioned my distaste for ambiguous over-used terms such as "existential threat," for example.
I remember using the equivalent of what we now call email and forums back in the late 1970s, when I was working for a company that had a very advanced international computer network. I remember thinking about conducting studies on how computer networks affect how people communicate. Unfortunately I didn't do those studies.
Since I've been doing this blog I've seen the language used by the metal detecting community evolve. It is natural for language patterns to evolve, but I believe this blog has played a significant roll in that evolution.
I remember when I was interviewed by a reporter from CNN and used the word detectorist. She stopped and said, "Did I hear you use the term "detectorist."" At that time the word was not as commonly used as it is today, and I believe some of that has to do with this blog.
As I recall, most people used the word "real" instead of "reale." I thought "real" could be confusing, and I also thought the Spanish word seemed more authentic, so I always wrote the word with the final e. It seems that spelling is now much more common than it was ten or twelve years ago.
I also never saw terms such as "coin line" used in the earlier metal detecting literature. It certainly was not defined in the detailed way that I defined it. I've tried to find that term used in the detecting literature before I defined it in this blog and have not found any earlier instances.
Even if I could not claim that this blog has introduced new terms and ideas, I can definitely say that it has advanced the discussion in numerous ways.
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The Washington Post is yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre and loving it!
If you listen to the media reports - and it's hard not to - it is beginning to sound more like an unbelievable horror movie. A recent Washington Post story, Coronavirus Will Radically Alter the U.S., describes an overwhelmed healthcare system and 1.1 million American deaths. No matter what you think of the Post, the story stokes fear while the subtle rewording in the headline suggests a thinly veiled satisfaction that President O'Bama's promise to fundamentally transform America will finally be ushered in by a catastrophe too good to waste.
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Every thing seems new to people who haven't seen anything like it before, which is why studying history adds important context.
The Spanish Flu (January 1918 – December 1920) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus with the second being the swine flu of 2009. The Spanish flu infected 500 million people around the world, or about 27% of the world population of between 1.8 and 1.9 billion. The death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest epidemics in human history. Historical and epidemiologic data are inadequate to identify with certainty the pandemic's geographic origin.
The world was very different then. A much larger part of the population lived in rural areas, and the medical profession was much less advanced. My grandparents survived that one. They mostly took whiskey and sugar, and put a sign in their window or on their door saying they were quarantined.
Then the swine flu, 2009 - 2010, killed nearly 12,500 in the U.S., but we heard almost nothing about it compared to Coronavirus.
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Many beaches have been closed. Unfortunately I can't provide an updated list, but I heard more were closed last night.
This might be a good time to explore new areas, do some testing or research finds.
Be blessed,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
