11/17/16 Report - On The Beach Or In The Hills Some Things Remain The Same. Sanitation Workers Find Wedding Ring.

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

Showing Recovered Wedding Ring.
Source: See link below.

Sanitation workers dug through tons of trash to find this lady's lost ring.

Here is the link for that story.

http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/ny-sanitation-crew-finds-womans-lost-wedding-rings/story?id=43574824

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Not long ago I was hunting in the hills of West Virginia.  While I was doing that I noticed several similarities to beach hunting.

It was very hilly.  You can see that in the photo I showed in my 11/14 post.

There was a flat spot about a quarter of the size of a football field.  It was down the hill from an old settlement, and I know that it was heavily used.  There were certainly many thing lost there, yet I found almost nothing there but aluminum.  Why?  Because tons of leaves piled up and rotted there year after year for hundreds of years.  The leaves were piled about a half a foot deep, then under that was partly rotted leaves, and under that very loose new soil.  Anything of any age was deep, except for the stuff like aluminum foil, which remained on top of it all.

That flat area was very much like an area on a beach where the sand is very loose.  The loose sand moves in and covers any stationary objects, just like the leaves covered more stationary objects on the flat spot.

That wasn't the only area that was similar to a beach area.  They had heavy rain there last summer. The rain ran down some of the steeper areas and washed leaves and loose soil off the slope.  The result is that some surface objects were removed with the top lighter soil.  Some things were left behind though.  That area was also very much like a beach in some ways.

You'll might remember my lengthy discussions on "trigger points" and "drop points."   When the force of water is great enough some objects will be moved and others not moved.  The same thing applies to hilly land.  (For more on trigger and drop points, see my 8/30/15 post.)

The top soil and some objects got washed down over the slopes where the slope was great enough and the water flow forceful enough.  It as on such a slope that I found the oldest coin (about 100 years old).

The same slope  was very hard packed.  That was because the looser soil was washed off with some objects.  Whatever washed off the slope ended up at the bottom of the slope, whether that was a flat area or a gully.

I'm sure that if I could move a foot or more of soil, the flat area would produce a lot of older coins and things.  As it was, the older materials were found on the slopes.

One way that that land was different from a beach is that there were roots and a lot of rocks.  The roots and rocks held some of the items that would have been moved by the water.

Old bottles also washed out of the hillside along the gullies.

No matter whether you are on a beach or in the hills, I'm always happy to see erosion.  Erosion can always uncover some older items.  It also moves sand or soil that can cover up items.

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A six-thousand-year-old underwater site was mapped and artifacts recovered.

Here is the link to that interesting article.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/underwater-stone-age-settlement-haven-fishing-yields-mysterious-elk-antler-pick-axe-1591682

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We're going to have a small surf for a few days, but big tides, at least tomorrow.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

6/28/16 Report - How Water Sorts Things On The Beach. Gold and Emerald Finds.

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

Gold and Emerald Ring and Gold Chain.

If you hunt where older people predominate you won't find nearly as much.  They don't do cartwheels or  dive for volleyballs, but they do lose some things.  The young people have been wearing more white gold, while the older people are still wearing a good bit of their older yellow gold.  The emerald ring is 14K, and the chain is 10K.  Both are recent finds.

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A week or so ago I said I would explain why some days there are shells on the beach and other days not.  A lot of the same principles apply to coins.  I decided that I would have to repeat some things so you'd have some important background information.

As you would suspect, it takes more water velocity to move some items that it takes to move others. It isn't all about size or weight.  Density and shape are two important factors that I've discussed in the past.

While objects will be transported by water moving at a given velocity, it takes more velocity to dislodge settled particles and get them moving than it takes to keep them moving.

The velocity required to dislodge particles and get them moving is what I have referred to as the "trigger point."  That isn't the scientific term.  It is just the term I use.

Clay makes a good example.  It consists of very fine particles that transport very easily in water when suspended, but due to what I'll simply call the "stickiness," it takes a good bit more force to dislodge the clay particles to get them moving.

Different objects, in addition to having different trigger points, also have different "drop" points. When the water slows, there is a point when a particle will drop out or settle.  The same thing happens with objects.  When objects are being moved by a current, they will "drop" out, or settle, when the water slows enough.

The water has to be very calm before fine clay particles drop out, for example, while sand drops out while the water is moving a little more rapidly, and pebbles will stop moving when the water is moving still faster.

Below is one of the most helpful illustrations that I have seen.  It sums up a lot of what I just said.

In the illustration, the straight red line between the other two red lines shows the increasing velocity required to move larger particles and objects when a laminar current is assumed and other factors are not taken into account.

I won't try to explain what laminar flow is other than to say that it is a simple straight parallel flow. Look up "laminar flow" if you want.

The curved red line to the right of the straight line shows that pebbles are moved when the water velocity reaches near 100 cm/s.  The same line curves to the left as particle size decreases because it requires less water velocity to move smaller particles such as sand.  It then curves back to the right again because it requires faster water to get silt and clay moving.

The curved red line to the right of the straight line on the graph shows it takes more water velocity to move clay than pebbles even though pebbles are much larger than particles of clay.

The most important thing to get is that objects such as sand, coins, rings and all kinds of things, have different trigger points and require different amounts of water force to get them moving.  They also have different "drop" points, which is when they drop out of transport and settle on the surface.

Fine sand requires less current to get it moving and keep it moving than coarse sand or shells, but fine sand keeps moving as the water slows and shells drop out of transport.

Water flows up onto the beach, and then flows back down again.  When it washes straight up onto the beach, it washes back down the same path.  Sometimes an incoming flow hits the backwash, which stops the flow, and items drop out.

Lets say the water is moving up the slope of the beach fast enough to move the sand up the slope.  As the water gets higher on the slope, the water slows and the sand is deposited.  If the water is not moving fast enough to move the shells, then more sand gets deposited on the beach.  If on the other hand the water is moving fast enough to move both sand and shells, the sand might get moved farther up the slope than the shells, but if the water slows enough to drop the shells, but retreats fast enough to take the sand back down with, you will be left with a shell pile.

There are times, as we know, that the water washes onto the beach at an angle rather than straight up onto the beach.  When that happens, it does not slow so much at the peak.  The water also makes an arc, slicing onto and off of the beach, without being slowed so much.

The water moves onto the beach and back down with each wave, but there are also the tidal cycles to take into a account, and they are very important.  And there are still other things as well, such as where the waves are crashing.   It is not laminar flow (sorry if you did not look it up), but turbulent flow.

I ll stop there for today.  There are other important and interesting factors that come into play at different times, such as how compact the sand is.  I'll probably pick up with some of those topics some other time.

Much of what I said today I've said before, but I did add some.

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There is still no tropical weather of any significance.  And we still have a small surf.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

8/30/15 Report. Erika Gone. Supermoon Last Night. More on Trigger and Drop Points. Flying Aircraft Carrier Sunk.

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

Two Disturbances

Erika has disappeared.  However, the remnants are just off of Cuba formed from the remnants of Erika.  At the time of the 8 PM update, this disturbance only had a ten percent chance of becoming a cyclone in the next 48 hours.  We will get a lot of rain from it.

There is another disturbance coming off Africa.  It has already turned into a tropical depression.

Erika fizzled out like Danny did.  The surfing web site are predicting something like a three to four foot surf on the Treasure Coast tomorrow.  Then it is supposed to decrease again on Monday.

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Last night was a supermoon, the first of three supermoons to occur this Fall

...In fact, the term ‘supermoon’ is not astronomical. Scientists call this event a ‘perigee moon’: it takes place when the full Moon reaches the closest point to Earth on its oval orbit. This point is called perigee and it is about 50,000 km closer to our planet than the opposite side of the Moon’s elliptical path – apogee...

Here is a link for more about that.

https://www.rt.com/news/313812-supermoon-rising-saturday-august/

You might recall that it was worried that Erika would arrive during a supermoon.

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I received the following email from Brian H.

I have been reading your blog and thought what if we had T-Shirts with Environmental Clean up Crew printed on them. Would make a great conversation point.

I have been studying your blog mainly on how objects move in the sand, fresh water lakes act different than the ocean but the fluid dynamics are the same. I do have the Great Lake Michigan in my back yard and it acts like an ocean.

I will hit a hot spot of 60's era flip tops and think no one has been here before? Then I will get into bottle cap heaven and dig like a hundred of them. One day I saw one in the water scooting across the surface of the sand and I started thinking differently.

It is when I get into the coins and nickels that I normally find the gold rings. Birds of a feather?

The weather on the lake for tomorrow will change to a Northeast and a Super Moon.

I will take a couple of machines and watch the sand movement.

Brian is right.  The water dynamics are the same.  Anywhere there is running water, even rain runoff, watch for the same basic principles at work.  Thanks Brian.  

Watching junk can tell you a lot.  Junk can help tell you how things are being distributed and therefor also where the good and bad areas are.

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I really learned a lot about escudos lately.  It happened primarily as a result of looking at the recent Treasure Coast finds.

In the past couple of years I have also learned a lot more about how sand and objects move on beaches.  That is something I've studied for a long time, but I just made some new breakthroughs that help explain a lot. The more you learn, the more knowledge you have to build on, and that leads to learning new things.

A diver told me he was pretty sure that at least some of the escudos that were found this year down in the pot holes and cracks were up on the slabs before the blowers removed the sand.  A lot of the escudos were found on top of the slabs even after the blowers removed the sand.  That information was important to me for several reasons.  Basically it confirmed some things I suspected but was not absolutely sure about.

One of the books I mentioned the other day said that Frogfoot Weller wanted his blowers to run no faster than 600 rpm.  That was so the coins would settle down in the hole instead of being blowing around.

That provides an excellent example of how what I have named "trigger points" are important.  In case you haven't read what I've said about trigger points, a trigger point is the amount of water movement or force needed to get different objects to start moving.

Little force is needed to move silt or fine sand and more force is needed to move small pebbles and even more force is needed to move things like gold coins.  Every object has its trigger point.  If you know where each object lies on the scale, you know in what order things will be moved as the amount of force increases.  If you think about that continuum and how the various trigger points are  met as the amount of force increases, you'll understand how some objects are moved and others left behind as different amounts of force are produced.

The other important thing is the "drop point," which refers to the point at which different items drop out of moving water and settle.  As water movement decreases, different objects settle out at different times.

An important thing to watch is when and where the amount of force changes.  For example, there will be a lot of force directly in front of a breaking wave and less as the water goes up the slope on the front of the beach.  If the trigger point for an object, such as a coin was exceeded at the base of the slope, the "drop point" might be reached at some point as the water slows as it goes up the slope. Objects that are less easily moved will generally settle out first, but it is not a straight line function.

It gets more complicated since you also have to take into account such as back flow, which may have enough force to move sand or other objects back down the slope again.

Up to 600 rpm the force produced by Frogfoot's blowers moved the sand, but above 600 rpm the coins were also being blown around.  What they wanted was to blow the sand but not the coins, which would then tend to settle down into the hole.

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Flying Aircraft Carrier
Source: see link below.

As early as 1916 the Navy had begun designing lighter-than-air (LTA) rigid airships, and by 1926 the focus had shifted to airships that could support aerial scouting missions. The first flying aircraft carrier, USS Akron (ZRS-4), was commissioned in 1931 – and after several incidents in two years, the airship crashed and sank off the coast of New Jersey in 1933...

I thought that was pretty interesting -  a flying aircraft carrier.  Note the size of the planes below the airship.  In the article there was is a picture of how the old planes were attached.  Really interesting idea that evidently didn't work out.

Here is the link.

http://news.usni.org/2015/08/19/exploring-the-wreck-of-uss-macon-the-navys-last-flying-aircraft-carrier

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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

6/28/15 Report - Trigger Points, Drop Points, Water Velocity and How Things Move And Get Sorted On A Beach.

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

There is a lot of information available on waves and coastal erosion.  What I do is start with that information and add my own observations and experimentation.  The academic literature is very good but it doesn't cover everything that a detectorist might want to know.

I could give you simple hints and suggestions such as to check dips below cuts, and that might would be good advice, but it won't help you nearly as much as knowing the principles of how beaches work. Situations differ, but if you know the important principles you'll be able to analyze any beach you look at and have a good idea if the beach is improving, and it will also tell you where to detect.  There is a lot to it, and it isn't simple, but if you continue adding to your knowledge base, you'll get it.  I keep learning more and more and understanding more and more.  Keep in mind the principles that you pick up and try to observe and test them in the field.

I'll try to put it in a way that I think is most understandable and applicable to a detectorist.  I'll add a little at a time, repeating some things and slowly adding a little new material to it.

As you would suspect, it takes more water velocity to move larger particles and larger items.  The relationship in "laminar" currents is pretty much a straight line when you are talking about items having the same densities and the same shape.

While particles will be transported by water moving at a given velocity, it takes more velocity to dislodge settled particles (and other objects) than it takes to keep them moving once they are suspended.

The velocity required to dislodge particles and get them moving is what I have often referred to as the "trigger point."  That isn't the scientific term.  It is just the term I use.  If we were to include that on a graph like the one above, there would be a line to the right of the red line, and it would not be a straight line because it takes more force to dislodge certain types of particles.

Clay is a good example.  It consists of very fine particles that transport very easily in water when suspended, but due to what I'll simply call the "stickiness" of clay, it takes a good bit more force to dislodge the particles and get them moving.

Different particles, in addition to having different trigger points, also have different "drop" points. When the water slows, there is a point at which the particle will drop out or settle.  The water has to be very calm before fine clay particles drop out, for example, while sand drops out while the water is moving a little more rapidly and pebbles will stop moving when the water is moving faster than that.


In this graph, the straight red line between the other two red lines shows the increasing velocity required to move larger particles and objects when a laminar current is assumed and other factors are not taken into account.  That line is very much like the graph above.

The curved red line to the right of the straight line shows that pebbles are moved with velocities of just less than 100 cm/s.  The same line curves to the left as particle size decreases because it requires less water velocity to move smaller particles such as sand.  It then curves back to the right again because it requires faster water to get silt and clay moving.

The curved red line to the right of the straight line on the graph shows it takes more water velocity to move clay than pebbles even though pebbles are much larger than particles of clay.

The most important thing to get from that is that objects such as sand, coins and rings and things have different trigger points and require different amounts of water force to get them moving.

There are times when you might have enough force to move sand but not coins.  Therefore, you might have erosion but not enough force to wash coins up onto the beach.  That would not be at all unusual.

The curved red line to the left of the straight line shows the decreased amount of force at which particles will drop out or settle.  Pebbles, for example, will continue to be moved until the flow slows to somewhere around 25 cm/s flow and will settle well before the water flow decreases to 10 cm/s.

Silt and clay, on the other hand, will remain suspended and continue to be transported as long as you have just a very little flow.

That is a good place to stop today.  Get that down and then I'll show you how it applies on a real beach to determine when there is erosion and when coins and things move and how they are deposited differently.  I'll add some additional factors.

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Here is a good web site giving terminology and other good basic information about waves.

http://www.csun.edu/~khurst/ES300/Fritche/300waves.html#I

Knowing how a beach works is one of the most important things you can know for greater success with beach and shallow water metal detecting.

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When you submit a photo of an object for ID, include some indication of size.  That can be something simple like a coin for comparison.  Also include a picture of both sides of the object.  You might think there is nothing to see on the other side, but some one who has not seen the item in person might benefit from seeing the other side even if there isn't much to see.  Maybe there is nothing to be seen there, but that is important too.  Sometimes there will be the tinniest of clues, a very small stub where something was attached, the slightest signs of usage, even corrosion, which by itself can tell something about the metal the item is made of.  Green corrosion is sometimes a sign that the object is cuprous, for example.  Even the shape is important.  An object might look flat on the back, but it might be just a touch convex or concave.  All of those are important clues.  I know it takes time.  I'm just saying, for the best chance for an ID, both size and pictures of both sides can make the difference.

An object that isn't easy to identify isn't easy to identify to start with, so any detail might help.

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I've received some thoughts on the round mystery object I posted a couple of days ago.  I'll post that before long.

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Has this been the longest period of smooth surf or what?  The Treasure Coast hasn't seen good beach detecting conditions for a very long time.

It has to happen.  I'm ready.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net