Thursday, July 28, 2016

7/28/16 Report - 1715 Fleet Gold Rings Found. Tumbaga and Depletion Gilding. A Diamond Ring, Gold Coins and Stinky Cheese. Two New Tropical Disturbances.


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


Gold Rings From 1715 Fleet Just Found.
Submitted by Captain Jonah Martinez


I just received this photo of the latest 1715 Fleet gold ring finds. Amazing finds! Great job guys!


The clasped hands motif is very common. I have seen it on a variety of 1715 pieces.

The clasped hands signifies friendship and love. That design motif has been used on antique jewelry since Roman times and continues to this day.

I wonder if the bird shown on the top ring is another reference to the pelican of piety that my friend Laura Strolia wrote about.  It very much looks like it could be.



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Yesterday I mentioned tumbaga and how they used a procedure to get a relatively pure gold on the surface of the item.  I didn't remember the exact process at the time, but here is paragraph that describes the details.

The surface color of the objects could be modified by a process called “depletion gilding” (miseen-couleur), a gold surface enrichment. The cast copper-gold alloy figurines were treated chemically to remove the base metal from the surface of the object giving the finished piece the appearance of high purity gold. Either mineral salts or acidic plant extracts could have been used for this procedure. Depletion gilding produces a well bonded but porous and spongy layer only a few microns thick, which was then burnished. A higher copper content would result in a more reddish color and a higher gold content produced a more yellowish color.

That paragraph is from the web site found through the following link.





Here is another web site showing a variety of tumbaga artifacts.



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A diamond ring, 14 gold coins, and you guessed it, 340 year-old stinky cheese, was found on an old shipwreck site.

Here is that link.



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There is now a tropical disturbance, two in fact, coming off of Africa.  One has a 20% chance of becoming a cyclone in the next 48 hours and the other has a 30% chance.  When you see them start to line up like that, they sometimes keep coming.

They are too far away now to have any idea where they might go or what they might do, but keep watching.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net