8/8/11 Report - More Beach Renourishment Projects & GPS Uses

New Wilderness GPS Model.

If you have never looked at a wilderness GPS system, you might find it interesting. They can be very useful, although not every beach hunter will need one. If you are not hardcore, it might be a waste of money.

This is not the brand or model that I use, but I do use one. If you are a beach hunter, you might want to get a waterproof unit.

You can mark a spot so you can easily return to it later. You can easily find locations given in latitude and longitude. And you can even map your scan pattern so you can tell exactly what area you covered by looking at the display screen. You can also mark spots (way points) along your path.

Overall hand held GPS units can be quite handy, but some are difficult to use. Some are not exactly what I would call intuitive.

You might or might not benefit from having one, but you might want to look into it.



It looks like the 2012 beach renourishment budgets are in place. Congratulations to Indian River County who won't get any additional money for drowning our beaches in sand.

Martin County's is getting $2.96 million to dump sand from the St. Lucie County border to Indian River Plantation.

$890,000 more will be dumped south of the Fort Pierce Inlet. We saw how well the last project lasted there. They created a nice eight foot cliff. And some people complain about six inch deep holes. The world is full of craziness.

A request for a project to dump sand on 3.6 miles of shoreline, stretching from the Florida Power & Light Co. nuclear plant south to the Martin County line was not funded. I'm really glad about that. It would have been a shame to cover the reefs and rocks where all the wild life is flourishing now.

If you want to read more about where sand will and won't be dumped, here is the link.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/jun/18/despite-162-million-set-aside-by-state-to-fight/?print=1



I said a few days ago that gold was headed to $1700 per ounce. That didn't take long. It has passed that already. It is amazing how quickly gold is rising. It is seen as one of the few safe havens in this time of high uncertainty and economic turmoil.

We'll see what the downgrade in credit rating is going to do the US dollar in a short while.

I'm afraid that if you are one of the many people that have a 401K or retirement program, that it might take a hit. Again, we'll see what the day brings.

When the people voted for change, it must have been in place of dollars - as in pennies and nickels.



Here are a few shipwreck and salvage definitions.

Flotsam are goods lost from a ship which has sunk or otherwise perished which are recoverable because they have floated.

Jetsam are goods cast overboard in order to lighten a vessel which is in danger of sinking.

Derelict is property which has been abandoned at sea by those who were in charge without any hope of recovering it. It includes both vessels and cargo.

Anything sunk in the sea, but attached to a buoy or the like so that it may be recovered.


Treasure Coast Beach Forecast and Conditions.


There are no cyclones out there now. Emily disappeared again. And not much else stirring in the tropics right now. At least we got a little rain out of it.

The wind, what there is of it, is from the west. The seas are calm and predicted to remain that way for several days.

The rating on my Treasure Coast TBDCS is a 1 (poor).

The water should be calm enough for easy water hunting for the next few days. Look for dips or moving sand bars.

Some people on the Treaure Coast have been picking up a good bit of clad lately.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

5/26/11 Report - Eye-balling the Beach, Fossils, 380 Year Old Canoe & Anchor Wreck Artifacts

Treasure Coast Beach at Low Tide Yesterday Morning.

You can see the sand bar and the dip next to shore.

As I mentioned, I have a couple of wounds that need to heal but went to the beach and took a leisurely walk. I tried to take it easy on my foot injury but probably still did more than I should have. Anyhow, I didn't detect, partly because conditions were poor and partly because I simply wanted to take it easy.

Anyhow, I did a little eye-balling. It is important to scan a beach visually even if you are detecting. You might notice some important clues, and you can actually find cobs and artifacts visually. Yesterday all I was expecting to see was the type of materials that often show up with shells, and that is what I found.

I think it is good to practice eye-balling. I believe it is a skill that can be developed to a high degree. You can learn to notice unusual or unnatural objects, by color, shape, and surface texture. I've eye-balled almost every type of item that I've ever found, including, cobs, gold jewelry, etc.

Here is a video showing a fossilized tooth that I picked up yesterday while walking the beach. I think it is probably from an Ice Age horse or similar mammal. I can't really tell which animal it came from because it is worn down from tumbling in the surf. Camel, bison, mastodon and giant sloth teeth have all been found in the same general area.





I was experimenting with my video cam and trying to develop video skills. Yesterday I made a video of what I saw as I walked. My field of vision is actually much wider than the visual field of the video camera, but I think I can share a little of the walk even though it was one of my first tries and I didn't focus at the right spot very often when I picked up an object. I'll do better in the future.

I uploaded the video clip that is nearly eight minutes during which time I picked up four or five fossils and a few pieces of sea glass. If you take a look at the clip, you'll see where i picked up a brown piece of sea glass around the six minute mark, a fossil at around 6:38 and another fossil around 7:24. I point those three out because I did a decent job on those, and you can see the objects that I picked up.

Earlier in the clip when I bent down to pick up the objects, I tended to have the camera pointed too far up and to the right. As a result, you'll almost always see any object that I pick up in the bottom left corner of the video frame if you see it at all.

When I get this down, I can make some nice videos, hopefully when the conditions improve enough to pick up some cobs or something more interesting.

Here is the long video if you want to take a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4o6w77Ibac



A 380 year old canoe found in Arbuckle Creek is now on display at the Polk County Nature Conservancy. If you want to read more about the canoe and it's history, here is the link.

http://www2.highlandstoday.com/content/2011/may/20/archeologists-preserve-ancient-canoe/


There is a cannon ball and mallet head for sale on eBay said to be from the Anchor Wreck. You might be interested in the little write up that goes with the item.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Munitions-Spanish-1715-Plate-Fleet-/160593611617?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2564200b61



Treasure Coast Beach Detecting Conditions and Forecast.

The wind is still from the southeast and the seas calm. You'll find a lot of sand and shells with some sandbars and dips near shore.

I showed today that even when conditions are poor for finding cobs and the like, you can still find stuff on the beach. Also look for clues. Pieces of black glass or olive jar shards can tip you off to a nearby wreck.

One of my favorite finds was eye-balled during poor detecting conditions like this. It was a wax seal with the impression of an eagle on it found laying right at the edge of the water.

As I often say, when conditions aren't right for finding one type of thing, they are good for another.

The surf web sites still predict increasing seas about Sunday and into early next week. The peek will be only about five feet, which is normally not enough to significantly improve beach detecting conditions, but there have been times when it was enough to cause some nice localized cuts and a few nice scattered finds. I doubt if it will be enough to improve conditions that much this time. The beaches have a lot of sand to be removed, and there are bars in front of the beach that will protect the beach front.


I'll work on my video techniques so I can produce some good videos when things start to improve.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

12/6 Report - Acid Testing & Beach Combing

Two Plain Silver Rings Found on Treasure Coast Shipwreck Beaches.

These are the type of thing that are very difficult to identify - not much of a design to go by and no markings. The only thing to suggest that they might be from a shipwreck is the location where they were found.

There are metallurgical procedures that can help tell where the metal in the object came from, but other than that, it is very difficult to say.

It seems there was a jeweler on the Nieves. At least that is the conclusion that some have reached. A lot of unfinished jewelry and materials come from that site.


It seems they are producing a lot of 9 carat gold jewelry these days. And the trend is white gold. I prefer yellow - especially that nice buttery looking yellow of 22 k. But the 9 carat gold presents a little difficulty for those who use acid test kits to test or verify the carat value of found gold. Yes, most of this new jewelry will be marked, but if you want to test it, most gold kits come with test acid for 10kt, 14 and 18 kt, but not 9 kt. gold. I don't know why there is so much 9 kt gold jewelry being produced unless it is just the ridiculously high price of gold these days.

I was out of silver test acid and mentioned that one day. One person, I think it was Bill P., wrote in and told me that if you use 18 kt gold test acid on silver, the rubbing will turn blue. That seems to work. Thanks for the tip Bill.

It is good to have test pins which are tipped with known purities of gold, silver and possibly other metals like platinum. Test pins tipped with various purities and types of metals can be purchased from retailers that sell jewelry manufacturing equipment.

Make a rubbing of the known metal (say 14 kt if that is what you suspect the unknown metal might be) on the touchstone and then use the acid. Then after watching the results for the known metal, do the same for the metal to be tested. Compare the results. This procedure will help you further narrow down the purity of the gold or other metal.

For example, if you happen to have a gold ring that you know is 9 kt gold, you might start with a test on 14 kt first. Apply the 14 kt rubbing to the touchstone and apply the 14 kt test acid and observe the results. Then make a rubbing of the unknown gold and test it with the 14 kt acid. You will see that the 9 kt gold dissolves much faster than the 14 kt. So then you can do a test using 10 kt gold and use the 10 kt acid on that sample and then compare the results to the test on the 9 kt gold.

By using various samples of known purity and comparing the results to the unknown sample, you can pretty well arrive at the approximate purity of unknown samples.


If you want to test an object that is 16 kt, but you don't know that yet, you might test it and then compare the results with the results of tests done on 18 kt and 14 kt gold. You'll find that the 16 kt sample will react in a way that shows that it is between 14 and 18 kt.

I know that is not a great description of the process, but hope you get the idea.

Talking about platinum - platinum gives off the smoothest signal on many metal detectors. If you are practiced, you can often identify platinum targets from the signal. The signal will generally be not very loud, but very steady and smooth.

That is the kind of thing that you can learn to do with practice.

I often recommend playing around with your detector at home and using various types of test objects, especially those that you most want to find. You will develop an ear for the various types of signals and also learn how to adjust your detector's settings for maximum effectiveness.


Here is a nice web site by a beachcomber in Vera Cruz. It has lots of nice maps and illustrations and discussion about hunting shipwreck artifacts. The author shows spikes and various other finds. He describes the hunt in a very entertaining way.

Good read.


http://www.johntoddjr.com/75%20Beach/beach.htm

This web site provides a lot of useful tips for the detectorist. The things you do without a detector can really improve your success when using a detector. Studying maps, history and knowing about the area and having a strategy can really help improve your success rate.

Thanks to metal detectors, fragments of some of the earliest guns ever used one a British battlefield have been discovered.

I gave a link to this story before, but this link provides more on that story.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/world/2010/12/02/16398681.html


Forecast and Conditions.

With the cold fronts that have come through and the wind out of the north, there is actually some hope that the protective sand out in front of the beach is being moved. I don't know why, but it seems that north winds have a cumulative effect that gradually improves beach hunting conditions into the winter and spring. I have a theory on that, but it is only a theory.

As you know, the seas are only around five feet and have been that way for a while, so the hunting strategy hasn't changed. I'd still be scouting for dips and hunting the low tide areas.

At least the high tides are still nice and high. That helps some, especially with the non-metallic and artifact hunting.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net