6/3/19 Report - Tips For Scooping in Shallow Water. Jars Give Good Dates. A Storage Solution.

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

Scooping Tips.

If you work in shallow water, there will probably be times when you have trouble getting an item scooped up.  There can be various reasons for that.  One is strong currents.

When you lift a scoop, that will create currents that will cause sand and objects that are not firmly in the scoop to fall out, with or without strong cross currents.

Lifting your scoop more slowly can help.

Gold chains can be very difficult to get in your scoop.  Even when you get some of a chain in the scoop, there can be enough hanging out, to pull the entire chain out as you lift the scoop.

Of course light objects can also get swept away as you lift your scoop.

Too much sand in the scoop will cause more sand and other objects to fall out as you lift. Be careful to not over-fill your scoop.

Here is something I have found helpful.  When you stick your scoop in the sand, tilt the handle farther back so the front of the scoop is angled up more, but don't lift yet.  Before lifting, vibrate your scoop.  Shake it in very short quick strokes.   That will allow some of the sand to sift through and the object will fall deeper into the scoop before you lift.

In three words, it is tilt - sift - lift.

---

Among the more common bottles you will find are Bromo Seltzer and Vaseline.  I've found a lot of embossed Vaseline bottles.  I usually don't keep bottles with screw tops, but the Vaseline bottles are so heavily embossed that I did keep some of them.

Embossed Vaseline Bottle.

This bottle is not one of the older Vaseline bottles that I've found.

The first known reference to the name Vaseline was by Robert Chesebrough in 1872 (U.S. patent 127,568).

As you would suspect, the first containers for Vaseline were not screw top bottles.

As always, doing your research can make your finds more meaningful.  I found out, for example, that the bottles for Vaseline were made in a factory where my father worked in his early teen years.  It is possible that he actually packed the bottle above.  I'll have to do some additional research.

Like anything that has success, there are copies.  Moroline was a competitor to Vaseline.

Embossed Moroline Bottle.

Surprisingly, Vaseline bottles have been thoroughly studied and inspection of the bottle can provide a very good estimate of the age of a site.

A Tour Through Time in Vaseline Bottles is a 30 page document with references written by John Lockhart and presented on the Society for Historical Archaeology web site.

Here is the link.

https://sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/Vaseline2015.pdf

---

I've been trying to store my bottles more compactly and safely.  Here is something I'm trying, and it seems like it should work.

Large Plastic Container That Once Held Animal Crackers.

I looks like I'll be able to store three layers of ink or other siunukarkt small bottles in this plastic container.

Cardboard strips separate the layers.

---

It looks like we'll have at least another week of one foot surf on the Treasure Coast.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

12/21/18 Report - A Few Miscellaneous Items. After Christmas Hunting Might Improve.

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

Older Style Bromo-Seltzer Bottle.

Here is a nice cobalt blue Bromo-Seltzer bottle find.  I've sold a few like this in the past.  The cobalt blue bottles seem to be popular.

Embossed Red Rock Co Bottle Find.

I did some research on this bottle and it seems the Red Rock Company began in Atlanta in 1885.  I saw that you can still buy Red Rock soda with the same recipe being sold today.  It was bottled in a variety of cities, mostly in the south.  As you might be able to see, this one has the Jacksonville label.

My research on this bottle is sketchy at this point.  I think it is a slug plate bottle.  

A slug plate is an interchangeable, typically iron, engraved plate which was used in a bottle mold to produce different embossing patterns for the same type bottle.   By simply taking out one engraved plate and replacing it with another differently engraved plate, the same mold could produce scores of unique and individually embossed bottles of the same shape and design.  Commonly called a "slug plate" by collectors, but more properly called simply a plate and bottles from this type mold referred to as having been produced in a "plate mold" (Jones and Sullivan 1989). 

I haven't done enough research to give a good date for this bottle yet.  Maybe someone will help with that.

I always like to find embossed bottles, especially Florida bottles.   The research usually isn't difficult.

I'll add this one to my bottle barn.  I should take some better photos though.

---

About the pumice shown yesterday.  Steve M. says that is what it is, and he has found it too.  

I've found darker color pumice (below) as well as the light color.

Black Pumice From Treasure Coast Beach.

It has its uses.  You can purchase pumice sticks today for scrubbing.  It also has nautical uses.

Here is a link.

http://aboutpumice.com/pumice-info.html

---

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  Last December was kind of windy too.

We've had a west wind as some cooler air moves in.  The tides are of a decent size now.  The surf has been small, but it looks like it will increase after Christmas.

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

4/22/18 Report - Beach Conditions. Sight Find of Old Brewery Bottle.

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

John Brooks Beach Near the Saturday PM Low Tide.

After the higher surf Saturday I went out to see what the beaches were doing.  The first beach I checked was John Brooks.

As you can see above, there were some small scallops and peaks, but the water had not been back very far and it was still pretty sandy.

I skipped Frederick Douglass because I figured it would have been about the same as John Brooks.  For the last year or more those two beaches have been staying about the same.

Blind Creek Beach Saturday PM.

I then took a look at Blind Creek, which was eroded back a few weeks ago.  Where there were substantial cuts back then, there were now only slight dips.  Overall a lot of sand accumulated on this beach in the last few weeks.

I also checked Walton Rocks, but it didn't look very interesting yet.

Fort Pierce South Jetty Beach Saturday PM.

Fort Pierce South Jetty was cut a little.  I think you can see that in the photo above.  But you might also be able to see that they are dumping sand up by the jetty.  Looks like they barely got started with that.  The small cut ran for a hundred yards or more south of where they were working.

So far the higher surf hasn't done much good to these beaches.  The water didn't get very high yet.

---

Thursday I took a little walk to see what I could see at first.  I didn't see much interesting so walked a little farther than normal.  Eventually I found an area where a lot of bottles were buried in the sand.  They were barely visible, but they were there.  I could see tufts of sea grass or moss sticking out of the sand.  That is how I spotted the mostly buried bottles.

It got dark, and I had to give up, but I saw enough that I figured I could find something nice if I came back the next day.  Friday when I got a chance to go, the water was higher and dirty, making visibility very poor.  I could make out a few bottles, but couldn't see them very well, and had to spend a lot of time investigating individual bottles because I couldn't see them good enough to tell if they were junk right away.  If visibility was better, I could have moved much more quickly.  I did find the above old embossed brewery bottle from Rosslyn, Va.

A little research revealed that the Consumer's Brewery Company, as it is embossed, existed from 1895 until 1902, when it became the Arlington Brewing Company.  That makes it older than I originally thought.

I did pick up a couple other things on that walk.  Below is another old bottle that I picked up on that walk.  You can see how it is covered with barnacles and green vegetation.

Old Bottle Covered with Barnacles and Vegetation.

In most cases, the bottles were mostly covered, but I could see the clumps of green that told me something was there.  I already removed part of the vegetation from both of the bottles so I could see them better.  In the water the

---

You might enjoy browsing MainStreetFortPierce.org, which gives some nice history and pictures of old Fort Pierce.

Here is the link.

http://mainstreetfortpierce.org/pdf/MSFocusApr06Web.pdf

---

We're going to have some higher surf.  Here is the chart.

As I said the other day, it looks like neither the wind nor tides will be favorable for beach improvement.  Anytime you get some good surf, there might be some location that improves enough to be worth checking.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net