6/25/19 Report - Musket Gun Barrel Mold. Cleaning Coins. Benefit of Metal Detecting. Gold Prices. Way to Remove Rust.

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

Encrusted Musket Barrel as Found.

Find and photo by Will R.

If you saw yesterday's post early, maybe you didn't see the link I added later in the day.  That link was to a old post in which Will R. talked about some nice finds and how he made a mold of the gun barrel shown above.  Here is what Will said.

I love your last post. I ran into a similar situation last year. I was detecting a private site on the intercoastal when I found a brass butt plate, then the side plate and one of the ramrod tubes. Then it hit me... where's the barrel? Soon I found the barrel because it had one of the ramrod tubes stuck in the EO chunk. I took it home and did as I do with most EO's and put it in a tub of fresh H2O. The next day I noticed the end of the EO was oozing sludge. I figured this was the end of the barrel. I gently flushed the end of the EO with water and then I knew I had rare opportunity. This was a perfect mold of the metal barrel that once was there. I carefuly flushed the rest of the mud and sludge out and made sure it was clear of all metal. Now here's where the fun began. I used fiberglass resin and made a perfect mold of the barrel. Here are some pics of it. You're welcome to use them if you like.

Finished Copy Made From Mold.

By Will R.

If you used the link yesterday, you might have already seen this, but I thought it was worth posting again for those who might have missed it.

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Surfaces on Recently Dug Dime and Quarter That I'll Be Cleaning.

I'm going to use diluted Muriatic acid.  I'm doing four dimes and three quarters, all having a black patina very much like the dime and quarter shown in the photos above.  Some are a little worse than others, but all are similar.

You hear that you should never clean coins.  There is no danger with these coins since they have no collector value other than the melt value.  They are already damaged beyond what any body would pay a premium for.  Therefore there is no danger of actually hurting the value.

Make sure you know that is the case before you clean any coin.  In the case of possibly valuable coins, definitely don't clean them until you know for sure.

I hope to have some photos for you as things progress.

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I heard another way to remove heavy rust from iron objects.  On the Antiques Roadshow it was said that a fellow found a clump of rust and buried it in his barn in horse manure.  It looked like it did a good job of removing the rust from what turned out to be a medieval key.

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The price of gold has been really flying for the past week or two.  It went up another $28 per ounce in the past couple of days.  That puts it close to $1430 and moving.

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I've commented about some of the fake elements of some of the "reality" treasure shows.  I realized the other day that I actually hope that some of the other so-called reality shows are fake.  It would be sad to think that people are actually like that.  I could list a number of shows that I've seen enough of to actually hope that they are really fake.

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It's been established that people who spend more time in parks and other natural settings tend to report higher levels of health and happiness, but new research shows there's actually a magic number for it.

According to a study published this week in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, spending 120 minutes a week strolling a tree-lined street or sitting by a lake can greatly enhance a person's overall sense of well-being. Less time didn't yield any significant benefit, the research showed...

Here's the link.

https://www.greenwichtime.com/news/article/People-who-spend-more-time-outdoors-lead-more-14025910.php

As always you can quibble with the conclusions and details of the article, as I'm so prone to do, but isn't that one thing we all like about metal detecting or treasure hunting.  You have to be out there.

There is something about feeling the sun, wind and rain.  I like being barefoot.  I like feeling the grass or sand beneath my feet, and will accept the risk of fire ants or other dangers.  I like when it is stormy and nature is getting a little frisky.  You feel nature even more.

On the other hand, there is the garbage and pollution littering the out doors.

Millions of tons of plastic enter the oceans every year, polluting our seas, littering our beaches and endangering wildlife.

Plastic can take centuries to break down, and instead of quietly disappearing beneath the waves, it has a way of coming back to haunt us.

Almost 1 million shoes and over 370,000 toothbrushes were among more than 400 million pieces of plastic recently found washed up on a remote group of islands in the Indian Ocean.

Great chunks of plastic have been found inside the stomachs of everything from seabirds to whales, while tiny microplastics are eaten by fish and other sea creatures, ending up as part of the food chain...
See https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/24/health/plastic-pollution-rivers-oceans-scn-intl/index.html

The litter makes me a little sad.  It intrudes on nature, and makes it a little less "natural."  Litter seems to intrude upon nature and removes some of the healthy-giving and aesthetic benefits.

One of the side benefits of the dig-everything and take-everything philosophy that I encourage, is that it leaves the environment a little better than you found it.

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The price of gold continues to rise, going up another $28 per ounce in the past couple of days.  That puts it close to $1430.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

1/19/15 Report - Some Problems With Air Tests: Physical & Psychological. Calm Surf and Sandy Beaches

Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.BlogSpot.com.

Fresh Cut Found On Treasure Coast Beach Yesterday.

Everybody knows that an air test won't tell you exactly what you can expect in the field.  An air test doesn't have to deal with things like ground mineralization, but in my opinion there are much bigger concerns and limitations.

When you test a detector you are not just dealing with one system.  The detector is an electromechanical system, but when you use a metal detector there is actually a much more complex and important system involved - your nervous system, including your sensory system.

Before I address those systems and how they play a very important roll, I want to talk a little about air tests.  There is the problem of generalizability.  An air test is not like a field.  There will normally be some difference in how far your detector will detect an object in air and how deep it will detect an object buried in the ground.  Most everybody knows that.  But those differences are not due ony to the differences in the ambient environments.  Some differences are due to how air tests are conducted.

I'm sure that most of you have conducted an air test and have watched others conducting air tests.   Carefully observe the human behavior involved. 

Usually a person conducting an air test will start close to the coil where a distinct signal is achieved and move the object farther from the coil until the signal is no longer distinguished.  One problem is that during an air test, the object is usually moved right over the sweet spot of the coil.   Most often that does not happen in the field.   Usually the object will be off one direction or another.  During an air test, people usually seek the sweet spot until they get the absolute best signal.

In the field during a hunt, an object will only fall under the sweet spot a fraction of the time.  In more cases than most people think, the object will not pass under the coil at all.  In the field many objects are missed by inches, and when the coil does pass over them, it is just as likely that the object will be at the edge of the sweep, and only occasionally under the sweet spot.

Secondly, and no less important. the sweep speed is typically varied during an air test until the optimal signal is obtained.  I think that more often than not, people are not using the optimal sweep speed in the field. 

I've mentioned this before, but you should test your sweep speed in the field on a sample target, and then either speed up or slow down your sweep speed.

Thirdly, during air tests, the object is kept in a very narrow area just under the coil.  Most signals may be attributed to the object - not always accurately.

It is more difficult to detect a signal in noise, such as you might get in a field environment.  In an environment with noise, your nervous system will adapt and begin to ignore marginal signals such as those that you would might attribute to the target (correctly or incorrectly) during an air test.

Thirdly, as I stated above, the detector is not the only system involved.  Your nervous system, including your brain and sensory systems are also involved.  Those systems are very important.  They are very flexible and may adapt in ways you don't realize.

Here is one fun example.  Which of the following horizontal lines is the longest?  Don't include the arrow heads.

Maybe you've seen this classic demonstration before.  The three horizontal lines are the same length.  Measure them if you need convincing.

The point is that your nervous system interprets sensory data.  It can be fooled and sometimes it is wrong.

When you do an air test, not only do you listen but you also see when the target is under the coil.  Try this experiment.   Close your eyes and pass the object under the coil.  You might find that you can not distinguish the auditory signal quite as well when you are not also seeing the object under the coil.  That will be even more true if you are in a noisy environment.  Not using the visual information will make the auditory data more difficult to interpret.  During a hunt you will not see the object when you hear the signal, that means that a more distinct auditory signal will be required for it to be correctly interpreted.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying that air tests are no good.  I'm just saying that they can be misleading, and you have to be cautious about drawing too many conclusions. 

I think most people should probably do air tests more often.  They should not, however, attempt to evaluate a detector based upon air tests results, and should be cautious about generalizing from an air.

I hoped that by pointing out some of the problems with air tests, both physical and psychological, you will be able to conduct more meaningful air tests and draw more accurate conclusions.

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We are back down to a one or two foot surf on the Treasure Coast.  Really smooth.   That will make water hunting easy.  Also easy to do the low tide area.

The surf will not be increasing hardly at all for the next few days.

The cut shown above was not visible from any beach access.  You'd have to walk a ways to find it.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@Comcast.net