11/18/20 Report - NE Winds And Bigger Surf On Treasure Coast. MOHS Scale for Identifying Materials. Shipwreck Found.

 

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

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com.

The big news for me today is the weather.  We got some good northeast wind and are still getting it, although it has shifted a little to the east in recent hours. 

Wind History Shows 24 Hours of Greater Than 19mph At Sebastian.

Source: http://www.sebastianinletcam.com/index.htm

The Treasure Coast is supposed to have NE and ENE wind for a few days along with the higher surf.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to go out the last couple of days so I don't have any beach photos for you yet, but it would seem some of the beaches will open up again.

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Jacks4News reports that a shipwreck was recently uncovered by erosion at Crescent Beach.

It appears to be 1800s and not Spanish.

Click here to see that article.

Thanks to Matt G. for that link.

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Pieces of Metal Recently Found On A Treasure Coast Beach.
Photo by Kenneth T.

I received the above photo and following email from Kenneth T.

I had a bit of a natural high digging these things up just south of Jupiter Inlet last week. They were a few feet away from the base of the dunes in a small cut. After digging the 6th one within 30 minutes, my enthusiasm turned skeptical and I thought that they were probably encrusted bottle caps. When I got home and gave 2 of them a muriatic acid bath, here is what I had. No need to clean the other four. All are magnetic. I vaguely remembered you mentioning fake cobs a while back, and after using the search feature on your blog, I pulled up your old post about fake cobs at Jupiter Inlet. I’m not sure if these are fake cobs or just old slugs. They were fun for a few minutes anyway. Thanks for your daily column!

Thanks for writing Kenneth.  I used to get a lot of questions from people who had found pieces of iron and wondered if they might be old coins.  As you know, a magnet provides a good test, and eliminates a good number of junk finds.

There are some genuine coins that are magnetic though.  That includes a lot of German coins, which tend to badly corrode, some Canadian coins, and even a few US coins.   

Yesterday I talked about investigating unidentified lumps of metal,.   Here is an article that gives you a few ideas on how to identify some common metals.  The article isn't great, but you still might find some useful information in it, such as the mohs scale.

https://cycleback.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/non-precious-metals-a-beginners-guide/

That article also provides a link to another page on the mohs scale.  The mohs scale is a ten point scale of hardness.  The softest materials have low numbers and the hardest (diamond) has a mohs number of 10.

Here is how the scale goes.

1 (softest): tacum, chalk
1.5: tin, lead, graphite
2: gypsum, plaster of paris
2.5-3: human fingernail, magnesium, gold, silver, aluminium, zinc, Jet (lignite)
3: calcite, US penny, copper, arsenic, antimony, thorium, dentin
4: fluroite, iron, nickel, iron nail
5: apatite, tooth enamel, volcanic glass
5.5-6.5: window glass
6:  titanium
7: quartz, steel file, ceramic tile
7.5-9: emerald, hardened steel, tungsten, garnet
8: topaz, cubic zirconiam
9: corundom, ruby
10 (hardest): diamond

So you can use a diamond to scratch a ruby because a diamond is harder than a ruby.

Titanium is harder than a US penny, and a penny is harder than tin and lead.

If you use this information, it can help you identify different materials, including metal.

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That is all for now.

LATER UPDATE: shipwreck items are being found.


Happy Hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net