Worked out! You hear it all the time, but I don't pay much attention to it.
I don't really know what it means? I think it means somebody visited a beach or site a few times and didn't find anything worthwhile. It seems to be a relative term, something like worthwhile.
I remember a time on a Fort Lauderdale beach when a fellow just came up to me and told me he had just found two gold rings down by the Dania pier. I never ask anyone much of anything - especially not where they have been hunting or what they found, but I figured that if he found two rings found, there would be more to find, and I had no shortage of confidence in my modified Nautilus detector, so I went down to Dania pier (a place I never hunted much) and quickly found a gold ring or two. I know it was at least one, but I don't remember the details.
At times, it helps if a site has been worked. It means that some (maybe a lot) of the easy surface targets have been removed, making it easier to pick out the smaller and deeper targets.
People seldom work out a site completely. That is my opinion. Sometimes you just want to cherry pick. Sometimes you are just doing a little sampling, but some sites are heavily worked and the easy finds might be scarce, but there is usually something good left behind.
It always amazes me when you go out to the beach and see tons of detectorists, and then you walk down the beach where good detectorists with good detectors have already been and you still make good finds. It is not at all unusual.
As I said, worked-out is a relative term. It depends upon your goals. For some it means that the site is not worth the time. That can mean that there are no finds, there are not many finds, or that there are no worthwhile finds. For me it often means that you simply need to do something different.
An area will quickly quit producing if the searcher uses the same techniques over and over again. Very often the good finds will be just an inch deeper, just a foot to one side, in the black sand, under an aluminum can, or maybe just between sweeps.
Sometimes all it takes is changing things up a bit. Use a different detector. Change your settings. Search more slowly. Take a different path. Stick your coil in hard-to-get-to spots. Or maybe try something other than detecting - perhaps trenching or sifting.
The way I look at it, worked-out sites are nearly as rare as captured Bigfoots. A site might be worked out to some extent, but seldom entirely. Maybe it never had much, or maybe most of the easy targets have been taken, but there is almost always a little more - if you really want to get it. And that is a question that always needs to be considered.
If you want to make the most efficient use of your time, there very well might be better sites to hunt. That is definitely true. And that is something to be considered. So if you mean by worked-out that there are better places to hunt, you are probably right, but if you mean that there are no remaining good targets (however you define that), I'd be skeptical.
As I said, it partly depends upon your goals and what you are trying to do. If you are on a TV program, you might start out talking about marvelous things like the Ark of the Covenant or Indiana Jones-worthy treasures and end up wildly celebrating an iron rod, button or ox shoe.
If you are trying to figure out what happened at a site and are interested in gathering information, that is a lot different from trying to find something valuable that you can sell. One is about history, the other is economics. Then there is the fun, excitement, adventure and romance of the hunt. It helps to know what you are really after, but there is always some place to hunt and something to be found.
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You might wonder why I was interested in the Indian River Ridge site that I've been working so much. I didn't have any reason to believe there would be any great treasures there. In fact the site had been so overgrown with trees, vines and briars for at least the last thirty years that I doubt anyone even passed through it during that time period, and I had no reason to believe that much of anything ever happened there. I never expected that the site would be hiding so much. Nevertheless, I can't think of a single site that I've metal detected, from the lakes of Minnesota to the hills of West Virginia to the swamps of Florida, where I've failed to find a coin, ring, or some item of interest.
I wanted to hunt the Indian River Ridge site for a variety of reasons. For one thing, I wanted to illustrate my process for thoroughly working a site. And so I began.
So far I've removed hundreds of items and pounds of rusty junk - including pounds of small pieces of unidentifiable rust, nails and wire, and I still haven't gotten down to any old coins. There could be some, but I still have a way to go before that site has been well worked.
The history of the site is becoming evident as more evidence is collected. I have been able to show the pieces of the puzzle gradually coming together when as the search proceeds.
At this time, the most likely theory seems to suggest a derailment in the 1920 to 1950 time range. Here is one more piece that I discovered last night.
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| Front and Back Views of New Find. |
What you can't tell from the photo is that the front piece is badly rusted iron and the larger piece, or base, appears to be brass. One end is attached by a removable screw and the other but a rivet.
I'm not sure what it is. I don't think it is just a handle. The iron piece is not high enough to put your fingers under. I have another piece that might go with this piece. I'll have to look into that.
One of the good things about this piece is the markings.
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| Hallmark on New Find. |
The Stanley company began in the early 1800s, but the SW stands for Sweetheart, which indicates the "post merger period of Stanley R&L/Stanley Works between 1919 and 1933..." (From 100 years of Stanley Sweetheart (A Valentine's Day Tribute) (plane-dealer.com)
Once again, that tends to support the 1920s - 1940s date range.
The heart in the hallmark seems to be a tribute to one of the big contributers to the company - William H. Heart.
I also found the patent date on the object.
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| U.S. PATENT 11-11-24. |
That once again puts us right in the suspected date range.
I made more discoveries on the site, but I'll leave it there for now.
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It looks like we'll have nothing more than a 1 - 2 foot surf for the next week or so.
I'll keep watching for storm development.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net