blowing holes

[mark54]

When you blow holes must you always blow holes to bedrock, if yes why do you do this
How do you go about searching one

Thanks Mark

 

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[rgecy]

Mark,

You don't always have to blow a hole to the bedrock. The process of blowing a hole is to remove the overburden over a wreck site. Sometimes a wreck or treasure may lie only a few feet below the surface and it would be overkill to blow past this level. But Gold and Silver of course have a tendancy to settle deeper into the layers and may over time settle on the bedrock.

The process of searching a hole is basically to use a circular search pattern. You can start at the bottom and work your metal detector around your center, moving up the sides until you have covered the entire area.

Hope this answers your question! And welcome to the forum!

Good Luck,

Robert in SC

 

[riobravo]

hi mark,
my how times have changed, back before it was a business as such, permitted excavation, the thought was to hit bottom hard and fast, grab everything shiny and leave the rest for the other subcontractors, before my time, and only a short lived hobby.
the procedure as we live today is a very systematic one as we position over an anomalie we do a small dust, send down a diver for an inspection and do a little probing and detecting, depending on that we find make a decision, generally with no results from a probe and no hits we dig a bit harder to get some definition of the immediate layers and add to the already started paperwork.
with technology you can expect to find somthing on those numbers and it has to be defined,as things go we normally find items assocaiated with modern times, not much i can say about the real time excavation except blow slow and record history with a pencil cause that anchor isnt alone it has a chain that leads to a barrel in a hold in whitch if you stop and hover is a big page of history that has been hidden for a long time.
anyway if the technology gives you a lead dont destroy it,record it

 

[mad4wrecks]

I vote for blowing down to bedrock baby!

Over the course of 300 years, that is where many of the goodies (like coins, bars, splashes and heavy jewelry) have settled.

However, one technique that I still sometimes use to this day is to check the "spoil area" left behind by some of the larger salvage boats. I wait for them to return to port around 4pm or so. Then I dive and re-check their holes. I have found some great artifacts that way. Just working the spoils and re-seraching their holes with a metal detector.

Kane Fisher and his 1715 fleet crew were notorious for being in such a hurry and moving from hole to hole if they weren't picking up coins. They would leave Khang Hsi porcelain pieces, pottery, intact and broken bottles, musketballs, (even an expensive diver's watch!) and other neat artifacts behind.

Tom

 

[riobravo]

good answer tom,
i just thought i would start politically correct

 

[Mackaydon]

Mark:
Welcome to Treasurenet.
Depending on the depth of the water column and the depth of the sand, you may not have enough torque to blow a hole to the bottom. Also your target may be in tact, so why then blow a hole beneath it to bedrock?
Enjoy the journey, do the process slowly, one layer at a time. Keep divers out of the water during the process and until the water has 'cleared'. When you leave the site, you'll believe you have worked it thoroughly, rather than left 'goodies' for others. And when you leave the site, for various reasons,you may wish to blow sand back into the area to cover up what you have discovered and now left bare. The Brig Baltic (1860) lies (nearly empty) in that condition beneath the sands of the Bahamas.
Don....

 

[tom yerian]

When I used to do a blow, we, the divers were there while the blow is going on.

 

[Mackaydon]

Dell;
Yes we did, and came back to Fla. just ahead of "Andrew".
Don....

 

[Mackaydon]

Dell:
I sure do know Nick and George. Nick, who held a permit in the area, contacted us in Nassau after we came back from working further south. We were intrigued by his story of a ship being lost in the Spanish Wells (SW) area, two survivors and a gold watch. After 'taking the bait' and going to the SW area, my partner, Rob McClung actually found the wreck. I identified the wreck based on the artifacts recovered and corroboration with the paper of the day that mentioned the wreck by name and location lost; the same name on an artifact I found actually floating in the water column while we were in the salvage process. George was quite helpful in the deal and facilitated the permit, approval and storage functions.
Don.......