Bronze Ship's Spike from Gold Beach

[badkharma]

I've been detecting the Crystal Coast of NC all week. The beach has been socked of sand pretty bad. I had just been finding lights with zero heavies. Sunday, I found an old tire about six inches deep in front of my house. There's an old tire reef from back in the day off shore here. We had a storm last week that broke part of the old reef up, so tires have been washing in everywhere, but this one was still buried. We had some raging seas yesterday and this morning, and first thing today, I saw that tire was exposed about six inches. I figured about a foot of sand had been stripped, so I went swinging. Immediately I was finding numerous coins and fishing weights for 2 to 8 ounces. It was still

raining intermittently and I was soaked. But I never pass up a chance to detect when the heavies are popping. I also managed to find the old ship spike pictured. It's around 6 1/2 inches, and bent back to the j shape shown. Wish it could talk. Let me know what you think.

 

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[villagenut]

Very nice clenched spike...cool find

 

[newnan man]

Cool find. Why do you think it is bent like that?

 

[Blak bart]

Cool find. Why do you think it is bent like that?

It's a "clinch"

An undersized hole is drilled through the plank/wood. The spike is driven through, and the protruding spike tip on the inside of the vessel is then bent over to keep the spike from backing out, and keep people from getting hurt by the spike tip. It's called a clinch nail/spike !!

 

[E-Trac-Ohio]

Very cool !

 

[pepperj]

Great looking spike.
It will look great in the display.