Underwater recovery of a lost Pile Driver head?

[David]

Hi, yesterday my dad told me the details of what happened in the early 1960's(getting close to 50 years ago) when he was employed to run pump(s) to run water over the existing ice in the very cold winter time on a freshwater lake in the north. Why? Because the ice was built up thicker so it could carry the weight of a heavy Pile Driver to pound in large wooded poles about 12" in diameter into the lake bottom.

The VERY heavy(tons) Pile Driver iron head came off and fell into the water. Divers were called in to dive below the ice, in the darkness, they probed the sandy bottom with rods but could not find it. The divers kept warm in dad's trailer and the head was never found. So it was replaced instead. Dad thinks it veered off and/or burried-covered in the sandy bottom(the bottom there is almost 90% fine sand). The water is no deeper than about 13 feet. It is also very close to the lake shore and in an isolated area with very little population of people living around there. So there would not be that much junk-trash around the lake bottom.

I think Metal Detectors might be a second choice to using some kind of Magnetometer, Ground Penetrating Radar, or Imaging Locator mounted on a boat.

Also if the Pile Driver head is either sitting on the surface or burried in the sand might make a difference if some sort of Imaging Locator can find it or not.

My question is, any very brief advice or suggestions on how could this massively very heavy iron Pile Driver head be could be found??

Thank you.

 

[Gulf Hunter]

How much could something of that nature possibly be worth?

 

[David]

I forgot to mention the reason that the large wooden poles were put in the lake bottom was to go on both sides of an underwater pipe-line to keep it from veering off and to hold the pipe-line in place. The entire whole thing when finished is all completely underwater with nothing showing above waterline so boats can go above it without the propellers hitting anything.

Sorry I did not see your post. Thank you, I do not know what it is worth and I would like to know that myself? Probably alot, and it is worth-while to recover it, but yes I do want to do research to find out how much.

 

[Neil]

it its in that shallow of water and that heavy its go to be pretty close to where it went down but if the ground is that fine of sand I would guess its sunk a lot in the sand. you could intitially try poking around with either some long steel rod or even copper piping which comes in 20ft lengths, see if you can locate it that way. at least you should be able to tell if its near the surface that way. otherwise and underwater pulse machine would probably be your best bet, just rent one to save cost.
getting it out of the water should be fun

 

[GraveDiggerMax-VaBch-Va]

12" wooden piles are not large in the pile driving industry. in most cases they are drive with what they call a cup anvil, especially if the ground is soft..................some use what they call a wood pile cap.

pile drivers come in 3 types...........old types are air/steam pile drivers and diesel. now we have the newer type with are hyd. pile drivers.

Conmaco, the company i work for has been building air/steam hammers and related pile driving equipment since the early 60's. the caps were made at foudries here and there, and then machined, but of late, most of ours have come from china since it is hard to find any foundries in the usa now to make small or large helmets.

next week, we are shipping one of the biggest pile drivers in the usa when it arrives tues. from korea. it is going to a big bridge job in Tiverton, RI..........when i say big.................dia. is like 10ft................hanging weight is over 200,000 lbs.

12" wood pile hammers come in around 7,000lbs to 15,000lbs............wood pile caps............900 to 1800lbs.........VALUE: If u had a home for it and someone had a need for it...............couple thousand bucks.

here are some pics of what it would look like..............size would be approx....................18" x 18" or less and height would be around 2ft. or less.

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[GraveDiggerMax-VaBch-Va]

1ST PIC IS BABY BRO. TO THE ONE INBOUND.

NO PICS OF THE BIG ONE YET, STILL ON THE SHIP HEADED TO PORT ON SUNDAY, BUT I HAVE PICS OF IT IN PIECES IN KOREA.

 

[grumpyolman]

I searched Lake Washington for WW II aircraft and specifically a Martin Mariner PBM. It's rare and the Smithsonian doesn't have a complete one. It was also supposed to be the PBM that was being used by an admiral.
To find this big hunk of aluminum in an area as large as 3 square miles and with water depth from 0-150' we pulled a proton magnetometer behind a boat traveling as tight a compass course as possible. Not Gpss then. Not even satellites. When the magnetometer showed a big anomaly we dropped a marker buoy. We would probably mark 3-4 points on one compass pass. As we came to a buoy a diver would go over and 'bounce' dive the marker and look around to see if there was an aircraft there.
What made this more difficult was at the turn of the century when logging was the major industry, large rafts of logs waiting to be towed were stacked and bundled together with 1" wire rope. The magnetometer identified the metal in those bundles so it became a process of trial and error. We finally did locate the aircraft and I think the magnetometer responded to the large steel radial engines. Although promises from the navy about releasing the aircraft to get it to an archive somewhere were made, the navy never released the aircraft. It's location became known and many divers dove it and scavenged whatever they could. One summer the navy showed up with a dive barge and for training had divers try to get the aircraft ready to bring to the surface. They bent one diver and he died. They gave up. Someone else came in and got straps and all under the aircraft but broke it apart when trying to lift it. The dissimilar metals in the fasteners that 'bolted' the wings on became contaminated from the electrolysis over the years and the wings broke from the fuselage. Somebody then decided the salvage attempts were over. There was also major concern about how much av/gas would still be in the wings and fear of pollution probably put the stops further attempts to raise the aircraft.
There have been many advances in electronics since then. I suspect a moder magnetometer would not be prohibitively expense to lease and would be much smaller than what we had. But that's the way I'd attempt to locate the pile driver head. Then I would consider using something like Mel Fisher did to blow the sand away from the target by using the prop wash from a boat. One could also hook up a good large volume compressor on a barge and make a powerful airlift. I suspect the potential of moving that much sediment would bring out the conservationists in hordes. Probably rightfully so!
You have dodged one bullet because the target is shallow. I'd use surface supplied air for the recovery. If you don't have a true professional guiding the recovery the airlift or the exhaust from the prop wash could get somebody seriously hurt or maybe even killed. All in all...I have no idea if the recovery would be equal to the cost of the salvage. Seek a pro if you go for it. Finding it can be done by anyone. The recovery is another story. Jim