My title describes the thing – size is in relation to quarter pictured. I found this on the beach in Malibu, CA – it may be a part of ship or oil rig, I don’t know. The curious thing about it was that the heavy semi-ovular magnetic piece of metal was completely encased inside and shook around loosely in the weathered containment piece of metal. I would’ve just thought it was a rock and left it alone, but the metal detector beeped on it then I picked it up and felt something inside so I have to figure out what it is!. Thank you!!!

HERE ARE SOME OF THE ANSWERS:

1. I think the metal bit is wrought iron, which is the reason for the ‘layers’ in it. Wrought iron was made by repeatedy hammering a bloom of white-hot cast or puddled iron. It pretty much vanished when Bessemer steel became available. It could be anything.

   The ‘container’, I think, is a concretion made up of the corrosion products from the iron.

2. I may be waaaay off base here… but… the center “striated” object… looked like it could possibly be a clump of old steel needles? In a case? That sat together in water for years until they rusted together as one lump?
3. casing is obviously not lead, lead oxidizes white, not rust. High intensity radioactive sources are rarely magnetic. it is most likely an odd oxidative concretion around the residual chunk of iron. Odd that it would rattle, but strange things can happen with ferrous materials in seawater.
4. Maybe it is a very old and corroded, short piece of cable that was snipped off the end of a stretch at the terminal point for some reason. The case is old, hardened insulation or outer layer, looking sealed at both ends from being crimped, and the metal slug from inside is old stranded steel cabling.
5. Now, I’m not as smart as a lot of other people who commented, but I’m pretty sure what it is. I live in Colorado and find a lot of iron nails from the 1700s encased in their own oxide. That looks to be what this is. It’s probably a piece of iron cylinder from a bridge or ship or something( i cant tell you where it came from or how its made) that got trapped in its own iron oxide bubble or case or whatever.
6. Does it smell at all? I found two very similar smaller items that smelled like gunpowder. I took them home and cracked them open and it appeared to be two old bullets which had the same striations as the inner piece you have here (military used to train on this beach). Happy hunting!
7. How did you open the capsule? Did it open like a 2 part container, at a joint? Or how much effort did it take to get it open? I’m asking because something meant as a container would be easier to open vs a solid formed ball or something that had been sealed as a permanent casing.
8. It’s an iron concretion with a relatively solid chunk of iron hematite piece of fossilized Carboniferous plant matter.
9. Could be an early ad-hoc attempt at making something to prevent a ship’s hull from corroding? Like they would do now with a big brick of Zinc?
10. Man, I’ve found near exactly the same thing but on the other side of the world. I found exactly 3 of these. One was big nodule that looked rusty, when shaken you could hear something inside, when broken there was dark black dirty T shaped object with a little different texture than yours, when cleaned in water immediately after opening it was shiny silver colour, 30 min later it started rusting fast, in a matter of day it was completely rusted. It smelled intensively like rust. Two other ones looked exactly like yours just smaller diameter, the points were really sharp so much so I was afraid not to cut myself with probably more than 100yo metal.

    I haven’t managed to find out what it is, it should be something nautical, and something from a period they used this kind of metal, it is something low carbon I don’t remember the name, I don’t know yet if the shape you are looking at has any resemblance to the object it is from. Currently I’m trying to convince my friend to use his job lab equipment to test it.

11. Is that a paper or fabric wrapper in pic 2 & 3? Could it be a fragment of an early undersea cable? Thy had iron/steel armoring cables around the outside.
12. Dear lord have you ensured it isn’t radioactive?? My uncle found some concreted metal while detecting and carried a portable dose meter. When he tested it, it was off the scale.

    If it was encased like that, it could have been for good reason. /

13. Paint stores have lead test kits if u wanna see if it was a lead containment
14. I really, really hope this wasn’t weathered nuclear material.

    Call the DoE just in case please.

15. It’s a check valve
16. Looks like it could have been a stop sleeve of some kind, crimped in place along a steel cable. A metal sleeve that was crimped on both ends to stop it moving along the line. Corrosion could have eaten away everything outside the crimps and sealed them up preserving the last nugget of cable between the crimping spots.
17. Maybe the center grain from a piece of pig iron. It looks like the center piece has the grain exposed from rusting.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENT!

via: OmensGroup