I took my newfound passion even further and spent the next year researching magnets and magnet design, and in 2020, I launched my own magnet fishing business, Kratos Magnetics, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pretty soon, I was filling buckets with interesting finds-large bolts, cables, steel plates. So I ordered a cheap, generic magnet from Amazon and headed to a local bridge to try it for myself. The more magnet fishing videos I watched, the more I wondered what else could be buried in our waterways. Even though his find ended up having no historical significance, what I found even more compelling was not knowing the gun’s backstory: Who owned it? Why was it tossed into the water? Was it used to commit a crime? It was like a modern-day mystery that needed to be solved. And though none of his haul was the type of stuff I was used to finding during a land excavation-he reeled in a gun-this different style of treasure hunting, called magnet fishing, almost guarantees you won’t go home empty-handed. So when I saw a YouTube video of a guy using magnets to retrieve submerged objects from bodies of water, I was intrigued. Sometimes you get lucky, but sometimes you can spend hours prepping and days scavenging only to return home with nothing.
I’ve excavated burial mounds and precontact villages and metal-detected battlefields. I love recovering objects, whether it’s digging deep into the earth or sweeping the surface using a metal detector.
#4LB DUTY DOUBLE SIDED MAGNETS PROFESSIONAL#
I’ve been a registered professional archaeologist, with an undergraduate degree in anthropology from California University of Pennsylvania and a graduate degree in North American history from Norwich University in Vermont, for over 17 years, and I’m as addicted now as I was then to what it’s all about-artifact hunting. All I had to do was learn a craft.Īnd so, I did. At that moment I knew what I was going to do for a living, and I didn’t need a magic sword or a way to travel the galaxy to do it. In the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark, archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones, played by Harrison Ford, is recruited to recover the long-lost Ark, along the way digging up relics and piecing together the mysteries surrounding them. I never expected one of them to change my life. It was always a treat when my mother rented movies.