Confederate drum canteen & very strange FLAT eagle button with shield & stars...

parsonwalker

Bronze Member
Feb 16, 2013
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Virginia
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Modified GI Mine Detector (In the 60s)
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Primary Interest:
Relic Hunting
Confederate drum canteen & very strange FLAT eagle button with shield & stars...

My buddies absolutely cleaned my clock today, so let me say going in, these are NOT my finds. Digging buddy found some colonial flat buttons, bullets and frags, but the find of the day was a Confederate drum canteen, 2 1/2 feet down in very wet red clay/sand mixture. I'm waiting to see it cleaned, but the parts you can see have NO RUST and barely discolored. Unreal.

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Can anybody identify this cuff-sized Eagle button? I've never seen anything like it . . .

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He also found the remains of an excellent side knife. The hand guard looks to be copper.

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The rest of his take for the day:

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Mudduck had a fine day as well with his first bayonet scabbard tip, first friction primer, and a lot of bullets. he never posts his stuff, so I'm posting it!

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I was low man on the totem pole today. All I managed to pull was a 3 ringer, a blown boreman fuse and a friction primer. Oh well, the TEAM scored big . . .
 

Upvote 16
Wow, wow! some great stuff there! The eagle button is 1820s era, Militia.
 

You certainly can't complain PW!! You have scored 2 plates so far this year. Are you surface hunting or digging hut sites and rifle pits? HH, Q.
 

Nice finds you guys got! Congrats!
 

Very nice finds. Congrats.
 

Q, we are only surface hunting so far this year. I've never SEEN a hut site, but the plate I dug in 2014 was in a trench. No complaining from me, and thanks BB for the button ID. Thanks also Bill D for your PM insight!
 

Hot dammn I mean dang!!!vanzutphen You know I got so excited that I didnt pay attention to the finder but I should have known.
 

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very nice digs.Good save on the canteen.The bowie knife is a killer find!congrats.Nice button too
 

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PW, Great recoveries for you and the team! Would love to see a pic of the canteen after some initial cleaning. Many thanks for your post!
 

PW, Great recoveries for you and the team! Would love to see a pic of the canteen after some initial cleaning. Many thanks for your post!
Me too!,I wanna see the knife cleaned also.It is Quite a find too!It looks like a commercially made bowie looking at the guard,but that is just a guess. looks like the most of it is still there besides the handle of course.About how long is it?
 

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Me too!,I wanna see the knife cleaned also.It is Quite a find too!It looks like a commercially made bowie looking at the guard,but that is just a guess. looks like the most of it is still there besides the handle of course.About how long is it?
I will get some pics when my friend cleans them - I wanna see it too. But I thought (at my first look) that the HANDLE is there and the BLADE is what's missing. I really don't know. Just got a short look the day of the hunt. I will post cleaned pics in this thread when I can get back to my friend's house (an hour away)
 

I was thinking the long part was the blade,and the short end was the handle end.Hard to tell from picks sometimes.You have been finding allot of nice relics.I take it you are hunting quite close to a major battle.About what part of V.A are you from?
 

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Again Dig, I'm not sure! I thought the handle survived and blade missing, but now you've got me wondering. We'll know soon. I now live in the Northern Neck (Between Rappahannock and Potomac rivers) but I grew up a few miles east of Richmond.
 

the eagle and stars with cannon button is old -- like Seminole war era type old if in florida *
 

N.O. Noir and Dig2 - here's what you asked for.

Here's the canteen. The metal is like NEW which is insane. The strap keepers are perfect but the spout is missing. He's afraid to clean much more because while the flat metal is incredible, the seams are gone to NOTHING. The dirt is all that's holding it together.

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The knife had bone handles, which are already cracking as it's drying.

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Great Stuff PW.
My only ? is Why did you not do as well as the others in the finds Category?
Was it a Machine Thing? or just one of those days that your loop did not get over any good targets?
I have many like that myself.
That Canteen turned out better than I thought, Displaying something like that can be a pain but it will look nice i'm Sure.
Well Happy Hunting & God Bless.
Davers
 

Man that turns me on!!! Makes my heart pump. Congratulations!!!!! :occasion14:
 

Honestly Davers, those guys were willing to fight through a ton of trash and I wasn't. Aluminum foil and modern junk was EVERYWHERE and they sucked it up and hunted in that stuff. I just wasn't willing to dig a dozen holes for every keeper. Sometimes I'll bite the bullet and do that, but not that day. I hunted an entirely different area of the property, lots less trash, and lots less good stuff too!
 

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