IRON MAIDEN! Colonial iron incl. pitchfork, axes, and buttons & draped...

Scrappy

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Mar 6, 2014
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IRON MAIDEN! Colonial iron incl. pitchfork, axes, and buttons & draped...

I have been away for family vacation, forbidden to detect for the week despite being in a colonial area of Maine. Long story short, and not by chance, we ended up on eastern Long Island where I did some colonial digging.

Day one was sifting for about 4 hrs, and found lots of bits including buttons and hand-blown glass. The shells are clams - a very important food to Long Islanders in colonial days.
Here's the pit I marked two months ago:
ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471831150.943878.jpg

ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471828956.777573.jpg

Day two was detecting an old farm that had some poor folk about. All iron, no copper to speak of. After two days and about 10hrs.
Here's the foundation hole, apparently disappeared between 1846-1857...

ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471831201.402216.jpg
Here it is:
ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471831097.816771.jpg

ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471828552.276133.jpg
Hand wrought Axes:ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471828562.712525.jpg
Pitchfork: ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471828573.825242.jpg
Hand iron: ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471828602.832878.jpg
Log grabber?:ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471828621.165660.jpg
Iron smalls incl. buckles ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471828647.555612.jpg
Hand blown glass and black glass: ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471828693.795158.jpg
Smalls incl. a poured rat-tail pewter spoon handle: ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471828735.199129.jpg
Barely and coinage. A crusty draped copper and half copper: ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471828778.537855.jpg
Smalls incl. thimbles and such: ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1471828842.445166.jpg

Anyway, enjoy. I'm sending off the iron to Brad (OutdoorAdv) for some expert preservation. I'll post the results soon enough.

Steve
 

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Upvote 23
Too bad your machine was on lockdown on vacation...
Nice to get way though, hope you had a good time. Welcome back, and nice finds from the farm!
 

that sure is some nice scrap, Scrap. well diversified portfolio :---)
 

great_find.gif
Nice finds! Don't know why but I always enjoy finding Axes. Thanks for sharing...
 

Nice hunt Scrappy! The "log grabber" looks like a gate hing that was driven through and bent over to me. That's a nice pile of iron. [emoji106]

HH RN
 

Nice batch of finds.. your pocket watch probably isn't quite that old, at least as evidenced by this: http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/what/511651-civil-war-period-pocket-watch.html

Got a response back already from oldwatch.com. Great bunch of guys.

"The winding mechanism makes the watch much later….

All Civil War watches were wound and set with a key.

1870s when winding without a key was invented…

It looks like a watch from the 20th century…"

You log grabber, I think, is actually a hinge pintel.
 

Nice digs Steve. :thumbsup: How did you sift? Small frame with a screen or do you have a larger set-up? The watch frame coins and buttons are a great addition to your finds.
 

Great finds!
HH
dts
 

Glad to see that you got out. Nice selection of finds too.

The cool weather will be here shortly, and I am certain that you will make up for lost time!

Best of luck to you sir!
 

Nice hunt, any ticks? There are no ticks in the water. I had to send off my Deus, water infiltrated my waterproof bag. I'm receiving a brand new control box. They informed me Deus came out with a new hard case and was told the new coil and upgrade will kick butt in the salt water. I'm already looking forward to next year water hunting.
I was up in the Poconos this past weekend, I found a great fall/winter spot to detect as long as there would be no snow?
 

You were very resourceful without the aid of your metal detector and did really well anyway!
 

Too bad your machine was on lockdown on vacation...
Nice to get way though, hope you had a good time. Welcome back, and nice finds from the farm!

Thx Dave. It was a total of 8 days of not detecting. Wasn't fun...
 

Nice hunt Scrappy! The "log grabber" looks like a gate hing that was driven through and bent over to me. That's a nice pile of iron. [emoji106]

HH RN

You could be right about that. I looked up some old log rollers and the hooked iron piece is usually on a pivot.
 

Nice batch of finds.. your pocket watch probably isn't quite that old, at least as evidenced by this: http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/what/511651-civil-war-period-pocket-watch.html

Got a response back already from oldwatch.com. Great bunch of guys.

"The winding mechanism makes the watch much later….

All Civil War watches were wound and set with a key.

1870s when winding without a key was invented…

It looks like a watch from the 20th century…"

You log grabber, I think, is actually a hinge pintel.

Yep, very nice Google work.
 

Great hunts man! I really like that pitchfork a LOT. I wish it wasnt losing one of the tines on it, but that might be the reason you found it... trashed after it broke! The flat clothes iron is awesome too. Look forward to preserving those for you.

As a few others pointed out the grabber is a hinge piece. Here are a couple ones I have found and zapped.

IMG_20160822_082904147.jpg

This one I slid a strap hing on to display. It has a long "tail" on it but its hidden between the bricks.

IMG_20160822_083047699.jpg

The bend in yours looks looks too close to 90 degrees to be by mistake. I'm guessing they drilled a pilot hole through a 6" or so post, hammered the hinge piece in, and bent the last inch or two of the "tail" part up to "lock" it in place. I find rose heads with bends like that too.

Nice hunt, any ticks? There are no ticks in the water. I had to send off my Deus, water infiltrated my waterproof bag. I'm receiving a brand new control box. They informed me Deus came out with a new hard case and was told the new coil and upgrade will kick butt in the salt water. I'm already looking forward to next year water hunting.
I was up in the Poconos this past weekend, I found a great fall/winter spot to detect as long as there would be no snow?

Good to know about the hard case Brad. Its cool to see the mods people have done with the Deus as far as finding aftermarket cases to solve a problem. The waterproof bag case XP sells is not as good as the waterproof phone cases we use (I have both a phone case and the XP one) Its great to see that XP is watching what we all are doing and they are making their own accessories to bridge the gap.
 

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