{Sentinel}
Silver Member
Lots O' Gold: 1830 United States Navy (Marines) Eagle Button
Here is my near final result of the awesomely corroded button that I found on my last hunt. This button was about as bad as they come and required alot of attention and application to get this clean, ESPECIALLY, because of the amount of gilt still left on it which was certainly alot. The crud actually is what kept all the gilt on underneath that hard outer covering. This button took me about 6 days of cleaning to get to this point. The backmark is "Scovills ** Waterbury" which dates it to 1830. Many of these buttons in this area get this corrosion as you have probably seen with some of my other buttons including the U.S. Marines 1860 that I posted two months ago (which made American Digger Magazine for this month-thanks Steve S.
) Hope y'all like as I put alot of elbow grease into this one, it really is phenominal how hard and tough this material is to remove from these buttons :P:
The button fresh out of the ground looked similar to this one however I didn't take a picture of this particular button before starting the cleaning process and I apologize for that...I must've got carried away trying to clean it...So, have a look at this one which was found not too far from this same site and imagine about twice as thick with corrosion:
Day 3: THIS IS it. Halfway through the cleaning process. You can still see that it has heavy buildup on it. This was about 3 days into vigorous cleaning:
Day 6: This is the near done product. Probably 5 to 6 mm of crud removed from the face! Very pretty button!
With a wee bit more soaking, I should be able to get that remaining hard-to-get clinger on corrosion out of the face of the Eagle
Here is my near final result of the awesomely corroded button that I found on my last hunt. This button was about as bad as they come and required alot of attention and application to get this clean, ESPECIALLY, because of the amount of gilt still left on it which was certainly alot. The crud actually is what kept all the gilt on underneath that hard outer covering. This button took me about 6 days of cleaning to get to this point. The backmark is "Scovills ** Waterbury" which dates it to 1830. Many of these buttons in this area get this corrosion as you have probably seen with some of my other buttons including the U.S. Marines 1860 that I posted two months ago (which made American Digger Magazine for this month-thanks Steve S.
) Hope y'all like as I put alot of elbow grease into this one, it really is phenominal how hard and tough this material is to remove from these buttons :P:The button fresh out of the ground looked similar to this one however I didn't take a picture of this particular button before starting the cleaning process and I apologize for that...I must've got carried away trying to clean it...So, have a look at this one which was found not too far from this same site and imagine about twice as thick with corrosion:
Day 3: THIS IS it. Halfway through the cleaning process. You can still see that it has heavy buildup on it. This was about 3 days into vigorous cleaning:
Day 6: This is the near done product. Probably 5 to 6 mm of crud removed from the face! Very pretty button!
With a wee bit more soaking, I should be able to get that remaining hard-to-get clinger on corrosion out of the face of the Eagle
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Well worth the effort. Beautiful.
Congrats on that find!
