wetrock
Jr. Member
- Feb 4, 2009
- 27
- 13
- Detector(s) used
- Minelab E-Trac, Garret AT-Pro, GTI 2500 & 1500
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
Found this past Saturday. Was hunting around what I thought was the porch slab of an old house that apparently burnt down. Turns out it may have been a switching station right next to a track as I also dug one of the iron rail base plates near it. Got a really strong overload signal and this popped out just an inch or two deep. According to a couple of railroad websites, it was made for the MK&T by Dayton Mfg. Co. and it dates to the late 1800's early 1900's.
It didn't come out looking like this. it was actually seized up and caked with a layer of baked on ash to the point that you couldn't tell it had any wording on it. A good scrubbing hardly made a dent, so I opted for a very low pressure bead blasting in my cabinet. Once I got all the baked ash off I blew all the dirt out of the inside and the hasp, cover and internal pin started to move freely. Of course the internal spring is long gone, but if you close the hasp and tilt the lock to the left, the pin will seat and still "lock". The steel pin at the bottom still has a bit of chain link rusted to it. After bead blasting, it was quite bright and of course didn't look right, so I read up on how to re-tone brass and decided to try aging it with ammonia. After suspending it in a sealed jar with about an inch or two of ammonia in the bottom of the jar, this is how it looked after three hours.
It didn't come out looking like this. it was actually seized up and caked with a layer of baked on ash to the point that you couldn't tell it had any wording on it. A good scrubbing hardly made a dent, so I opted for a very low pressure bead blasting in my cabinet. Once I got all the baked ash off I blew all the dirt out of the inside and the hasp, cover and internal pin started to move freely. Of course the internal spring is long gone, but if you close the hasp and tilt the lock to the left, the pin will seat and still "lock". The steel pin at the bottom still has a bit of chain link rusted to it. After bead blasting, it was quite bright and of course didn't look right, so I read up on how to re-tone brass and decided to try aging it with ammonia. After suspending it in a sealed jar with about an inch or two of ammonia in the bottom of the jar, this is how it looked after three hours.
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