✅ SOLVED Small decorative brass thingie

[Dougie Webb]

Using the historic aerials website, I was able to identify a house and barn in the property our neighborhood owns; my guess is that it stood from about 1900-1970-ish. Very overgrown, poison ivy everywhere. Brought in the weed-whacker and chainsaw and have been able to map out the foundation of the house so far. Pretty neat. My first coin find was a 1940 wheat penny, so I'm pretty stoked. Anyway, to the point, below is my first "non-trash" find....

I've done a bunch of research and can't figure this thing out. It's 1.2 inches long (not including the pointy thing on top) and .4 inches wide at the bottom. Made of brass, weighty, and it seems that the "spike" on top is iron. It used to be a little bit longer, but I broke off about 1/4 inch of the spike as I was cleaning it.

Interestingly, it's threaded on the bottom. The best I can do for a guess is that it screwed into some sort of base, like a small candle holder, and you could stick the candle on the sharp point. But it's so small, that kinda doesn't make sense. But at least I tried.



Close up on detail


Lead pointy thing


Threads

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Minelab PRO-FIND 35 Waterproof Pinpointer Metal Detector for Experts with Tone ID & Adjustable Sensitivity - Grab it through Amazon!

[pepperj]

Part of a pepper mill?

 

[xaos]

Using the historic aerials website, I was able to identify a house and barn in the property our neighborhood owns; my guess is that it stood from about 1900-1970-ish. Very overgrown, poison ivy everywhere. Brought in the weed-whacker and chainsaw and have been able to map out the foundation of the house so far.

All that work, and you found the top of a spice mill....damn...

 

[Dougie Webb]

Ha! You guys are dead on! LOL. I kept looking at this thing going "I know this looks familiar..."

But it's a beautiful vintage brass top of a pepper mill!

 

[Georgivs]

historic aerials + my 4H aerial surveying and analysis classes has lead to finding so many old house sites on parks and public lands that no one else has discovered. That site is great

 

[Dougie Webb]

historic aerials + my 4H aerial surveying and analysis classes has lead to finding so many old house sites on parks and public lands that no one else has discovered. That site is great

Just found a new site yesterday using it - zoomed out from the 1955 view and started looking at surrounding public property areas and then going back to see if anything stood there. Got lucky and found a fairly new middle school around the corner from me that had a house and shed standing smack in the middle of where the track's located. Looks like it stood until about 1960 and then the land was completely empty until the school was built in ~2010. Going to go hit it for the first time tonight!