Unknown button

[Pdr206]

Any ideas?

 

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[Kodiak43351]

It would be very hard to identify that button unless you could find some makers mark on it. I dig a lot of buttons and clean them up and I have plenty I wish I knew what they came off of.

 

[grasshopper]

Looks like a more modern civilian button to me, but I'm no expert. When I say "modern" i mean post-1900s, but like Kodiak said, it's difficult to ID without any back marks. I was just going off it's look/design.

 

[Iron Patch]

I'm quite sure it's a late 18th century era tombac, the only thing that's odd is the iron on the back.... so I would bet you dug it in an iron infested area, or at least with something else in the hole.

 

[Pdr206]

Thanks. How do i clean the rustification off the back without damaging everything?

 

[Iron Patch]

Thanks. How do i clean the rustification off the back without damaging everything?

I'd try a toothpick and if way too tough for that, you'll probably have to get way more aggressive using something like a sharp nail or anything you can chip away at it with. Not a great option, but I don't think there is any, but you might be able to knock most of it off. Electrolysis would damage the face, so you're much better off doing anything to the back that does not affect the front.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

I don't like having to disagree with Iron Patch, whom I respect. But using T-Net's option to super-enlarge the photos, it sure looks like a 2-piece button... having a silverplated/nickel-plated thin stamped sheetbrass brass front crimped over an iron back. In the super-enlarged backview photo, you can see the crimped brass rim around the edge of the back. The crimped rim shows some green brass patina in a couple of places.

If it is indeed a 2-piece stamped-sheetbrass/ironback button, it can date anytime from the late-1820s onward through the 1900s. If its sheetbrass front is nickel-plated instead of silverplated, it would date from the 1870s onward.

The multi-multi concentric circles design on its front means it is a Civilian-usage button, not a Military one.

Due to the backview photo being shot almost straight-downward on the button, I can't be sure, but I seem to see an iron stud projecting from the center of the back. If that is correct, it is an Overalls rivet-button, dating from approximately the 1880s through the present.

 

[Pdr206]

Excellent thank you. The post in the back appears to me to be square. Found in the 1919 schoolyard in my old farming hometown. Would make sense that its an overall button of that era.