What is this chain for? Any way to date it?

[TrpnBils]

Found this tonight at a promising river ford that has been used since at least the mid 1700s up through the Civil War and beyond. Everything from Spanish silver up through wheat pennies have come out of this ford, so it's seen just about everything. I pulled this chain from the river bed tonight and I'm planning on trying to restore it if I can because it looks real cool. Would this have been from a wagon? It looks real familiar like I've seen this somewhere before but I can't put my finger on it.

Is there any way to get an approximate age on it? I can't tell yet what kind of welds the links have. The iron looks striated a bit, but I'm assuming that's because it's been kind of degraded. It was basically a big ball with rocks and all kinds of stuff stuck to it but this was the end result after being the crap out of it with a hammer this evening. All links are intact and the whole thing is flexible just like it should be. End to end it's probably 3ft long.

Incidentally, how do you go about doing electrolysis on a chain There are an awful lot of nooks and crannies there to be missed....

 

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[Tony in SC]

Could have been for a single tree, but that setup was used for a lot of things. Most of the older farm chains were long link, that one has a more modern look.

 

[creskol]

Looks like welded chain links, making it fairly recent.

 

[ivan salis]

horse tack chain aka as a "single tree"

 

[TrpnBils]

horse tack chain aka as a "single tree"

Glad you specified horse tack there because I thought the other reply that mentioned "single tree" was talking about logging....

Would this setup have been for a single horse or multiple? When I search what you mentioned here I come up with pictures of yokes, which I thought would just have been for carriages or other hauling purposes...is that right? Not really a horse guy here...

 

[pa plateau hiker]

It's difficult to do electrolysis on a chain. You can't just attach the negative to one link as the electric currant doesn't flow very well from link to link. What I have done succesfully on several chains is to wrap a copper wire around each link and then attach your negative contact to the wire. It works very well this way.

 

[sutphin]

THATS A NEET FIND .

 

[sawmill man]

Could it be a calf puller chain,looks close to some ive seen