time4me
Bronze Member
- Aug 30, 2005
- 1,296
- 44
- Detector(s) used
- E-Trac, Explorer II, Excalibur
Last Friday I hopped on a plane to North Carolina in pursuit of relics from the Civil War. I had never been on a Civil War relic hunt before, so I didn’t know quite what to expect, and was somewhat anxious about traveling 2,850 miles to metal detect for items used or lost 150 years ago by Americans fighting Americans based on what each side interpreted what America should be. As the airplane left the runway, I settled in for a day of travel and let my mind drift to thoughts of untold treasures awaiting discovery. And after an entire day of travel - 2 flights, 6 hours in the air, and another 2 hours drive - I crashed at my hotel, wishing morning would hurry up and arrive.
A group of us left the hotel bright and early Saturday morning, and met up with another group to find our first hunt location. Not long after we arrived, several of the other hunters started finding minie balls, so I was determined to find one of my own. About 30 minutes into the hunt, I dug my first Civil War relic – a fired minie ball, and was congratulated by one of my nearby hunting companions. I had been told that digging up and touching an item that was last touched by a Civil War soldier was a moving experience, and now I was experiencing it for myself. I was holding a bullet that was fired in the war that determined the future of our country. I was moved.
Not long after finding the minie ball, I got a solid and repeatable signal on my E-Trac, and dug up an oval chunk of rust the size and shape of a small potato. I took this item over to one of my hunting companions Josh, and asked him what it could be. He said “I think I know what it is, and if I’m right, this is an awesome find!” He then asked if he could perform some PME on it. PME, or “Poor Man’s Electrolysis” I quickly learned, is another important function of a Lesche digging tool which removes the outer crust of rust to expose the iron object inside. Josh began whacking the crap out of this lump of rust and exposed a fairly large round steel ball, which I learned was canister shot.
Here is the canister shot with most of the rust removed…
… and again, cleaned up a little bit more and next to a quarter for scale…
I was beyond thrilled with these first two finds, and if I’d found nothing else over the next day and a half, I’d felt like I had a successful trip.
After a bit more hunting at this spot, we decided to hop back in the trucks and move to the site of a different battle. Several of us found more minie balls at this new site, and I was fortunate to find two beautiful dropped minie balls in relatively close proximity to one another, and then a fired bullet (which I don’t believe is a minie ball, but not sure exactly what type it is) about 50 yards away…
We hit a couple of other spots on Saturday, where one of our hunting companions had found buttons and bullets in the past, but I didn’t find anything else the rest of the day.
On Sunday, we again set out first thing in the morning for a third battle site, where the Confederate army was spread out and took heavy artillery fire from the Union army. One of our group had brought along some artillery fragments so we could check them with our detectors to see how they registered, and once we were sure we wouldn’t be discriminating out any artillery shell pieces, we set off into the field.
My first find at this new site turned out to be a piece of case shot. I ended up finding three pieces of case shot in total at this location…
My next find was a broken gray chunk of lead about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide. Again, being a total novice at Civil War relic hunting, and assuming this was just some piece of junk, I took it to one of my experienced hunting companions and was again told “that is a great find!” It was a piece of the lead band, known as the “sabot”, that held the base and the top of a Hotchkiss artillery shell together.
Not long after finding the sabot piece, I got a deep iron signal, and dug up a large and heavy chunk of rust. Again, not knowing if I had discovered something good or not, I took it to Josh, who just shook his head and said “I can’t believe you found one of these” as he took out his Lesche tool and performed some serious PME on the object. It turns out my chunk of rust was the base to a Hotchkiss shell. Here is the base with much of the rust removed via PME…
And here it is with additional cleaning at home…
I need to get the rest of the surface rust off of it and then seal it with a polyurethane varnish to seal it, so that hopefully it won’t continue to rust.
Shortly after finding the Hotchkiss base, I uncovered two very similar pieces of rusted iron in the same general area, which generated some debate over what they are among two of my hunting companions (I am hoping that someone here can properly identify these pieces). One believes them to be halves to the top piece of a Hotchkiss or other artillery shell, but the other says he is fairly certain they are not Hotchkiss shell pieces because of the raised ridge on each one.
Here are several pictures from different angles of these pieces. If you know what they are, please reply with your assessment…
Here are a few other items I found at this site that I haven’t cleaned up too well yet. The first appears to be the steel tang of a knife handle that may have had wood handles attached to, as I can see where the rivet would have gone on one end of the handle…
The next item looks like a small pulley wheel…
The next site we moved to on Sunday was the area occupied by the Union army from the same battle as the Confederate site we had just been detecting. This site happened to be in the woods. We parked the trucks at the edge of the woods, and everyone proceeded to detect while hiking through the woods in search of the creek that runs through the back end of the woods, where we wanted to concentrate our detecting efforts. Not far into the woods, I got side-tracked by a couple of signals that didn’t turn out to be anything of interest, and then I realized that only one of my hunting companions was in view. I scurried over to Eddie and told him that I was going to stick near him as I didn’t want to get lost. Well, about 15 minutes later, I stumbled upon a bunch of bricks and mason jar lids, and told Eddie I was going to investigate the area further. Pretty quickly I found a small bottle with a top for a twist off bottle cap, so I knew it was a trash pit from some post-Civil War activity, and moved on. It was then that I realized that Eddie was nowhere to be seen or heard, so I just kept walking in the direction I thought the creek was in, and kept detecting.
I soon got a good signal, and dug what I was later identified as “another really great find!” It was a “tampion,” which would have originally had a pin attached to it, holding a cork to it, which a soldier would push into the open barrel of his rifle as a cover to keep water and dirt out of the barrel.
Not far from the tampion, I found a piece of grape shot, possibly from a buck and ball, and then this piece of chain – not sure if it is from the Civil War period or not…
After finding the chain, I realized that I was pretty lost in the woods, so I started trying to find my way back to the trucks. After wandering around for awhile, I saw the road through the trees, and emerged about a hundred yards or so from the trucks, very relieved that I found my way back out.
Then I called one of the guys on his cell phone, and he told me to come find them at the creek, as one of them had just found a button back, and they thought they might be in the area we were looking for. So, with great trepidation, and after nearly getting lost once in the woods, I started out again in search of the creek. After 10 minutes or so of hiking where I thought was straight back from the trucks, I realized I was never going to find this creek, so I turned around and headed where I thought was straight back. No such luck. I was lost again. This time I felt really lost, as I started seeing some evergreen trees that I hadn’t seen before, and I started getting caught up in some really thick brambles and vines. Then I started thinking about the Blair Witch Project. I wandered around for a while longer, and then called Matt back on his cell phone. He said they had all reconvened at the trucks, and were wondering where I was. “Lost,” I said. So I told them to honk the horn so I could get a bearing on the direction of the trucks. They did, and I heard a very faint horn, and couldn’t tell which direction it had come from. So they honked the other truck’s horn, which apparently was louder, and I got a vague idea of which direction to head. My companions started hiking back in, and we ended up meeting half way to the trucks, and they led me back out.
From the woods, we went back to one of the locations we had hunted on Saturday, and I pulled up a few more relics, including a skeleton key lock frame, what I think is a totally smashed fired minie ball, a rivet, a really deep green colored piece of metal, and a few other odds and ends, all pictured here…
All in all, I had a blast, and I brought home some wonderful memories, and some very cool relics.
I’m already planning for my next Civil War relic hunt.
Happy Hunting,
Jim
A group of us left the hotel bright and early Saturday morning, and met up with another group to find our first hunt location. Not long after we arrived, several of the other hunters started finding minie balls, so I was determined to find one of my own. About 30 minutes into the hunt, I dug my first Civil War relic – a fired minie ball, and was congratulated by one of my nearby hunting companions. I had been told that digging up and touching an item that was last touched by a Civil War soldier was a moving experience, and now I was experiencing it for myself. I was holding a bullet that was fired in the war that determined the future of our country. I was moved.
Not long after finding the minie ball, I got a solid and repeatable signal on my E-Trac, and dug up an oval chunk of rust the size and shape of a small potato. I took this item over to one of my hunting companions Josh, and asked him what it could be. He said “I think I know what it is, and if I’m right, this is an awesome find!” He then asked if he could perform some PME on it. PME, or “Poor Man’s Electrolysis” I quickly learned, is another important function of a Lesche digging tool which removes the outer crust of rust to expose the iron object inside. Josh began whacking the crap out of this lump of rust and exposed a fairly large round steel ball, which I learned was canister shot.
Here is the canister shot with most of the rust removed…
… and again, cleaned up a little bit more and next to a quarter for scale…
I was beyond thrilled with these first two finds, and if I’d found nothing else over the next day and a half, I’d felt like I had a successful trip.
After a bit more hunting at this spot, we decided to hop back in the trucks and move to the site of a different battle. Several of us found more minie balls at this new site, and I was fortunate to find two beautiful dropped minie balls in relatively close proximity to one another, and then a fired bullet (which I don’t believe is a minie ball, but not sure exactly what type it is) about 50 yards away…
We hit a couple of other spots on Saturday, where one of our hunting companions had found buttons and bullets in the past, but I didn’t find anything else the rest of the day.
On Sunday, we again set out first thing in the morning for a third battle site, where the Confederate army was spread out and took heavy artillery fire from the Union army. One of our group had brought along some artillery fragments so we could check them with our detectors to see how they registered, and once we were sure we wouldn’t be discriminating out any artillery shell pieces, we set off into the field.
My first find at this new site turned out to be a piece of case shot. I ended up finding three pieces of case shot in total at this location…
My next find was a broken gray chunk of lead about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide. Again, being a total novice at Civil War relic hunting, and assuming this was just some piece of junk, I took it to one of my experienced hunting companions and was again told “that is a great find!” It was a piece of the lead band, known as the “sabot”, that held the base and the top of a Hotchkiss artillery shell together.
Not long after finding the sabot piece, I got a deep iron signal, and dug up a large and heavy chunk of rust. Again, not knowing if I had discovered something good or not, I took it to Josh, who just shook his head and said “I can’t believe you found one of these” as he took out his Lesche tool and performed some serious PME on the object. It turns out my chunk of rust was the base to a Hotchkiss shell. Here is the base with much of the rust removed via PME…
And here it is with additional cleaning at home…
I need to get the rest of the surface rust off of it and then seal it with a polyurethane varnish to seal it, so that hopefully it won’t continue to rust.
Shortly after finding the Hotchkiss base, I uncovered two very similar pieces of rusted iron in the same general area, which generated some debate over what they are among two of my hunting companions (I am hoping that someone here can properly identify these pieces). One believes them to be halves to the top piece of a Hotchkiss or other artillery shell, but the other says he is fairly certain they are not Hotchkiss shell pieces because of the raised ridge on each one.
Here are several pictures from different angles of these pieces. If you know what they are, please reply with your assessment…
Here are a few other items I found at this site that I haven’t cleaned up too well yet. The first appears to be the steel tang of a knife handle that may have had wood handles attached to, as I can see where the rivet would have gone on one end of the handle…
The next item looks like a small pulley wheel…
The next site we moved to on Sunday was the area occupied by the Union army from the same battle as the Confederate site we had just been detecting. This site happened to be in the woods. We parked the trucks at the edge of the woods, and everyone proceeded to detect while hiking through the woods in search of the creek that runs through the back end of the woods, where we wanted to concentrate our detecting efforts. Not far into the woods, I got side-tracked by a couple of signals that didn’t turn out to be anything of interest, and then I realized that only one of my hunting companions was in view. I scurried over to Eddie and told him that I was going to stick near him as I didn’t want to get lost. Well, about 15 minutes later, I stumbled upon a bunch of bricks and mason jar lids, and told Eddie I was going to investigate the area further. Pretty quickly I found a small bottle with a top for a twist off bottle cap, so I knew it was a trash pit from some post-Civil War activity, and moved on. It was then that I realized that Eddie was nowhere to be seen or heard, so I just kept walking in the direction I thought the creek was in, and kept detecting.
I soon got a good signal, and dug what I was later identified as “another really great find!” It was a “tampion,” which would have originally had a pin attached to it, holding a cork to it, which a soldier would push into the open barrel of his rifle as a cover to keep water and dirt out of the barrel.
Not far from the tampion, I found a piece of grape shot, possibly from a buck and ball, and then this piece of chain – not sure if it is from the Civil War period or not…
After finding the chain, I realized that I was pretty lost in the woods, so I started trying to find my way back to the trucks. After wandering around for awhile, I saw the road through the trees, and emerged about a hundred yards or so from the trucks, very relieved that I found my way back out.
Then I called one of the guys on his cell phone, and he told me to come find them at the creek, as one of them had just found a button back, and they thought they might be in the area we were looking for. So, with great trepidation, and after nearly getting lost once in the woods, I started out again in search of the creek. After 10 minutes or so of hiking where I thought was straight back from the trucks, I realized I was never going to find this creek, so I turned around and headed where I thought was straight back. No such luck. I was lost again. This time I felt really lost, as I started seeing some evergreen trees that I hadn’t seen before, and I started getting caught up in some really thick brambles and vines. Then I started thinking about the Blair Witch Project. I wandered around for a while longer, and then called Matt back on his cell phone. He said they had all reconvened at the trucks, and were wondering where I was. “Lost,” I said. So I told them to honk the horn so I could get a bearing on the direction of the trucks. They did, and I heard a very faint horn, and couldn’t tell which direction it had come from. So they honked the other truck’s horn, which apparently was louder, and I got a vague idea of which direction to head. My companions started hiking back in, and we ended up meeting half way to the trucks, and they led me back out.
From the woods, we went back to one of the locations we had hunted on Saturday, and I pulled up a few more relics, including a skeleton key lock frame, what I think is a totally smashed fired minie ball, a rivet, a really deep green colored piece of metal, and a few other odds and ends, all pictured here…
All in all, I had a blast, and I brought home some wonderful memories, and some very cool relics.
I’m already planning for my next Civil War relic hunt.
Happy Hunting,
Jim
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