Aluminum? Tin? Foil??

[Dominoe]

I finally bought my MXT today and took it out to an old wall that was built during the Civil War for a defensive position. (At least that is what I have been told) We didn't find anything staggering, my friend found a couple of things he is going to research. He also found an end of a shotshell from Peters Referee manufactured 1900-1910.

Anyways, I found 2 items I'm not real sure of. They are "nugget" shaped but are very light like tin foil or aluminum that has been melted. But they read high on the VDI scale, around 80-82. My question is, when foil or aluminum is melted, does it ring differently? I tried to cut them with a pair of dikes, to see if I could reveal a wrinkle wadded foil would produce but they are solid. I think they are some kind of aluminum but the numbers don't seem close enough.

Any ideas or am I just a bit of a noob??

Dom...

[Dominoe]

I got my scanner back up, here's a couple of pics of my unknown find... They are about the size of a quarter, maybe a little larger. Anyone have any guesses as to what they are? Natural formation or man made??

[dneyedli@res1.mts.net]

The nuggets look exactly like what I find around camp fires in the sand at beaches. People throw aluminium cans into fires and make these little nuggets. From what I remember, they give good signals and fooled me into thinking I had something good. Save enough of them and maybe you can take it in for scrap value?
Dave.

[awsmix]

Dom..I have found stuff that looks like that before. I assumed they were blobs of aluminum that had been melted. Since I didn't keep'em they are probably valuable.
Mix

[Highmountain]

The top one looks like melted foil, maybe. Can't tell much about the bottom ones from the pic. Take a look at through about 30X. If it's aluminum, magnesium or whatnot recently melted you should see a lot of small protrusions that haven't worn away with time. The one on the lower left appears to have a patina on it. Is that what it is? If so, that might indicate it's been out in the weather a long enough time to make it natural. The lower right one appears to have a cavity at the lower end with a whitish powder or patina. Any idea what that might be? If the thing's aluminum that might be residue from whatever it originally contained. But I suspect 30X would tell you a lot you don't know now. If you're really curious and it's unalloyed you could identify the metal by the weight, but the top one almost certainly ain't worth the trouble. More than likely, neither are the bottom two. But the one on the bottom-left is a bit curious.

Best to you,
Jack

[coinshooter]

We pick up tons of this stuff on the So Cal beaches. It's everywhere. Mostly associated with old fires. If you can find the old campfire it came from, this would be where I would concentrate your efforts.
I had about ten 10lbs of this stuff I had been collecting for about a year or so. Tried to take it to the recycler and they wouldn't take it because it was too contaminated. I at least cleaned up the beach for all my fellow detectorists. You can tumble them and then spray paint them with gold paint. Throw them in a local panning river next to some panners and then watch the fun begin! LOL. 8)

[Highmountain]

Cute trick, coinshooter. Richard French pulled something of that sort on me once during the mid-90s. We believed we were onto something hot and were doing some test panning of some traps about a hundred yards apart. He let out a whoop and started waving his arm at me to come look at his pan. I naturally gave myself a dose of 8500 MSL oxygen depletion getting there, where he smiled his toothy grin and held out what appeared to be a nugget weighing about 1/2 an ounce. I reached for it for a better look and he drew it back, but then couldn't hold back a burst of laughter. It was brass and he'd carried it in in his pocket just for this comedy routine.

J