VTColonialDigger
Hero Member
I have been quite busy lately which has resulted in not getting out detecting very much. Yesterday, however, I was able to get out detecting on some land that my friend in town who is interested in getting into metal detecting got permission for us to search. I let him use my old Bounty Hunter that I used when I first started. He had a blast metal detecting and I think I got him hooked on it. He really enjoyed looking for signals, and I would help him to look for the target once he found a signal as I only have 1 pinpointer. We were only out for around 2 hours and we ended up finding some cool stuff.
We started off in his yard. The house he rents was built in the 1950's but built on an homesite that dates back to the 1800's. This interesting relic was one of the first things we found
Any Ideas what this might be?
We also found this awesome 1810 classic head large cent. I decided to use some water on it since the patina underneath the corrosion looked stable enough.
After the Largie we found a couple of zinc pennies and 1 wheat penny, but then things started to slow down. So then we decided to go to an old cellar hole in the woods behind his house. We got there and I dug a nice little mid-1800s ball button right off the bat. My friend got a really strong signal and I went over to help him dig the signal. After a few shovel fulls of dirt, this came out
At first I didn't know what it was but after a few seconds of turning it over in my hand I realized it was the broken barrel of a flintlock pistol! I still can't believe what a stroke of luck it was to find this!
Here are a couple more pictures after I cleaned it up
I used a set of calipers to determine that it is 65 caliber. It is made of brass, which was surprisingly not uncommon for pistol barrels in the time period. I showed it today to very knowledgeable Revolutionary War re-enactor who builds reproduction flintlocks for a living and he told me that two of the 3 marks on the side of the barrel were common British marks from the late 1700's to early 1800's time period. He said that he looked through his London gun makers book and could't find an "IF" and crown mark, but that it could have been made in a city such as Birmingham, England. So we are still on the lookout for the maker of this pistol!
Thanks for reading,
Good luck/happy hunt
VTColonialDigger
We started off in his yard. The house he rents was built in the 1950's but built on an homesite that dates back to the 1800's. This interesting relic was one of the first things we found
Any Ideas what this might be?
We also found this awesome 1810 classic head large cent. I decided to use some water on it since the patina underneath the corrosion looked stable enough.
After the Largie we found a couple of zinc pennies and 1 wheat penny, but then things started to slow down. So then we decided to go to an old cellar hole in the woods behind his house. We got there and I dug a nice little mid-1800s ball button right off the bat. My friend got a really strong signal and I went over to help him dig the signal. After a few shovel fulls of dirt, this came out
At first I didn't know what it was but after a few seconds of turning it over in my hand I realized it was the broken barrel of a flintlock pistol! I still can't believe what a stroke of luck it was to find this!
Here are a couple more pictures after I cleaned it up
I used a set of calipers to determine that it is 65 caliber. It is made of brass, which was surprisingly not uncommon for pistol barrels in the time period. I showed it today to very knowledgeable Revolutionary War re-enactor who builds reproduction flintlocks for a living and he told me that two of the 3 marks on the side of the barrel were common British marks from the late 1700's to early 1800's time period. He said that he looked through his London gun makers book and could't find an "IF" and crown mark, but that it could have been made in a city such as Birmingham, England. So we are still on the lookout for the maker of this pistol!
Thanks for reading,
Good luck/happy hunt
VTColonialDigger
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