BuckleBoy
Platinum Member
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2006
- Messages
- 18,159
- Reaction score
- 9,723
- Golden Thread
- 4
- Location
- Moonlight and Magnolias
- 🥇 Banner finds
- 4
- Detector(s) used
- Fisher F75, Whites DualField PI, Fisher 1266-X and Tesoro Silver uMax
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
Hello All,
Rodeo and I got out in the fields today. We were trying to find an early house site, and I figured that we had three possibilities on the land we would be hunting. After we secured permission, we parked the car and looked out on the frozen, foggy soybean field:
The ice on top made it a bit difficult to eyeball broken brick and glass, but we finally managed to find our first spot. We started hearing the refreshing sound of iron nails after all that silence on the machines.
Rodeo got a nice suspender clip (looks like a Gordian knot on the front of it), and he dug below plow depth to recover a spatterware pot.
Some of the finds looked burned by a fire, so we knew that in addition to being in a plowed area, recovering a nice item could be difficult. A few more bits came up--and I got the first coin find--a danged 40's wheatie. 
Then Rodeo got his very first V Nickel. Here's a shot of it in his muddy mitts:
Nice work, buddy! You know you're hunting the right spots when you can score your first TWO half dimes and a Shield Nickel before you find a V or a Buffalo.
We got a few more bits--a drawer pull and a cane topper... Then I got a signal I knew would be a coin on my 1266. I called Rodeo over and said "I think this is gonna be a coin. What does it read on your Ace 250?" His answer got my blood pumping: "Dime!" Well folks, after the wheatie and the V Nickel, I was expecting a Barber or an early date Merc. And I wasn't that excited about either prospect, to be honest. I opened the hole and located the target. The coin was blackened, and looked like it would not be that pretty.
I put the coin in my cotton ball filled medicine jar, put the lid on, and kept hunting. We finished the site up pretty well, with nothing else great to be found, then foregoing finding the barn site for now, we spent about an hour trying to locate the blacksmith's shop. We found a small iron patch, and a few more bits. At this point, my feet were Wet and freezing cold. We slogged back through the muck to the car to warm up. On the way back, I started to wonder what the dime was.
So I got some water and gently washed the dirt off the dime. To my Total Surprise, the date 1840 was visible on the blackened coin! I think that realization sped up my recovery time from the temperature outside. To give you an idea of what these coins looked like before much cleaning, here is a photo of the Dime and the V Nickel right after we got home. The dirt is already rinsed off the dime, and it still looks really oxidized:
At that point, we changed our strategy and decided to at least get a sense of the last spot on the list for the day--so that way we could return to the "dime spot" if the other one was a bust. So we slogged out through the foggy field once more.
The last spot was pretty odd--and in fact we almost missed it. We ended up walking right through the site the first time, but didn't hear much iron at all--only a blip here or there. I did see what could've been a few pieces of foundation stone chopped up, but no bricks, no glass, no iron concentration... So we walked on through.
On the way back, Rodeo dug a flat button in the same spot I'd eyed on the way through the first time. So we decided to focus on the area more thoroughly.
Well, folks--what happened then is now a bit of a blur. Button. Button. Button. Thimble. Musketball. Button. Button. It seemed like the flat buttons were just pouring into our pouches one after another--with some pewter and tombacs mixed in (so we knew this was an Early spot!). The land we were on was occupied at least as early as 1809.
Here's a button Rodeo found:
There was no trash--well maybe one tiny piece of aluminum can. The rest were buttons, thimbles, pewter spoon handles, and musketballs. Rodeo found a tiny ball button (nice work!). Here's a photo of how tiny the sucker is:
We kept hitting the spot, and the targets slowed down but didn't stop by the time we had to leave--so this is Certainly a spot I'd like to return to. I keep hoping that there is Half Real waiting in there somewhere.
Here are all of our finds for the day, before cleaning:
And after cleaning:
Best Wishes and Happy Hunting to all of you from the IRON Brigade.
Rodeo and I got out in the fields today. We were trying to find an early house site, and I figured that we had three possibilities on the land we would be hunting. After we secured permission, we parked the car and looked out on the frozen, foggy soybean field:
The ice on top made it a bit difficult to eyeball broken brick and glass, but we finally managed to find our first spot. We started hearing the refreshing sound of iron nails after all that silence on the machines.
Rodeo got a nice suspender clip (looks like a Gordian knot on the front of it), and he dug below plow depth to recover a spatterware pot.
Some of the finds looked burned by a fire, so we knew that in addition to being in a plowed area, recovering a nice item could be difficult. A few more bits came up--and I got the first coin find--a danged 40's wheatie. Then Rodeo got his very first V Nickel. Here's a shot of it in his muddy mitts:Nice work, buddy! You know you're hunting the right spots when you can score your first TWO half dimes and a Shield Nickel before you find a V or a Buffalo.
We got a few more bits--a drawer pull and a cane topper... Then I got a signal I knew would be a coin on my 1266. I called Rodeo over and said "I think this is gonna be a coin. What does it read on your Ace 250?" His answer got my blood pumping: "Dime!" Well folks, after the wheatie and the V Nickel, I was expecting a Barber or an early date Merc. And I wasn't that excited about either prospect, to be honest. I opened the hole and located the target. The coin was blackened, and looked like it would not be that pretty.
I put the coin in my cotton ball filled medicine jar, put the lid on, and kept hunting. We finished the site up pretty well, with nothing else great to be found, then foregoing finding the barn site for now, we spent about an hour trying to locate the blacksmith's shop. We found a small iron patch, and a few more bits. At this point, my feet were Wet and freezing cold. We slogged back through the muck to the car to warm up. On the way back, I started to wonder what the dime was.
So I got some water and gently washed the dirt off the dime. To my Total Surprise, the date 1840 was visible on the blackened coin! I think that realization sped up my recovery time from the temperature outside.
To give you an idea of what these coins looked like before much cleaning, here is a photo of the Dime and the V Nickel right after we got home. The dirt is already rinsed off the dime, and it still looks really oxidized:At that point, we changed our strategy and decided to at least get a sense of the last spot on the list for the day--so that way we could return to the "dime spot" if the other one was a bust. So we slogged out through the foggy field once more.
The last spot was pretty odd--and in fact we almost missed it. We ended up walking right through the site the first time, but didn't hear much iron at all--only a blip here or there. I did see what could've been a few pieces of foundation stone chopped up, but no bricks, no glass, no iron concentration... So we walked on through.
On the way back, Rodeo dug a flat button in the same spot I'd eyed on the way through the first time. So we decided to focus on the area more thoroughly.
Well, folks--what happened then is now a bit of a blur. Button. Button. Button. Thimble. Musketball. Button. Button. It seemed like the flat buttons were just pouring into our pouches one after another--with some pewter and tombacs mixed in (so we knew this was an Early spot!). The land we were on was occupied at least as early as 1809.
Here's a button Rodeo found:
There was no trash--well maybe one tiny piece of aluminum can. The rest were buttons, thimbles, pewter spoon handles, and musketballs. Rodeo found a tiny ball button (nice work!). Here's a photo of how tiny the sucker is:
We kept hitting the spot, and the targets slowed down but didn't stop by the time we had to leave--so this is Certainly a spot I'd like to return to. I keep hoping that there is Half Real waiting in there somewhere.
Here are all of our finds for the day, before cleaning:
And after cleaning:
Best Wishes and Happy Hunting to all of you from the IRON Brigade.
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