TrpnBils
Hero Member
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2005
- Messages
- 870
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- Location
- Western PA
- 🥇 Banner finds
- 1
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- 1
- Detector(s) used
- CTX 3030
- Primary Interest:
- Metal Detecting
Grapeshot ball from 1800's foundation - dug, cleaned, ID'd, and polished.
Last weekend I detected a farm a few miles from here for a grand total of about 10 hours. Within 5 minutes on the first day I dug a ~1830's button, but didn't dig a whole lot more that wasn't rusty until the following day. The land manager was weedeating nearby when I dug this ball, and when I showed him he insisted that "That's a walnut, boy!" until I handed it to him. Also, for what it's worth, this is also the same farm I had a thread on a few days ago where the land owner's "psychic advisor" was adamant that some kind of massacre had happened in the one field....
Anyway, between talking with a coworker who shoots cannons competitively at a nearby range, and posting it in the "What is it" forum on here (thanks in large part to TheCannonballGuy), it's been ID'd as a grapeshot ball fitting a 12# caliber cannon or a 32# caliber canister shot from the Civil War. The cast iron ball weighs 1.1 lbs and has a diameter of 2.03" and was dug at about 4" deep.
I'm a biology, chemistry, physics, and experimental design teacher, so I turned this into a lesson for some of my upper level classes and we let this run in an electrolysis setup for about 20 hours in my classroom until it was cleaned up. Sealed it with beeswax last night and I might do a second coat tonight just to be safe. As part of the impromptu lesson, I used two different anodes throughout the process (copper and carbon), so that's why the water looks different in two of the photos below.
As an aside...what really gets me is that my main interest in this hobby for several years has been old coins...anything pre-clad. I can't seem to find an of that (6 wheats to date and nothing silver since I started detecting over 5 years ago), but I can find something like this
I don't get it!
Last weekend I detected a farm a few miles from here for a grand total of about 10 hours. Within 5 minutes on the first day I dug a ~1830's button, but didn't dig a whole lot more that wasn't rusty until the following day. The land manager was weedeating nearby when I dug this ball, and when I showed him he insisted that "That's a walnut, boy!" until I handed it to him. Also, for what it's worth, this is also the same farm I had a thread on a few days ago where the land owner's "psychic advisor" was adamant that some kind of massacre had happened in the one field....
Anyway, between talking with a coworker who shoots cannons competitively at a nearby range, and posting it in the "What is it" forum on here (thanks in large part to TheCannonballGuy), it's been ID'd as a grapeshot ball fitting a 12# caliber cannon or a 32# caliber canister shot from the Civil War. The cast iron ball weighs 1.1 lbs and has a diameter of 2.03" and was dug at about 4" deep.
I'm a biology, chemistry, physics, and experimental design teacher, so I turned this into a lesson for some of my upper level classes and we let this run in an electrolysis setup for about 20 hours in my classroom until it was cleaned up. Sealed it with beeswax last night and I might do a second coat tonight just to be safe. As part of the impromptu lesson, I used two different anodes throughout the process (copper and carbon), so that's why the water looks different in two of the photos below.
As an aside...what really gets me is that my main interest in this hobby for several years has been old coins...anything pre-clad. I can't seem to find an of that (6 wheats to date and nothing silver since I started detecting over 5 years ago), but I can find something like this
I don't get it!
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