Sundays Relic Dig with a lil Fire Pit action

jamesbibb · Feb 25, 2013

So I decided I had enough and I took my daughter and caught up with matt for a dig on Sunday. Getting into the field late around 830 I fired up the dfx with the big coil and battled the cornstalks.
As you can see somebody tried their best to take off with my gear to find her own relics.

We walked around the field for 30 mintues with no hits then boom we got one. Dug it up and it was a fired 3 ringer. Now we're ttalking.

After a half dozen or so we changed spots and i dug the Ox Knob, remmeber we just had a conversation about them!

Then the next signal in the HUGE IRON infested field was a FIRST for me. Now Northerners DONT LAUGH but here is my first CROTAL BELL. AND IM STOKED about it. I cleaned it up and it still rings! Its actually the first one ive held in my hand after years of diggin lol.

The other guys found a few flat buttons and we decided at that point to part ways, but, I just hadnt had enough quite yet. Even though my daughter had lol. So we huried over to a pounded cavalry camp to fire up the TDi to try to pulse out an eagle button hopefully. Well after 2 pieces of camp lead I got the tell-tell signal of DEEP IRON. So I dug down to about 20" and found a kettle leg and 1 shard of glass. So I explored a bit deeper and the next shovel full of red hot dirt was about 4" thick of ash and charcoal. FIREPIT! So i called the wife and explained my now "dire" situation and that we were going to be late lol.

So I dug the pit out to about 18 around and started pulling out broken glass and fragments of a once intact bullseye canteen. Once I got that out of the way I found some MORE iron in the form of tons of horseshoe nails, harness buckles and rings along with some ration can parts. Then 2 sharps fell out the side of the hole. Sweet! The propinter wouldnt stop going off! I chased where the bullets came from and found 2 more. Then 3 back to back eagle cuff buttons. I continue around the pit now head in the hole laying on my stomach. I found a pocket knife and then the corner of a larger brass object revealed itself. I was thinking the entire time PLATE but it wasnt. And once I removed it and its other part I really didnt know what I had. So when I got home I cleaned up my finds and noticed something stamped on the shield. It read "SMITH'S PATENT JAN 17, 1860" well that made it easy. I then found out that I was holding a soldiers match case! Ive never found one of these before so im stoked about it!