What do I do!?!?

[Dark1one]

What do you think it is?? Found it digging in my side yard in southern Ohio. What do I do??

 

[The Rebel]

Umm dig it up..

 

[robertk]

If it concerns you, dig it up. Otherwise give it a tug and see if it pulls free. It doesn't look like it's been in the ground long -- it's barely even dirty.

 

[Almy]

Looks like a mantle from a Coleman type white gasoline lantern. I think they were made with either glass or asbestos fibers. That's why it didn't rot in the ground.

 

[releventchair]

Looks like a mantle from a Coleman type white gasoline lantern. I think they were made with either glass or asbestos fibers. That's why it didn't rot in the ground.

Wrong.
Cotton.
Both early mantles and this pictured piece. The pictured piece is a coarse cotton weave.

Egyptian cotton at one time for Coleman if recalled correctly.

Treatments varied. With earlier thorium discontinued in America due to mild radioactivity.
Yttrium replaced thorium. less bright but so be it.

The reason being cotton was/is used is to support the coating until fired.
The ask resulting is what glows after. So the cotton had burned away leaving the fragile ash .
When Coleman went to cheaper cotton , (post Silklite mantles) the quality of mantles began to fall off. Till current new mantles often failing prematurely. Evan at light up. And hole blown in a mantle lets a hot jet of heat go toward wherever the hole is facing. We don't want that...

Ther globe that is glass today was mica in early lanterns. that protected/protects the mantles from wind and flying insects. Screen has been used in place.

 

[Back-of-the-boat]

Looks like an old sock that got buried. The clothesline could have been in that spot. I don't think it is anything nefarious.

 

[gemee]

Are you kidding?? What is wrong with you?