Home Metal Detecting

Hello There - Old Find

Hello everyone, glad I came across this site. There sure are alot of interesting posts. Bought a detector last year but have not had much success. Seems the ony places to go around here are school yards. Tried to get permission to hunt an old fair grounds but was shot down. Thought that would have been great. Anyway, here are a couple of pics of a real old find. As a kid I did alot of weekend detecting with dad. Used an old Whites Coinmaster, and still have it today. It lacks discrimination but it works pretty darn good. The find is always under the coin picture on the coil. Having trouble getting used to how the Bounty Hunter I picked up works with having to criss cross to narrow in on the find.

Anyway back to the old powder flask. Around thirty years ago we were camping at a place called North Lake in New Yorks' Catskill Mtns. Dad took the detector on a hike as there were places to look. North Lake was the location of a grand old mountain hotel theat burned down the 20's or 30's. While hiking we wandered off a path and came across some bits of aluminum that appeared to be from a small aircraft wreck. Dad pulled out the detector for the heck of it, but did not expect to find anything but junk from the plane. Along the base of a tree we got a good solid hit. After digging several inches small pieces of the flask started to emerge. What an exciting find. As a kid I liked to believe that it belonged to old man Rip Van Winkle. Heck, I still like to believe it.

Sorry for the quality, had to do a lot of cropping and image reduction to make it fit under the 50k limit.

Comments

  • Cool find Rhack and thanks for the story behind it.
    ...thought I'd add your picture and show it off for you:
    image
    (www.freeimagehosting.net is another picture hosting option I like to use)

    I found one earlier this year while out with one of our forum members (Demodigger).
    We had found an old lot that was being dug up and the lot was close to one of the
    Spanish mission sites out here in CA. Here's a pic of it. It's not in as nice of shape
    as yours but these are definitely fun pieces of history... just imagine these getting
    carried around, full of powder, slowly (or frantically) pouring in the powder preparing
    for a shot... very cool piece of history that we don't get to see every day.

    Thanks for posting image

    image
  • hughesm1hughesm1 Posts: 778 ✭✭
    image Rhack. Very nice looking flask, any idea what time period it dates to?
    Mark
  • phutphut Posts: 1,087
    Nice find Rhack!!
    Sounds like an interesting site.
    Welcome to the forum.
  • Riccar - Thats neat you found one also. Mine is not in that great a shape, it's actually in a few different pieces. I just sat them together so it would look like a flask. I wish I knew the time period. You can't really see in the picture but there is a hunter in the distance holding a gun. The hat he is wearing is almost like a top hat but not as tall. Based on pics I've seen of men wearing these hats I would say it's prior to 1850. However, it could be more contemporary with an "old" scene. I have not been able to find any other flasks like it. Thanks for the welcomes!
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