DIGS O' THE DAY (2006-01-10): THE CURIOUS, CRUSTY CONCRETION
lordmarcovan
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DIGS O' THE DAY (2006-01-10): THE CURIOUS, CRUSTY CONCRETION
It was meant to be a "Dig Day". I decided to return to some of my old detecting haunts- the squares of Old Town Brunswick, Georgia. Five days earlier, on Thursday, January 5, I had taken my Troy Shadow X2 with its 10.5" searchcoil to Halifax Square, in an attempt to dig up some deep goodies that had eluded me over the decades. (The first time I can remember "putting the coil to the soil" in Halifax was in 1982 or so, with an old TR detector). The previous Thursday's hunt proved successful, when I dug a deep, "iffy" signal and found an 1881 Indian cent.
I got out a little before noon on Tuesday, and it was another gorgeous day with blue skies and a temperature around 70 degrees. I started the day out at one of my past hotspots, in King's Square. There was one area in the southeastern quadrant of the park that had produced quite a few coins and goodies for me ten years before: Indian cents, Liberty nickels, Barber dimes, an interesting lucky token, and a Queen Victoria Canadian large cent.
I figured if a machine with a bigger coil helped me in Halifax Square with that deep 1881 cent, it might help me in King's Square today. King's Square is much trashier than Halifax, though, so that was a concern, particularly as the Shadow has no target ID meter like I was accustomed to using while coinshooting in parks.
I soon was getting signals but ignored most of the louder ones. As with the previous outing, I was mostly interested in chasing down the deeper, older coins that I might have overlooked on past hunts, and these louder signals in my old hard-hunted hotspot probably represented objects that had been dropped there after I first hunted it in the mid-1990s.
Soon I had a signal that was a little quieter. It was a little "iffy", in that there was some crackling in the audio, but it was clear that something was down there and that it had a little depth to it. I cut a plug and dug down eight inches or so, then stirred my Tinytec probe in the loose dirt at the bottom of the hole. It gave a signal. Soon the source of the signal was apparent- a rusty nail. Because I was using light discrimination with the detector and the Tinytec does not have discrimination, I knew the nail was probably not my target. I rechecked the hole, and sure enough, I got a good signal- better than before.
Apparently it had been the nail that caused the crackling in the audio earlier. This is probably why I had not pursued this target in the mid-1990s (though I'm sure I went over it)- I was using a Garrett GTA-500 back then and watching the meter, no doubt. An ID meter is a nice tool to have when you're coinshooting, but it can make you lazy if you rely on it too much.
I dug some more and my heart skipped a beat when I saw the flash of a large, round silver object at the bottom of the hole. Silver dollar sized! It proved to be an old pocket watch. I turned it over, hoping to find that it was a complete watch (I'd dug many partial pocket watches before, but never a whole one). Alas, the face of the watch was gone, but it was still a pretty interesting find. And if I had missed something that big in my hotspot, well- there's no telling what else might be there!
After digging the watch, I hunted for perhaps a half an hour more in King's Square, and dug mostly junk- the middle of that quadrant of the park is full of some sort of old coal slag that actually gives a low grade signal if you're not using any discrimination. This challenge has probably hidden a few good targets from me. It's easy enough to discriminate out the slag, but my probe still sounds off on it.
I found myself thirsty and took a short break, then drove a few blocks, back to Halifax Square, where I'd hunted the previous Thursday.
Back in Halifax Square, I returned to the spot where I'd dug the 1881 Indian cent five days earlier: the northern half of the square, which I've affectionately nicknamed "Indian Head Alley", for obvious reasons- it's produced several. Soon I was finding the usual tiny targets like .22 shells and slugs, and small bits of buckshot. There were few signals worth chasing, but this site's like that- most of the clear signals were dug up long ago, and you really have to go slow and listen carefully.
Though "Indian Head Alley" has been good to me, I soon tired of it on this particular day- I'd been hitting it a lot lately. Instead, I decided to exploit an open, sandy area in the southern half of the square. It too is surprisingly free of clear signals, so the goodies must be deep. This open area had not yet yielded anything noteworthy to me. After digging to China for several phantom targets, I got a faint but mostly clear signal out in the middle of this area.
Digging down about a foot, I had a hard time pinpointing the target. Finally I noticed it had come up, and it proved to be a lovely little cuff-sized, two-piece eagle button. The eagle was a little different from the one on the Civil War eagle buttons I had found previously, but it looked to be from about that same period (after all, it had been a foot deep). It had a "HORSTMANN BROS. & CO. / PHILA. -" backmark, which dates it between 1859 and 1863, according to Albert's button book. This certainly places it in the Civil War period! I wonder how it got there. There were Federal troops occupying the barrier islands here as early as 1862, but I hadn't heard of their being here on the mainland in Brunswick, though I'd read about a Federal gunboat shelling the town.
So far it was a productive day for relics, and deep ones, at that- very encouraging!
The remaining targets for the afternoon at Halifax proved to be the usual lead shot, bullets, and cartridge casings, though I did find one interesting doodad that looked like it might be the tail of a brass numeral like a 2 or a 5, and some shallower modern change: a clad quarter and dime, plus a Memorial cent. I normally will not use a shovel in a city park, but since I was chasing deep targets in a sandy, grassless area, and I have a park permit, I decided to risk it, and got my little contractor's shovel out of the van. It made digging and root breaking far easier than with my hori-hori knife. I soon found I could cut plugs with the shovel, albeit slightly larger ones. Not only did the shovel make it easier and faster to dig deep, but I found that my big plugs were even tidier than the small ones I usually cut with the hori-hori knife.
I tired of phantom signals again, though, and decided to go back to King's Square, where I'd begun the day.
Back in King's Square, and barely two feet from where I'd dug the pocket watch that morning, I got a similar signal: loud enough to be sure there was something there, yet faint enough to be sure it had a little depth to it. It was also a little crackly on the audio, but I knew how much slag and old nails were there in the ground to potentially affect my signals.
I cut a plug with the shovel, and out popped a weathered piece of brick. About eight inches down, I got a probe signal, but it proved to be a piece of slag. Though the probe sounded off on the slag, I knew that was not what had caused the detector signal. Soon I had another probe hit, and brought up an odd, round object. It looked like a small stone, but we don't have many stones in our sandy soil. I thought it might be a "hot rock" that gave off a metallic signal like the slag, but it was a much hotter signal than the slag, and far too round. Man made?
Rubbing it on my gritty jeans, I was able to see that it was a round artifact of some kind, but one which had been encased in a rocklike concretion. This is rather unusual for our area, but I had dug a concreted 1887 Indian cent only a few feet away from this spot, a decade earlier, so I guess it's just a freak soil condition in that part of King's Square.
The round object was kind of fat, and looked like it might be a button. Maybe a nice EARLY button- perhaps earlier than the Civil War button I'd just dug! Very intriguing! I put it in my pocket and decided to call it a day, without finding the old silver I'd hoped for. (Well, there was that watch, but I wanted an old silver COIN- it had been a long time since I'd found one.) Still, I couldn't complain. I'd found some interesting things, and I'd had a good time.
All the while as I drove home, I wondered what was inside that concretion. When I got it home, I put it on the concrete slab outside and gently tapped it with a hammer, to crack off the rocky outer crust of it.
Soon I saw the greenish edge of what looked like a copper or bronze coin! It had to be an OLD coin, since I'd dug it from eight inches down, and the concretion was thick! (Thicker than on the 1887 Indian cent I'd dug near that spot in the 1990s.) So my excitement rose, and my mind started to wander. The coin had a plain edge and was bigger in diameter than a small cent, yet too small to be a large cent or colonial copper. It could have been another Canadian large cent like the one I'd found previously, but my mind immediately raced to two types of United States coins- neither of which I had found yet: a half cent or a two cent piece! Of course, there was a chance it could be a washer, too.
But no! it was a coin, for sure!
Tapping a bit more at the rocky crust on it, and breaking big flakes of that off, I noticed denticles around the coin's edge. It didn't look like a half cent. It was looking more like that elusive two cent piece- maybe.
Or perhaps a nickel, but surely it couldn't be that, with the greenish color?
Then I saw the first letter- a "V".
A big "V". In the middle of the coin.
What?!? A Liberty nickel? A GREEN Liberty nickel? Oh, well.
It proved to be an 1889, a date I had already dug before, so I didn't even get to add a new date to my album. I'm still pleased to have found it, though, and finding it in its own little shell, like an Easter egg, was mysterious and fun.
As I finish typing this, it is spinning in my new rock tumbler. I'm not sure how it will come out. Last I checked, it was still green and a little crusty, but at least the date is clear. Judging from the denticles around the rim, and the few other visible details, it was probably in a fairly decent grade when it was lost, perhaps before the turn of the last century.
All in all, I considered it a successful outing, and a fine day in the field.
~RWS
INDEX OF DIG STORIES
It was meant to be a "Dig Day". I decided to return to some of my old detecting haunts- the squares of Old Town Brunswick, Georgia. Five days earlier, on Thursday, January 5, I had taken my Troy Shadow X2 with its 10.5" searchcoil to Halifax Square, in an attempt to dig up some deep goodies that had eluded me over the decades. (The first time I can remember "putting the coil to the soil" in Halifax was in 1982 or so, with an old TR detector). The previous Thursday's hunt proved successful, when I dug a deep, "iffy" signal and found an 1881 Indian cent.
I got out a little before noon on Tuesday, and it was another gorgeous day with blue skies and a temperature around 70 degrees. I started the day out at one of my past hotspots, in King's Square. There was one area in the southeastern quadrant of the park that had produced quite a few coins and goodies for me ten years before: Indian cents, Liberty nickels, Barber dimes, an interesting lucky token, and a Queen Victoria Canadian large cent.
I figured if a machine with a bigger coil helped me in Halifax Square with that deep 1881 cent, it might help me in King's Square today. King's Square is much trashier than Halifax, though, so that was a concern, particularly as the Shadow has no target ID meter like I was accustomed to using while coinshooting in parks.
I soon was getting signals but ignored most of the louder ones. As with the previous outing, I was mostly interested in chasing down the deeper, older coins that I might have overlooked on past hunts, and these louder signals in my old hard-hunted hotspot probably represented objects that had been dropped there after I first hunted it in the mid-1990s.
Soon I had a signal that was a little quieter. It was a little "iffy", in that there was some crackling in the audio, but it was clear that something was down there and that it had a little depth to it. I cut a plug and dug down eight inches or so, then stirred my Tinytec probe in the loose dirt at the bottom of the hole. It gave a signal. Soon the source of the signal was apparent- a rusty nail. Because I was using light discrimination with the detector and the Tinytec does not have discrimination, I knew the nail was probably not my target. I rechecked the hole, and sure enough, I got a good signal- better than before.
Apparently it had been the nail that caused the crackling in the audio earlier. This is probably why I had not pursued this target in the mid-1990s (though I'm sure I went over it)- I was using a Garrett GTA-500 back then and watching the meter, no doubt. An ID meter is a nice tool to have when you're coinshooting, but it can make you lazy if you rely on it too much.
I dug some more and my heart skipped a beat when I saw the flash of a large, round silver object at the bottom of the hole. Silver dollar sized! It proved to be an old pocket watch. I turned it over, hoping to find that it was a complete watch (I'd dug many partial pocket watches before, but never a whole one). Alas, the face of the watch was gone, but it was still a pretty interesting find. And if I had missed something that big in my hotspot, well- there's no telling what else might be there!
After digging the watch, I hunted for perhaps a half an hour more in King's Square, and dug mostly junk- the middle of that quadrant of the park is full of some sort of old coal slag that actually gives a low grade signal if you're not using any discrimination. This challenge has probably hidden a few good targets from me. It's easy enough to discriminate out the slag, but my probe still sounds off on it.
I found myself thirsty and took a short break, then drove a few blocks, back to Halifax Square, where I'd hunted the previous Thursday.
Back in Halifax Square, I returned to the spot where I'd dug the 1881 Indian cent five days earlier: the northern half of the square, which I've affectionately nicknamed "Indian Head Alley", for obvious reasons- it's produced several. Soon I was finding the usual tiny targets like .22 shells and slugs, and small bits of buckshot. There were few signals worth chasing, but this site's like that- most of the clear signals were dug up long ago, and you really have to go slow and listen carefully.
Though "Indian Head Alley" has been good to me, I soon tired of it on this particular day- I'd been hitting it a lot lately. Instead, I decided to exploit an open, sandy area in the southern half of the square. It too is surprisingly free of clear signals, so the goodies must be deep. This open area had not yet yielded anything noteworthy to me. After digging to China for several phantom targets, I got a faint but mostly clear signal out in the middle of this area.
Digging down about a foot, I had a hard time pinpointing the target. Finally I noticed it had come up, and it proved to be a lovely little cuff-sized, two-piece eagle button. The eagle was a little different from the one on the Civil War eagle buttons I had found previously, but it looked to be from about that same period (after all, it had been a foot deep). It had a "HORSTMANN BROS. & CO. / PHILA. -" backmark, which dates it between 1859 and 1863, according to Albert's button book. This certainly places it in the Civil War period! I wonder how it got there. There were Federal troops occupying the barrier islands here as early as 1862, but I hadn't heard of their being here on the mainland in Brunswick, though I'd read about a Federal gunboat shelling the town.
So far it was a productive day for relics, and deep ones, at that- very encouraging!
The remaining targets for the afternoon at Halifax proved to be the usual lead shot, bullets, and cartridge casings, though I did find one interesting doodad that looked like it might be the tail of a brass numeral like a 2 or a 5, and some shallower modern change: a clad quarter and dime, plus a Memorial cent. I normally will not use a shovel in a city park, but since I was chasing deep targets in a sandy, grassless area, and I have a park permit, I decided to risk it, and got my little contractor's shovel out of the van. It made digging and root breaking far easier than with my hori-hori knife. I soon found I could cut plugs with the shovel, albeit slightly larger ones. Not only did the shovel make it easier and faster to dig deep, but I found that my big plugs were even tidier than the small ones I usually cut with the hori-hori knife.
I tired of phantom signals again, though, and decided to go back to King's Square, where I'd begun the day.
Back in King's Square, and barely two feet from where I'd dug the pocket watch that morning, I got a similar signal: loud enough to be sure there was something there, yet faint enough to be sure it had a little depth to it. It was also a little crackly on the audio, but I knew how much slag and old nails were there in the ground to potentially affect my signals.
I cut a plug with the shovel, and out popped a weathered piece of brick. About eight inches down, I got a probe signal, but it proved to be a piece of slag. Though the probe sounded off on the slag, I knew that was not what had caused the detector signal. Soon I had another probe hit, and brought up an odd, round object. It looked like a small stone, but we don't have many stones in our sandy soil. I thought it might be a "hot rock" that gave off a metallic signal like the slag, but it was a much hotter signal than the slag, and far too round. Man made?
Rubbing it on my gritty jeans, I was able to see that it was a round artifact of some kind, but one which had been encased in a rocklike concretion. This is rather unusual for our area, but I had dug a concreted 1887 Indian cent only a few feet away from this spot, a decade earlier, so I guess it's just a freak soil condition in that part of King's Square.
The round object was kind of fat, and looked like it might be a button. Maybe a nice EARLY button- perhaps earlier than the Civil War button I'd just dug! Very intriguing! I put it in my pocket and decided to call it a day, without finding the old silver I'd hoped for. (Well, there was that watch, but I wanted an old silver COIN- it had been a long time since I'd found one.) Still, I couldn't complain. I'd found some interesting things, and I'd had a good time.
All the while as I drove home, I wondered what was inside that concretion. When I got it home, I put it on the concrete slab outside and gently tapped it with a hammer, to crack off the rocky outer crust of it.
Soon I saw the greenish edge of what looked like a copper or bronze coin! It had to be an OLD coin, since I'd dug it from eight inches down, and the concretion was thick! (Thicker than on the 1887 Indian cent I'd dug near that spot in the 1990s.) So my excitement rose, and my mind started to wander. The coin had a plain edge and was bigger in diameter than a small cent, yet too small to be a large cent or colonial copper. It could have been another Canadian large cent like the one I'd found previously, but my mind immediately raced to two types of United States coins- neither of which I had found yet: a half cent or a two cent piece! Of course, there was a chance it could be a washer, too.
But no! it was a coin, for sure!
Tapping a bit more at the rocky crust on it, and breaking big flakes of that off, I noticed denticles around the coin's edge. It didn't look like a half cent. It was looking more like that elusive two cent piece- maybe.
Or perhaps a nickel, but surely it couldn't be that, with the greenish color?
Then I saw the first letter- a "V".
A big "V". In the middle of the coin.
What?!? A Liberty nickel? A GREEN Liberty nickel? Oh, well.
It proved to be an 1889, a date I had already dug before, so I didn't even get to add a new date to my album. I'm still pleased to have found it, though, and finding it in its own little shell, like an Easter egg, was mysterious and fun.
As I finish typing this, it is spinning in my new rock tumbler. I'm not sure how it will come out. Last I checked, it was still green and a little crusty, but at least the date is clear. Judging from the denticles around the rim, and the few other visible details, it was probably in a fairly decent grade when it was lost, perhaps before the turn of the last century.
All in all, I considered it a successful outing, and a fine day in the field.
~RWS
INDEX OF DIG STORIES
0
Comments
By the way, are you tumbling using Millenium's "shells" method?
(just curious what type of shells you guys are using)
I still wanna try sawdust.
I think that big coil is gonna turn your luck around this year. Provided you get out and use the darn thing!
The eagle button is sweet and makes me very envious!
I have a "Eagle I" shirt button with the same maker's mark on back,that I found either last summer or the summer before.
Maybe next time you will get that 2 cent from your spot.HH,Tom
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Minelab Sovereign GT with 180 meter and Sunray probe.