Recent finds & a new site.....

[Bill Ladd]

Well I have been getting some e-mails & PM's asking what has happened to me? Have I retired,,,etc??
Well, we have not had much luck here lately. Lost a couple permissions, ran into some deer hunters & stuff....Hunters control the woods where most of our best sites are.
So, I have been keeping busy doing electrolosis on all my iron relics & I think I have finally perfected it & have a great set-up going in my garage. I just finished this cool lock that came from a cellar hole....probably Civil War era & came out Killer! A perfect, museam quality restoration.
[attachment 43326 000001lock.jpg]
Speaking of cellar holes....after we ran into some more poachers trying to get to a site, we decided to ride around on some back roads & look for other sites rather than just go home. We saw some stone walls & then this square depression along a backroad......
Though the stones have been stripped out, or are no longer visable under the leaves...this was the cellar of a good sized colonial home. You can see a stepping stone on the right....stone walls in the background & lots of open woods to detect
[attachment 43327 000008RichmndHole.jpg]
Though it may not even look like much of a home to the untrained eye....this open stonelined well nearby gives it away as an early house site....
[attachment 43328 000003RichmndWell.jpg]
We GPSed the location & decied to keep moving to try to locate some other sites.
We came to a big antique shop and walked in & met a real charater of a guy who said he had some bottles & owned 315 acres of land & a house that was from the 1700's
We asked if we could go check it out & see his bottles....I also had ulterior motives. Trying to get permission to detect
He was a very cool guy.....next thing we knew we were on the back of a John Deere being given a tour....
I found a Barber quarter in his field using the F4 (I'll have to take a pic later). He has a real cool property we'll have to go back again. Hopefully he was not just a caretaker I also bought a large antique stained glass window off him for $20. which is a steal!

I also took pictures of this early silver ring which was a pervious T2 find from a few weeks ago....
This came from the same site as the 1700's 1/2 Spanish Reale. Not sure how old this ring is but looks early...
I was hoping the "bars" were 13 bars representing the 13 colonies, but no luck
[attachment 43329 000004HBring2.jpg]
Though the back shows the silver ring is broken...it's personalized. "HB" was hand scratched inside which I thought was very cool...
[attachment 43331 000004HBring.jpg]
More later hopefully.....Not retired yet
HH,
Bill

 

[Anonymous]

n/t

 

[Bavaria Mike]

enjoyed the pics and finds! That cellar hole and area would be awesome to hunt. Has to have been an outhouse around there close. Any consideration of going down that well? Not many sites like that around my parts, they are still using the dang houses after 1000 years, just slap a new coat of paint on them once in awhile, LOL. HH, Mike

 

[Bill Ladd]

about the well as we examined it closely. The picture should show there's a tree growing up the side of it, which is very unusual. This probably compromised the stonework which is already probably over 200 yrs old. Who knows how strong it all still is now? The bottom of the well appears dry, but does not look as deep as all the others we have seen. Being along a road, all kinds of junk could have been dumped down there over the years burying the Colonial goodies out of reach. In other words, we'd hate to go down there & dig through 4 feet of screwtops from the 1940's. Archies use cofferdams to brace up the walls on these & great stuff is always found....preserved shoes, bottles, etc. Ted took a risk once & went down one to pull out some goodies, but it's very dangerous. Though we could probably find someone crazy enough to go down there, I don't want to be up top witnessing a cave-in. So, as you said, a better bet would be locating a privy or trash pit above ground. The surrounding woods does look inviting for our detectors. If it is yet to be detected....hopefully it will lead to a future post.
HH,
Bill

 

[Tony (NC)]

That ring is pretty cool too. Looks pretty old to me!

 

[Anonymous]

if i lived 'round there I would put a rope 'round my waiste and go right down there with a bucket-

Jack

 

[Eddie Currents]

Great finds!

How about some info on that electrolysis set-up of yours?

EC

 

[Bill Ladd]

I have put a link below that was helpful to me.....
It would take awhile to type out the entire process. The key items I use are:
Car battery charger
Baking/washing soda
plastic/glass bucket
stainless steel (old kitchenware)
NAPA Extend (car rust proofing)
.....I use the "extend" as the final step (others use wax, laquer, etc). "Extend" is a thick, milky paint-on preserver that gives the iron that black shiny coat like the lock has. I wack all the thick rust off first, and depding on how rusty the relic is it usually is done overnight. I dry the object out in my stove first to get all the water out of the pores before I paint the extend on. I do everything in my well ventilated garage....
HH,
Bill

http://www.troycustomdetectors.com/shadowtips/electrolysis.html

 

[Bill Ladd]

There could be some serious bottles in there.....but no relic is worth dying for

 

[Jackpine Savage]

Congrats on the finds and getting the new site Bill. Good to see you posting.

Tom