ToySoldier
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I dug this 1800s rim lock at about 10 inches in my backyard a month or so ago. It was unrecognizable out of the ground but after hosing it off I thought it was a mortise lock. A rim lock is fastened to one side of the door rather than inside a mortise in the door.
The first photo below is after the initial vinegar soak of a few days. It was an improvement over the block of rust that came out of the ground, but I still couldn't make out any markings. I have a 5 gallon bucket electrolysis tank I put together to clean up some horseshoes, so I gave it a go on the lock. (No car battery charger needed. Even for something this large a 1 amp DC wall wart adapter from some old gadget did the trick after a few days!). The electrolysis removed the rust and I was able to make out the BLW marking. I then soaked again in vinegar just for a few hours to loosen the black residue the electrolysis leaves behind.
There's an 1830s home 200 feet away and I've found a bunch of square nails that predate my house and an old sliding lock in the same area at the same depth. (The sliding lock is currently in the electrolysis tank.) My best guess is that there was a workshop or storage building for the main house in my backyard. I've found other unidentified iron pieces, and plenty of iron signals.
The Branford Lock Works was a major part of the Branford Connecticut economy in the mid to late 1800s, but was gone by the 1900s. Some of the buildings still exist today repurposed for other uses. I found the company's 1880 catalog on the Smithsonian Libraries website and included a page with a similar lock.
https://library.si.edu/digital-library/author/branford-lock-works
The first photo below is after the initial vinegar soak of a few days. It was an improvement over the block of rust that came out of the ground, but I still couldn't make out any markings. I have a 5 gallon bucket electrolysis tank I put together to clean up some horseshoes, so I gave it a go on the lock. (No car battery charger needed. Even for something this large a 1 amp DC wall wart adapter from some old gadget did the trick after a few days!). The electrolysis removed the rust and I was able to make out the BLW marking. I then soaked again in vinegar just for a few hours to loosen the black residue the electrolysis leaves behind.
There's an 1830s home 200 feet away and I've found a bunch of square nails that predate my house and an old sliding lock in the same area at the same depth. (The sliding lock is currently in the electrolysis tank.) My best guess is that there was a workshop or storage building for the main house in my backyard. I've found other unidentified iron pieces, and plenty of iron signals.
The Branford Lock Works was a major part of the Branford Connecticut economy in the mid to late 1800s, but was gone by the 1900s. Some of the buildings still exist today repurposed for other uses. I found the company's 1880 catalog on the Smithsonian Libraries website and included a page with a similar lock.
https://library.si.edu/digital-library/author/branford-lock-works
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