teotwawki12
Elite Member
Well, it was forecast to be in the 60's today and Mike and I made plans to hit an old one-room school house site on which the owner is going to build a house later in the spring. Turns out to be about two inches of mud on top of ice... My first hole, which I had to scrape and chop, turned out to be a '43 quarter. A 1926 wheat penny and a few odds and ends later, and I whacked the largest organ reed I've ever dug. There are lots of good targets there and I decided to leave until it thaws a bit more (don't want to destroy anything else chopping at the ground). I DID find a big heavy hunk of iron that I found interesting.
Driving home, decided to try one of my favorite field spots. The ground was better there; not quite as frozen with the looser soil. Found two copper thimbles, a button with a locomotive, a suspender clip, a little drawer pull, and a few old shotgun headstamps. While I was digging a hole, a guy stopped and trudged through the mud toward me. Thinking that maybe the farmer sold the land in the fall and didn't tell me, I figured the guy was going to yell at me to get the **** off of his property. Nope, just a guy who lives down the road who is also a detectorist and saw me out there. We talked for a while about some spots, exchanged numbers, and I walked back to the road to head out. Showed him the stuff that I found at the prior school site. He looked at the floor of my car and asked what the big thing was. I picked it up, and he looked at it and suggested it looked like the dinger from an old (big) bell...
When I got home, I did some googling, and I think he's right!! I found the clapper from the old school bell! I find that very cool, even if it IS just a big hunk of rusty iron.... I included a photo I found on the web of an old church bell clapper that looks just like it to me. Whatcha think?
Oh.....don't google "clapper bell".... just don't.
Driving home, decided to try one of my favorite field spots. The ground was better there; not quite as frozen with the looser soil. Found two copper thimbles, a button with a locomotive, a suspender clip, a little drawer pull, and a few old shotgun headstamps. While I was digging a hole, a guy stopped and trudged through the mud toward me. Thinking that maybe the farmer sold the land in the fall and didn't tell me, I figured the guy was going to yell at me to get the **** off of his property. Nope, just a guy who lives down the road who is also a detectorist and saw me out there. We talked for a while about some spots, exchanged numbers, and I walked back to the road to head out. Showed him the stuff that I found at the prior school site. He looked at the floor of my car and asked what the big thing was. I picked it up, and he looked at it and suggested it looked like the dinger from an old (big) bell...
When I got home, I did some googling, and I think he's right!! I found the clapper from the old school bell! I find that very cool, even if it IS just a big hunk of rusty iron.... I included a photo I found on the web of an old church bell clapper that looks just like it to me. Whatcha think?
Oh.....don't google "clapper bell".... just don't.
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