Clock key saves the hunt

AirmetTango

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I got permission on another 1890s home in town awhile back and finally got the opportunity to go hunt today. It didn't take long before I was pulling a bunch of clad up, mostly on the surface or within the top inch. An hour and a half later, I still had nothing in my pouch except clad and modern trash - mostly bits of aluminum probably from a gutter installation, miscellaneous hardware, and a couple pull tabs. Even though I had only swept maybe a quarter of the yard, I was seriously considering moving on to someplace else when I got a promising signal from deeper than the clad was showing - and turned out to be the unspent .22 round. It has a "U" on the headstamp, which is too ubiquitous to try and date - could be old, could be fairly recent. Either way, that was enough to rope me into continuing a little longer, and the next signal turned out to be the cool, old clock key, which ended up being the hunt saver! After another hour on site, I didn't get anything interesting other than the beefy, 3/8" thick gear. Rang up like a quarter and indicated 4" down - ended up finding it at about 6". I was out of time after digging the gear, so I packed up and left. I still have maybe 1/3 of the yard I could hunt, but not sure it'll be worth going back considering the minimal older finds.

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I would want to clean that 22 shell up and see if it'd fire.

Go back for the other 1/3, there should be some older stuff there. Although sometimes the old timers didn't lose too much. A lot of times the older houses get run down and then the owners rent them out and that's probably where the clad came from. But still, you got the clock key, 175 in quarters, sounds like a good day.

Try out the shell.
 
Excellent finds! Keep it up!

That is a dandy clock key! Royal Congrats from KT! :D

Yeah that'd save a hunt for sure, congrats!

Nice little winder, that's cool!

That's a cool key, congrats! :)


I would want to clean that 22 shell up and see if it'd fire.

Go back for the other 1/3, there should be some older stuff there. Although sometimes the old timers didn't lose too much. A lot of times the older houses get run down and then the owners rent them out and that's probably where the clad came from. But still, you got the clock key, 175 in quarters, sounds like a good day.

Try out the shell.

Thanks guys! I did end up going back and hunting the rest of the property, and I managed to pull up some interesting stuff (I meant to post it here in this post, but tapatalk had other plans - see the next post instead :lol:)

pplinker - yeah, that's definitely a problem with a lot of the older homes in my town. It's a university town, so a lot of the old homes have been or currently are rentals to college students, so you can just image the quantity of pull tabs and bottle caps I have to wade through at some sites (and that's just at the surface! :laughing:) I was lucky with this one, they apparently dropped their beer run change before it could get turned into pull tabs :lol:

The 22 shell would be an iffy fire - it doesn't show in the original pic, but the shell definitely has a distinct banana shape to it! I'll keep it though - kind of a cool relic.

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So here are the pics from the second trip to the property - still no silver for me, but I ended up with some nice finds. In fact, what I think was the most interesting find was only apparent a week later after cleaning!

The last third of the property that was left to hunt was part of the backyard, and I actually went back they day after my initial hunt. I managed to coax 5 wheats out that area, most of which where at least partially masked by trash, so it was no easy task harvesting the wheat! The only exception ironically was the oldest one - the 1915 wheat was embedded on the surface - kinda crazy!

Anyway, I got some miscellaneous other finds, including the broken spoon, the acorn shape knurled knob of a lamp or light fixture, and the lid with ceramic/glass insert, even a BB or ball bearing. The odd triangle shaped pieces are a mystery - no idea what they could be, but they were just as hard as that ball bearing to sift out of the dirt after pin-pointing!!

The spoon actually turned out to be my favorite find on this hunt - but I didn't know it until yesterday. I didn't really know what to do with it - it is a broken spoon, after all - and I pretty much had my mind made up to just toss it in the recycling with the rest of the scrap. I was setting up my tumbler yesterday to clean the paint off of the lamp knob along with some clad and other stuff, so on a whim I decided to through the spoon pieces in, too. The knob came out looking great, once all the thick, lead based paint was knocked off of it. The spoon cleaned up great too - and to my surprise, I noticed some faint engraving on the handle! The name "Daisy" in cursive can easily be made out across the top with the light angled right. Also along the handle, you can see faint initials in more elaborate script - the best I can make out is maybe "MEC" - with a basic decorative flower stem or something over top. The engraving isn't anything fancy, and was clearly done by whoever owned the spoon by hand, but to me that makes it even cooler - suddenly this spoon is unique and has a story to tell, and how did it end up broken in this backyard??

I was instantly enamored with this broken spoon! And I now have a minor obsession with trying to find out who Daisy might be :grin: The 1886 county map shows the land was owned by a family with the last name Culver, which would match the C - but that's as far as I've gotten so far. It's a long shot, I know, but I'll update if I happen to find out anything more. When I get a chance, I'll also post better close up pics that show the engraving a bit better. :cool:


Full hunt, day 2:

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Wheat close ups:

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After the tumbler (shiny modern spoon for scale):

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Engraving close up:

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Hopefully these show a little more detail - if anyone has a better guess on the initials, let me know. It's kind of tough to tell for sure with the script:
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Neat find.
Perhaps it is M & C and the set was a wedding present.
Then the couple gave one to each child with their name on it as they were born??
 
Neat find.
Perhaps it is M & C and the set was a wedding present.
Then the couple gave one to each child with their name on it as they were born??

Thanks, matmit...good thoughts! It's hard to say for sure whether that middle letter is an "E" or an "&" symbol with the "fancy" script they used. For that matter, I'm not entirely sure that the first letter is an "M"...could also be an "N"! Yeah, I feel pretty confident that "Daisy" is probably one of their children, too. I'll have to ask some old-timers whether this was a common tradition back in the day.
 
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