Metal Detecting a 100 Year Old Australian Stone House
Beautiful Turn of the Century Australian Stone House
A few days ago I got permission off a local farmer and his wife to go metal detecting at an old stonehouse on their property, no doubt one of the most beautiful stone houses in the district.
I took a beautiful photo of this house a few months ago, and knew that I’d have to return one day to do some metal detecting for old coins and relics.
So finally I had a day off and eagerly drove out to the house with my E-Trac Metal Detector, Garrett Pro Pin Pointer, my trusty shovel and my sifter and plenty of water, as it was a bloody hot day!
One of my most favourite things to find while metal detecting is old dog licence tags, usually made out of brass.
I have found around 20 of these Dog Licence tags so far, since I started metal detecting, and I hoped to find one today.
These Dog Licence Tags are issued to dog owners, so that if the Dog is found it can be returned to the owner, even today the same thing happens, except the dog licence tags these days are made out of a crappy plastic, not like the good old days when things were made to last.
Well My luck was running high, and just near a old stone shearing shed, I found one with my detector, one of the best ones I have found so far.
1930 - 1931 Dumbleyung Road Board Dog Licence Tag
If you click on the image to the right, you’ll see a bigger and better photo.
This is the first of these tags I have found with a clover leaf design, usually most of the tags I find are in a triangular shape.
I also found a another dog tag just the other day, this one was also really nice, another unique design, and this tag originating from Wagin, some 40km away from Dumbleyung.
I spent around 4 hours at the old house, it was a really good day, nice and peaceful, just how I like it.
I found some really nice coins, and found my first English Farthing, dated 1926.
I also found some pennys, a couple of six pence coins, some nice buckles and other interesting things.
As well as that, I also found a really nice old bottle dump, basically a big pile of dirt, but plenty of signs of really old Marble Bottles, Codds, and other rare bottles… I just wish I had a bobcat or a dingo, if I had one of those, I could get underneath the soil to get the good bottles.
I am actually thinking about hiring one from a local bloke for the day, $250 a day he charges.
Feel free to watch the YouTube Video I made of the day below.
1941 East Africa Shilling Found
1941 East Africa Shilling
I had another great detecting day today! I usually try and plan my day ahead so I can get a few hours in detecting to relieve my metal detecting addiction, so I get all my jobs done around the house and by around 2pm I am ready to head off detecting.
I am not working at the moment, I am having a planned long holiday, I have not worked for over a year, since leaving the Navy and it has been pretty good. I am doing all the things I have wanted to do for a long time and I am really enjoying my freedom at the moment. Thats why I am posting on this blog everyday about the stuff I am finding, because some of you must wonder how I find the time to go out detecting every day.
So today I went for a long drive on the isolated gravel roads around my district in search for good detecting places, hoping to find old abandoned homesteads, did not come across any, so on the way home I ended going to a couple of places that I had known about previously and thought I’d give the detector a few hundred swings!
The first place is one of my favourite old houses in the district, a beautiful old house, probably around a hundred or so years old. I really love this place, the house is beautiful with so much potential to renovate, I just love the long open verandah and I really love the beautiful Australiana style tin roof.
Today's Metal Detecting Spot 1 - Beautiful Old Australian Homestead
I found a couple of interest things worth keeping at this place as follows:
- 1955 Australian Penny
- 1948 Australian Penny
- Australian 1 cent coin
- Refill Only Mobile Oil Badge off a fuel tin with the Mobile Red Horse.
- Warranted Superior Saw Button
- Silver Teaspoon
- and the usual shotgun cartridges and bullet shells
Warranted Superior Saw Button
Warranted Superior medallions are found on secondary lines manufactured by Disston and other major saw makers with other brand names on the etch. Some smaller 19th century saw makers may have bought sawnuts and medallions from the bigger factories.
After 1900 or so the “small guys” were actually secondary lines of the “big guys.” The small companies were bought up by bigger ones and some of their products were continued for a time. Harvey Peace is one example. Most American saws from the 20th century, regardless of brand name, were made in the works of Disston, Atkins, Bishop, or Simonds.
In the case of Disston, their replacement medallions were stamped Warranted Superior rather than “Disston.” I would speculate their rationale was they didn’t want their name on lesser-quality saws. Brand identity and loyalty in the U.S. was much stronger in the first half of the 20th century than it is today. Source: http://www.disstonianinstitute.com/medallionpage.html
The next old place I went to is where I found quite a few old Australian coins, including an usual but thrilling find of a East African Silver 1 Shilling coin using my Minelab E-Trac Metal Detector.
I have had this minelab detector for around 8 months now and I am finally getting the hang of it, pre programing it for certain coins and learning how to discriminate properly. I learnt a few good e-trac metal detector tips tonight via watching youtube.com videos, so youtube.com is a great resource for learning how to use your metal detector.
The second old place is basically just old ruins of an old homestead, very old and a beautiful spot on top of a hill with views to die for
Today's Metal Detecting Spot 2 - Old Australian Homestead Ruins
Anyhow, here is what I found at the second old house:
- 1943 Australian Penny
- 1953 Australian Penny
- 1910 Silver Australian three pence
- 1941 Silver East Africa Shilling
- and the usual shotgun cartridges and bullet shells
Mobil Flying Red Horse Oil Tin Badge
1941 East Africa Shilling - Reverse Side
Another great days metal detecting
Cleaning Silver Coins and Silver Ring – Before and After Photos
.925 Stamped Sterling Silver Ring - Before and After Cleaning
If your a reader of this blog, the other day I wrote a post on finding some Coins and a Silver Ring in a Western Australian Lake (Lake Dumbleyung) which has extreme salinty, so salty that it is more saltier than the Dead Sea.
The coins were totally encrusted with mud, salt, tiny stones, shells and grit, so much so that it was basically like concrete. The Silver Ring was not so bad, but was badly tarnished, basically it was totally black from being in the salty water and black mud for many years.
So I put myself to task to attempt to clean the coins and the ring.
I knew that if the coins were also silver then they would be basically still okay, but if the coins were copper Australian Pennys then they would be basically beyond repair.
I tried a few cleaning techniques, the first cleaning method I used was soaking the coins in Distilled water for a couple of days, but I lost my patience with that as I knew it would just take too long, so then I used the good old Electrolysis Coin Cleaning method and that worked a treat.
When I originally found the coins in the Lake, I didn’t have a clue about what type of coins they were. All up there was around 10 coins I found.
The electrolysis helped me identify what the coins were as follows:
1 x $2 coin
1 x $1 coin
1 x 20 cent coin
3 x Australian Copper Pennys
3 x Silver Shillings and
1 x Silver Sixpence
As predicted apart from the Silver Coins, the other non silver coins were basically ruined from corrosion. The Australian pennys were basically paper thin, eaten away by corrosion and other chemical reactions and only one of the pennys was just barely identifiable as you can see in the photo below … the Queens head!
But amazingly the Silver Shillings and the Silver Sixpence came out in excellent condition, and what strikes me as being so amazing is that the four silver coins I found, had been buried in the black salty mud for at least 50 YEARS! Yes there was some mild deterioration of the silver, but nothing like the other coins.
Once I could make out the dates of the coins, I went to a good Australian Coin Values website to see if I had hit the lucky jackpot and found myself a coin of value, but unfortunately there only worth a few bucks at most.
After I finished with the Electrolysis cleaning, I cleaned up the Silver Coins with some Goddards Silver Cleaning Cream and a soft cloth , and they came out pretty good, as did the Silver Ring I found also which is stamped .925, which means it is Sterling Silver 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% other metals, usually copper.
Here are the before and after pics. Click on the photos to get a better view.
Australian Silver Shillings - Cleaning Before and After
Australian Silver Sixpence - Before and After Cleaning
Australian Copper Pennys - Before and After Cleaning
Coins & Silver Ring Found in Salt Laden Mud
I went back out to the local Lake yesterday with the aim of possibly finding another Ring or two. This time I carried out a proper Metal Detecting grid search of a small area where there was likely a lot of human activity when the Lake had water in it, water skiing, swimming, sunbathing etc
The area I searched was not the same area where I did a quick 15 minute search and found the Lost Gold Wedding Ring five days ago, so I decided I would try my luck in a different area, and come back to the “Gold Ring Area” another time.
I came a bit more prepared this time, I brought with me some insect repellent, to stave off the annoying flys that bite, it only helped a little, and these flys are the worse I have encounted, they would even bite through my BeautUtes.com Chesty Bonds Singlet, they must have mosquito like fangs! I ended up rubbing insect repellent all over my singlet and decided next time I will come even more prepared … with a long sleeve shirt!
Anyhow I knew I would find myself some coins, obviously lost out of swimmers pockets, I also knew that the coins I would find would be severely covered in corrosion from the salty environment the coins had been laying in for anywhere up from 5 years to up to 50 years or more.
So I ended up finding around 10 coins, and I have not got a clue what the coins exactly are, such as Pre-Decimal Australian Coins (Pennys, Shillings, Six Pence ) (Prior 1965) or Post-Decimal Australian Coins (5, 10, 20, 50 Cent Coins) (Post 1966) because as you can see in the photos below the coins a surrounded by a shell of corrosion, and no doubt are damaged beyond repair.
I was also happy when I found a nice Silver Ring, possibly another Lost male or female wedding ring, not really that sure, but nethertheless another nice ring to add to my collection of Western Australian lost and found rings to write about on this Metal Detecting Blog!
So after finding this stuff with my metal detector I have decided to do some experimental “Coin Cleaning, and I found this great coin cleaning link and I currently have the coins soaking in Distilled Water as per instructions below:
Distilled Water Coin Cleaning
Technique:
One of the gentlest methods of cleaning coins is using distilled water (DW) soaks. This requires that you soak the coin for 24 hours remove the coin and gently scrub the coin with a soft toothbrush. Change the water and then repeat until the coin is clean.Theory:
Distilled water contains almost no dissolved minerals. When you put a coin in DW the minerals on the coin transfer to the water until the DW is saturated with minerals.
Good Candidates
See other Coin Cleaning Methods
It will be interesting to see what the results are, I will keep you all updated on this.
As I say, it is highly likely that none of the coins will be unidentifiable due to the corrosion.
The 5, 10, 20 and 50 cent coins are made of cupro-nickel (75 per cent copper and 25 per cent nickel). The one and two dollar coins are made of aluminium bronze (92 per cent copper, 6 per cent aluminium and 2 per cent nickel). These coins will corrode slowly in a salt laden environment such as the lake I found them in or in the Ocean.
The Australian Pre-Decimal Penny and Half-Penny is made out of copper and will corrode very quickly in salty enviroments.
The Australian Six Pence, Three Pence, and Shilling are made out of pure silver.
A commonly asked question: Does Silver rust?
Silver will react to salty soil and water and can suffer from sulphide related tarnish. 80% of the lost silver rings I have recovered from the ocean have suffered from tarnish, but a bit of silvo or silver polish will bring the ring back to it’s former glory.
I once found two Australian Silver Six Pence coins in the ocean, those coins were in a shell of rust, and when I cracked open the shell, inside the silver coins were like brand knew.
Read more on Australias’ Salinity Crisis
Stay tuned for before and after photos of the coins and the silver ring!
Here are the photos of the coins and the ring I found yesterday
Billy - Toto - Ginger - Metal Detecting at Lake Dumbleyung Western Australia
Coin suffering from Corrosion - Australian Pre-Decimal Penny?
Australian Coin with major Corrosion
The Silver Ring Found in Salt Lake - Major Tarnish - Nil Corrosion
New Finds!
WW2 Australian Brass Army Buttons
Well its been a couple weeks since I last wrote, I had a great holiday, did not find much, but only tried a few times, found nothing of great interest.
But a few days ago I went out to my favourite haunt – my secret old Ghost Town, near where I live and found plenty of old coins, as well as my first Australian Shilling.
Also found an old Chinese Coin which is quite remarkable, I believe it was used as a necklace pendant as it has a hole in it, probably a gift to a old sweetheart from a Soldier returning from World War 2, might be wrong though.
Also found an old childs toy wagon wheel, some more old WW2 Australian Army Buttons, an old axe head, an old tie clasp, quite a few old Australian pennys, an old Victorian Copper Tray and another Engine Bay Badge.
1954 Australian Silver Shilling
Paulownia 1 sen - Chinese Coin
Paulownia 1 sen - Chinese Coin
Childs Toy - Wagon Wheel
Vintage Car Engine Plate - Lynas Motors Perth Ford Dealers
Old Tie Clasp
Old Victorian Copper Tray
