One Man's Trash...

Hey everyone!  I've been out a few times since my last update, with a couple of keepers to show for it.  The three ring minie ball on the left was mentioned in my previous post - but since I was taking pictures of my other finds, I thought I'd include it.  The rest of the finds in this picture came from a different Union Civil War camp here in central NC.  My detecting partner Jim got the best find from this particular spot - a gorgeous "Eagle I" infantry button with original gold gilt.  I'll put up a link here when he posts a picture online.

The brass rectangles are reeds from some sort of squeezebox musical instrument, similar to the flutina reeds seen here.  They may or may not be associated with the camp, as there were some post-war era items found nearby.  The other lead finds in the picture include the top half of a William's Cleaner bullet as well as some melted lead.  I didn't notice it at first, but Jim pointed out that one of the melted lead globs is actually a half-melted bullet - you can still see the nose and conical base cavity.

I first thought that the iron bar might be a section of a bayonet blade, but I'm not quite convinced.  It has a diamond shaped cross-section, unlike the triangular cross-section associated with typical Union bayonets.  The only period bayonet with a diamond cross-section that I'm aware of is the Lorenz Austrian bayonet, used by the Confederacy.  Based on the location of the find (a late-war Union Camp), this would be unlikely, though certainly not impossible.  Opinions are welcome on this piece!

While the coin may have the look of tarnished silver, I knew from the reading on my detector that it was not.  Despite being found very near to the camp, it turned out to be a copper-nickel 1/2 Swiss Franc coin from 1979.  It's still a neat addition to my collection, though.

One of my favorite recent finds came almost completely by accident.  We were wandering about in the woods looking for another Civil War site when we stumbled across a very large bottle dump.  Trash and broken glass were strewn about everywhere, and it obviously served as a trash dump for several houses over a period of time.  My eye was drawn to this collection of partially buried milk-glass jars, and I simply had to check them out.  The bottom of one of one of these jars identifies its manufacturer as the Woodbury Soap company.  Woodbury produced a number of cosmetics products, including the cold cremes and facial cremes once found in these jars, and was incredibly popular in the 1930's and 40's.  Although not as old as most things I look for, I thought they were great, and brought them home to clean them up.  I take the old adage of "one man's trash" quite literally!!