# Rainy day project...



## JOETHECROW (Sep 22, 2010)

Spotted the basis for this project on the curb the other day during junk pickup....Some sort of Ikea type thing, that had casters under a larger base, and a glass cupboard style door broken, with too many pieces missing to tell what it had been....maybe part of a 'cutesy' plant stand or some such,...Anyhow, salvaged the center shelf unit and added two pieces of 1x6, top and bottom. Painted her up, and,...It turned out to be perfect for the upstairs hallway.... There was a lot of orphan bottles hidden away on dark shelves that needed some fresh air....Here's the finished project.[]


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 22, 2010)

*


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 22, 2010)

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## div2roty (Sep 22, 2010)

nice


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## woody (Sep 22, 2010)

Looks good, Joe.
 Perfect fit...


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 22, 2010)

I just noticed how weird the 'fisheye' effect of the camera distorted our doorframes...(Although I've lived in some apartments in my early days that were almost that crooked)...[]


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## BillinMo (Sep 22, 2010)

Have you ever seen the Canadian TV show "Junk Raiders"?  They feature freecycle projects like this.  

 You did a nice job with that -- it's a great-looking shelf now.  I never would have guessed it was something else.


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## SAbottles (Sep 22, 2010)

Good heavens Joe; that porcelain thing in the background in photo 1. I thought you diggers only used privvies over there ?!


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 22, 2010)

Well,.....We _do_ have a privy...LoL []  (It's pouring rain, or I'd have gotten a better picture than from the back porch)


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## downeastdigger (Sep 22, 2010)

I've got 3 kids running around the house these days, with much bottle breakage potential.  I tend to not display my good bottles as much as I used to ( I display the colorful, damaged ones      But some day down the road, I look forward to having shelves of bottles out in view like you have there.

 I really like the use of that shelf unit.  I think I'll steal your idea, if you dont mind


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## cyberdigger (Sep 22, 2010)

[] I really like your toilet, Joe.. I gotta get me one of those... 





 ..is that a linen cabinet or a bunny hutch on the right side?


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 22, 2010)

Thanks everyone, for the input, opinions and all around nice comments!,...Bram,...feel free to liberate that idea as your own,it's about 16" wide by 34" tall by 4 or 5" deep...  Charlie,..yep,...I used to keep some rabbits,...bears got em. I salvaged that outhouse from a hill top near where we dug the 'B******n' farm last fall,...It was the privy from the old narrow guage R.R. (station) that ran over that hill in the 1800's..Rough cut hemlock , zinc coated tin roof,..built with square cut nails, coated with crude oil originally as a perservative....(it worked well)..They were getting ready to log the area and I knew it would probably get trashed, so we went up with my pickup,...put her in 4 wheel drive and three of us loaded it and hauled it out of there....[]


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## SAbottles (Sep 23, 2010)

That's great, Joe ! I've heard of people taking "the whole kitchen sink", but privvy diggers taking "the whole  d@mn privvy home" sure takes some beating !!


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## SAbottles (Sep 23, 2010)

Sorry, my bad. Of course privy doesn't have a double "v" ; although I believe some of them had double seats !


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## idigjars (Sep 23, 2010)

New cabinet looks great Joe, nice job.  Paul


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## dollarbill (Sep 23, 2010)

Nice pick there Joe. As in pick and pictures . The shelfs look like they were ment for there .   
    bill


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## bottle_head9 (Sep 23, 2010)

Excellent Joe!!![]


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## SAbottles (Sep 23, 2010)

Great job, Joe. I highly approve of reusing or "recycling"  things to use to show off one's bottles. This was an old brick mould, used for shaping clay bricks; now used to house dump dug dolls:


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 23, 2010)

Thank you Tom, Bill, (and Bill),....Paul,...and Dale,...Dale,...I love the brick mold idea!,.....Also we don't see too many dark skinned doll heads over here,..The eyes on that one are wild,....On the note of repurposing stuff, most of our home is redone (tastefully) with "are you getting rid of that?" type salvage items,....bookcases, barn beams,... The pot belly stove that we heat with, even our window seat....I'm all for salvaging items, and a ridiculous amount of nice stuff gets tossed out or wasted...I think alot of those items look cooler than most store bought too.


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## SAbottles (Sep 23, 2010)

Couldn't agree more, Joe. And after all, isn't that what we're doing with the bottles we dig - recycling them and giving them life again? Incidentally the eyes in that dark skinned doll are not original; my wife walked into the room one day and freaked out - my younger son had put some Prestik (stuff for sticking things onto other things!) into the sockets with rather macabre results !! : close up:


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 23, 2010)

[]That doll looks angry,...


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## SAbottles (Sep 24, 2010)

The same son recently laid out these dolls in dishes , creating a new line of  "coffin" dolls:


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 24, 2010)

Dale,...that'll fit right in with the latest "vampire" craze going on in the U.S.![]


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## SAbottles (Sep 25, 2010)

OMG ! You mean they might rise up and drain us dry during the night ? Mind you, from their size it might not be much worse than the average mosquito !


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 25, 2010)

Yes..., but how many are there?[]


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## SAbottles (Sep 25, 2010)

Ah, no problem there Joe. They may be legion, but as long as I keep these two nearby, they should control the nasties !!


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 25, 2010)

or just keep 'em near these bottles,...[]


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## SAbottles (Sep 25, 2010)

Very interesting bottles, Joe. What were they actually for ?


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 25, 2010)

I found them on google, in pictures of Holy water bottles...


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## SAbottles (Sep 25, 2010)

Ah, I thought it might be something like that. But here was I thinking they were yours and marvelling at the range of your collection!


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 25, 2010)

Dale,...I have a 'decent' collection,...but nothing like those devils,...[]  Thanks...


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## cyberdigger (Sep 25, 2010)

You guys are cracking me up!!!


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## rockbot (Sep 26, 2010)

Hi Joe, 
 nice rainy day project. I've been so busy the past month. We've been in a drought over here but its been good cause we got a really good and early fall harvest. I plan on putting up a post soon so you can see what I've been up to. Thanks for sharing your creative side![]

 Aloha, Rocky


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## SAbottles (Sep 26, 2010)

OK, Joe, at least you don't have an "indecent" collection :


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## SAbottles (Sep 26, 2010)

Yes, they were all dug up and yes, she is sitting on what you think it is !!


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## SAbottles (Sep 26, 2010)

Continuing the theme of recycling things - this was an old medicine cabinet someone didn't want any more. A lick of paint and it serves very nicely to house a whole host of dump dug and otherwise found "objects d' art" !


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## SAbottles (Sep 26, 2010)

Close-up of some of the contents:


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 27, 2010)

Lot's of really interesting stuff in that cabinet, Dale...have you been digging a lot of years?


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

Hi, Joe. Since September 1982 in fact. Remeber the date because since then I've hardly had a fly rod in my hands or been diving. (Out here we can't dive our rivers the way you do. (Would probably end up with bilharzia anyway [don't ask!]) Getting a bit longer in the tooth now and probably nearing recycling myself ! Here's a photo - the 200+ year old snuff bottle is in better condition !


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

Incidentally Joe, I sent Lauren a pm some time ago - did she ever get it ?


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 27, 2010)

Dale,...My morbid curiosity got the better of me, and I went and looked up bilharzia,..(Actually pretty scary stuff,...I wonder if there was ever a quack cure for that![])...why not, They had sure cures for malaria,....etc. Anyhow, It looks as though you have a pretty interesting and impressive collection of antique bottles and go withs,...I find it interesting, and I'm sure there are things around Cape town that we've never heard of,....(bottles and creatures), I've always been fascinated with English/Australian bottles, (actually with the fantasy of traveling and digging them),...so it's doubly interesting to see your bottles and hear your stories...Laur goes through phases, coming over here to the forum, then not, so not sure about the p.m.[] Long of tooth, eh? Do you still dig? I'd love to see a close up of that window behind you... and thanks for sharing your cool stuff....I wonder what possible occasion they would make a figurine of the woman on the 'loo' for?[]


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

Hi, Joe - yes, your "morbid curiosity" ! Actually they can't really cure bilharzi, they just treat it. Wouldn't imagine the Victorians knew much about it, especially as they thought you got malaria from "sleeping under a fever tree" ! Don't know why they would have made the lady figurine, but then the Victorians & Edwardians were a rather kinky lot behind the scenes ! And talking of behinds ... here's another little whimsy. The baby peers out from the egg -


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

but turn it around and you get this ...


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

Will very happily show more pictures of collection if you like, but I feel I have rather hijacked what was your thread !


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 27, 2010)

Well,...hey, it is under displaying and photographing,...[] (Or simply start another and I'll do my best to hijack that one...


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

OK, Joe, happy to oblige. As we were just a little colony, we tended to get the more utilitarian containers etc and not that many of the real exotics. I echo the sentiments expressed on another thread that, when viewing an incredible cabinet full of coloured historical flasks, one feels like hiding one's own collection away in the cellar !! But realistically one accepts that you can only dig & collect what is available (at least if you don't have pockets as deep as Bill Gates's !)  I have been lucky enough to dig on some good sites here in Cape Town and also further afield around SA. (I was also fortunate enough to do a bit of digging in England and Wales in the 90s.) Here are a few photos of what I have accumulated; first that "blue window" you asked about. (By flashlight as it is late evening here now)


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

As an ex-English teacher, I have mildly specialised in inks and here are some of them:


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

We also find some quite nice transfer printed ointments:


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

and we do find some earlyish things. This is a green body unguent bottle:


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

with quite a pronounced pontil scar -


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## Poison_Us (Sep 27, 2010)

Interesting bottle...at first, looked like the makings of a crack pipe [sm=lol.gif]
 Nice wall-o-cobalt [&:]


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

Hmm, yes, well ...  Out here we have a scourge of a drug locally called tik, which youngsters smoke in carefully broken off light bulbs. Heaven forbid they should get hold of my bottles ! I do have the annoyance at the fleamarket where I trade on weekends, of people picking up the clay pipes I have on my table and then making smirking comments about "smoking ganja" etc. I have to restrain the urge I have towards sarcasm or even violence. As a teacher, and with a wife who was a Social Worker, we see the terrible results of what drugs do, especially to our youth. Sorry if I come across as an old fart ! But I had someone this last Sunday who wondered if he could drill a hole in a glass torpedo bottle to use it as a pipe !! I refrained from commenting !!!


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## BillinMo (Sep 27, 2010)

> ORIGINAL: SAbottles
> 
> As an ex-English teacher, I have mildly specialised in inks and here are some of them:


 
 "Mildly" specialized?  That's quite an assortment.  I'm wondering what a "full" specialty must look like!


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

Thanks, BillinMo. I am happy with my inks, but I saw collections in England that almost made me weep ! Especially my old namesake Norman Lewis, now sadly deceased ! When I was staying with him, he took me up into his attic and opened up a cupboard - & my eyes just bugged out !


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

Here's a photo of the "green window" to balance the blue one:


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

Because of our historic links with Holland, we also get some very nice Dutch case gins :


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## SAbottles (Sep 27, 2010)

Here's the bottom of the one nearest the camera with a very rough pontil scar:


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 27, 2010)

Hey,...Well presented and very nice assortment of glass Dale!,...I too like inks and go-withs on a sub scale....Pretty great collection you've got there, and nice to see.
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 I've heard my share of pipe remarks too, when people realize what they are/were.....and of course the early meds all had Opium/Morphine/ Cannibas/ and Heroin!...don't forget Cocaine.....(Of course they were legal then too),...But that's a whole 'nother' socio-economic can of worms.... from a whole 'nother' era...[]

 P.S. Love the Case Gins!    J.B.


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## SAbottles (Sep 28, 2010)

Thank you, Joe. Yeah, I just recently got an e-mail from a friend with a whole series of old advertisements for old-time medicines which contained all the substances you named; it would fit nicely here, just trying to figure out how to set up a link - will consult my older son who is a computer whizz (it's his job!)


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## SAbottles (Sep 28, 2010)

Here's one of those adverts
                             Cocaine drops for toothache.


                           Very popular for children in 1885.

 Not only did they relieve the pain, they made the children very happy!


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## SAbottles (Sep 28, 2010)

and another, this for
                                      Metcalf's Coca Wine 
 was one of a huge variety of wines with cocaine on the market. Everybody used to say that it would make you happy and it would also work as a medicinal treatment.


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## SAbottles (Sep 28, 2010)

Yes indeedy :It's no wonder they were called, 'The Good Old Days'!!

                                               From cradle to grave...

                                             Everyone Was Stoned!!!


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## SAbottles (Sep 28, 2010)

And it wasn't as if this was frowned on by society; in fact you couldn't get much better recommendation than this !!
         Mariani wine (1875) was the most famous Coca wine of it's time.

            Pope Leo XIII used to carry one bottle with him all the time.

        He awarded Angelo Mariani (the producer) with a Vatican gold medal.


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 28, 2010)

Some interesting old ad's Dale,...It's pretty much true. cradle to grave...almost everything we dig,...Whiskey, wines, Bitters & Meds....All were some sort of "high"...except maybe household cleaners...(I'll bet some of those even got sampled during prohibition...) Anyhow, you had me thinking about the last time I saw a "Mariani" bottle,...here's one we dug last June...


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## SAbottles (Sep 28, 2010)

Hmm! Worse than sampling. We had a famous artist/eccentric called Helen Martins who created a house called the Owl House, much of it made from old bottles and weirdly shaped concrete structures. Sadly she committed suicide by drinking caustic soda. Ugh, brrrr. Pass the Mariani wine please !
 It is a fascinating place to visit but there is a very strange & dark atmosphere hovering over the whole house.


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 28, 2010)

Ach! What an awful way to go....[:'(] Went and  checked it out...Here's a pic they showed of the Nativity scene, done w/ wine bottles.....Found it here:  http://africanhistory.about.com/od/africanarts/ig/The-Owl-House/index.01.htm . I could see how the place might have a weird 'vibe'....Thanks for yet more interesting info.


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## SAbottles (Sep 28, 2010)

Nice find, Joe. Gosh, looking at those photographs brings back memories of a trip there a few years ago, sadly before I acquired my digital camera. Helen Martin's full story is a strange and sad one. Once her father was sick & disabled, she kept him virtually a prisoner in a small room with walls painted black. (there  was strong suspicion he had abused her as a child). All rather grim and reminiscent of the mountain people in "_Deliverance_" , but perhaps a bit more artistic. And no - I didn't pinch any of the bottles! In fact the people at the museum in nearby Graaf Reinet asked me if I had any of the 60s stubby beer bottles as they were doing some renovation work on the Owl House ! Had to explain that the dumps we dig were a bit too old for them!

 Don't know if you have ever ventured into "modern" dumps ? When they were working on a Freeway some years back, they had to work through a 40s to 60s dump. We went to have a look, but they were using breathing aparatus because of the methane gas, which is a bit off putting!! There is also a very old part of the Drift Sands dump, early 1870s, but it's under 10 feet of compacted modern rubbish & plastic. We tried there once, but our digging forks just bounced off !!


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## SAbottles (Sep 28, 2010)

You asked if I still dig. I'm embarassed to say that it's almost 2 years since I had my spade in the ground (other than in the garden!). On that occasion I got a lovely Holloway's pot lid out. Meant to get back to that spot - on railway property but no one seemed to mind us digging there - but when I drove past a few months ago, there is now a whopping great concrete bridge where the site was !! Part of all the development for the Soccer World Cup !
 But I must admit that a-b.net and all the great photos and tales of digging have got the juices stirred up again  - so you might just see an SAbottles post in the Recent Digging Finds one of these days! 
 Here's the Holloway's Lid :


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 28, 2010)

Wow..., 
             Dale, I can relate to meaning to get back to a spot and having it be gone....In 1991, I was living outside the Buffalo NY area about an hour and a half from my current area, and driving back to visit my mother. Then, along a rural route about sundown, The large travel coffee that I'd been working on, started working on me,...[] I found a relatively okay area with only an old farmhouse down the road aways, to pull off and take care of business....just at the edge of the narrow shoulder of the road, was a small washout, that I noticed layers of _really_ old looking glass, (found a pontiled bottom right there)..I remember thinking, as I got back in my vehicle, How ironic to stop at that particular little spot to pee, and have there be old buried glass there, and also, "Well, at least that spot's not going any where..." How wrong I was,...I had other large life events going on at that time period, and pretty much forgot about that incident,...About 7 or 8 years later, after I'd moved back here, I was working in that particular region, and riding in a company truck...As we passed that spot, there was an older gentleman and what looked like his son, digging there....It all came back to me, and I made a mental note to go check it out sometime...Fast forward to 2008. Lauren's now in my life, and wants to go dig some older glass,....I remember the spot. We go there. They straightened the curve there in the road,.....new blacktop _right over the top _of the old dump spot, new bridge, new guardrails,....same old farmhouse, but with wider lawn due to road project....For miles, the rest of the old road was the same as it ever was....[]

 Moral?...Well I hope that young man I saw digging there got a helluva early bottle collection, and is still into collecting bottles and old glass, and, Hey, you can't get them all, but I _could_ have made time to get that one, but didn't...No regrets, but I always wondered what came out of that little roadside pontil dump....Thanks for reading along on my ramble,....Nice potlid for sure,...we don't happen across too many of those, and great story about the Soccer World Cup location,...and how very bizzare about Helen Martin keeping her father in that small black room....Grim indeed.


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## SAbottles (Sep 29, 2010)

Yup, continuing that "oh it'll be there to dig forever" theme, here are some shots of that "drift Sands" dump and a much younger me ! -
 first a general view of part of the area with Table Mountain in the background. We used beach umbrellas to give us some shade as we dug :


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## SAbottles (Sep 29, 2010)

A very much younger SAbottles down a typical hole. I'm only standing on the actual layer now; we had to move 6ft of white dune sand each time to get to it!


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## SAbottles (Sep 29, 2010)

After an hour or so. Made a mistake by leaving bottles next to the hole; some of the locals saw these and when I came back next morning the whole section next to my hole had been blitzed!!


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## SAbottles (Sep 29, 2010)

This is a shot of what came from that particular hole. When you found a good area there would be a veritable trove waiting. Note the colour still in my beard as opposed to the earlier shot with the blue bottles !! sigh!


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 29, 2010)

Dale,...great digging pics and story,...what a great bunch of bottles! Looks like they were pretty deep under that sand, as far as older pics go, I must have some around somewhere....Time waits for none of us, but perhaps we improve with age?[]


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## SAbottles (Sep 30, 2010)

Hmm! That may go for some wines, but I don't think I could move as much dirt in one day as I used to! I like your thread on the old farm dump and can relate to digging in that sort of mud. Part of that Drift Sands dump was pretty swampy and I can well remember digging for 5 minutes and bailing out for 10! On one occasion I remember a pot lid falling out of the side wall and disappearing with a Plop! Fortunately some mad probing and sifting with the fork brought it to the surface.
  Some of the guys I dug with in the UK used garden forks with lots of close set tines with blobs welded onto the end. They sifted these through the mud and came up with some pretty good things. This was right on the edge of a soccer field, which was getting progressively smaller as they dug ! I remember them joking that by mid-season the teams would be playing with 5 a side !![]


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## JOETHECROW (Sep 30, 2010)

Laughing,....[] Dale,....we have a term for those devils that try to get away,..."bobbers"...When we were at that dump yesterday, Fred joked that he saw one doing the backstroke, trying to get out of our field ov vision....


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## SAbottles (Oct 1, 2010)

Amazing how shy those bottles are; reading in other threads about how they can sense if you have brought a box to load them in & so they burrow deeper!
 Talking of digging near water, I take my hat off to these diggers who dig the mud banks of the Thames in London. They cover over their hole with sheets of plywood weighed down with poles, then come back after the tide has gone out, bail the water out & go on digging! And the mud they dig has the consistency of wet cement! I contacted Tony, the chap benmding over the bucket, and bought a batch of lovely clay pipes to take back to SA.


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## SAbottles (Oct 1, 2010)

These were the pipes, some of which I found myself by wandering along on the mud flats and looking very carefully. The four figurals and the three centered by the yellow mouthpiece I bought. All sold like wildfire at my stall!


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## SAbottles (Oct 1, 2010)

These diggers dig under licence from the Museum of London, who have first claim on anything really historic they may find. But wow, digging on a site that has nearly 2000 years of history !


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## cobaltbot (Oct 1, 2010)

SA you have a great collection that reflects a lifetime of passionate digging, thanks for sharing.  I love the mudlarking website, it takes a little while to load but is great!  Here in the states we get excited, and rightly so from anything from the late 1700's to early 1800's.  Mudlarking website:

http://www.thamesandfield.co.uk/


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## JOETHECROW (Oct 1, 2010)

Laur and I spent some time checking out the "Mudlarks" site awhile back....very cool setup...at least they give the diggers a legal avenue to dig....I suppose it's the honor system when it comes to telling them what was found? Anyhow, here are a few of the pipes we find from time to time...(The brown-ish colored one being the most recent,...which features a snake along the stem/bowl)....


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## SAbottles (Oct 2, 2010)

Joe, yes it is an honour system, but the museum people do come & check the stalls where these people sell, and also they do "police" one another. Tony told me of at least one digger who had kept things back, was reported and lost his licence.


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## SAbottles (Oct 2, 2010)

As pipes go, this is my pride and joy: a French Gambieri figural pipe of President Paul Kruger, president of the old Transvaal Republic. I dug this some 10 feet down in a lump of clay. I bashed it carelessly against my leg to shake the clay off and nearly freaked when I realised what I was bashing ! -


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## SAbottles (Oct 2, 2010)

The photo doesn't really do it justice, it is a remarkable likeness of the old bugger. (I can be a bit rude, because co-incidentally he was my great-great grand uncle !!)


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## JOETHECROW (Oct 2, 2010)

Way cool pipe....any family albums where you could audio-visually compare likeness? Just kidding,but that IS a great pipe.


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## SAbottles (Oct 3, 2010)

We both have beards, Joe, but that's as far as it goes!![]


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