# My Son's Metal Detecting Finds-Any Ideas



## nhpharm (Aug 2, 2021)

We live in a new neighborhood that is built in an area that had not had much past development, but my son has a cheap metal detector and apparently is finding some odds and ends that appear to have some age in a random spot in the woods behind our house.  He's found a little bit of glass there too that appears to have some age as well as it has purpled.  Nonetheless, the photo shows two items he found...one looks like a 22 bullet but there is some sort of strange protrusion from the shell and the other is a rivet (like for a piece of clothing) that has something impressed on it (maybe a flattened eagle or a cross or something?).  Anyone have any ideas?  I promised my son I'd try to figure out what these were.


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## Old Wiltshire (Aug 2, 2021)

Hi Brandon,
The ammunition appears to be an obsolete pin fire pistol cartridge.
An interesting item but be careful, it could still be viable!!









						Pinfire cartridge - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				




​


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## UncleBruce (Aug 2, 2021)

A real puzzler.


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## nhpharm (Aug 2, 2021)

Wow-that's it for sure!  Thanks so much!  I wonder how the heck a pinfire cartridge ended up in the middle of the woods here in Texas.   

Now to figure out what the other thing is.  Now I'm really intrigued.


Old Wiltshire said:


> Hi Brandon,
> The ammunition appears to be an obsolete pin fire pistol cartridge.
> An interesting item but be careful, it could still be viable!!
> 
> ...


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## willong (Aug 2, 2021)

nhpharm said:


> I wonder how the heck a pinfire cartridge ended up in the middle of the woods here in Texas.











						Pinfire cartridge - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				




That intact cartridge is a nice piece of history. The production years of pinfire ammunition and arms matches up well with the Republic of Texas era and the Mexican War. Not everyone was a Texas Ranger packing Colt Paterson or, in later years, a big horse pistol like a Walker Colt or one of the Dragoon models. But nearly everyone in those early years needed firearms for protection and shooting for the pot. Pinfire arms were some of the first to utilize self-contained metallic cartridges. If you haven't done so already, I suggest you take a peek at the Wikipedia article.


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## treeguyfred (Aug 3, 2021)

Finding the cartridge is cool AF! congrats! 
~Fred


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## saratogadriver (Aug 3, 2021)

Any chance for an old civil war encampment?    I don't think the pinfire cartridge weapons were common much after the civil war.    Once center fire and rimfire cartridges hit the market everything else fell by the wayside pretty quickly.

Jim G


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## nhpharm (Aug 3, 2021)

I appreciate the feedback from everyone!  My son is at camp now but will be so excited when he gets home that he found something with some age and of interest!  He's 10 and loves to explore.  I'll have to get him to show me where this stuff was found...perhaps there is more to the area than the maps indicate.


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## nhpharm (Aug 3, 2021)

saratogadriver said:


> Any chance for an old civil war encampment?    I don't think the pinfire cartridge weapons were common much after the civil war.    Once center fire and rimfire cartridges hit the market everything else fell by the wayside pretty quickly.
> 
> Jim G


Its certainly possible, but there were not any battles nearby that I am aware of and I don't think there was much activity.  I'll have to poke around in the history books and see what I might be able to find!  We're about 1 mile from the San Jacinto river between Conroe and Houston.


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## treeguyfred (Aug 3, 2021)

@nhpharm keep looking and be careful as was said before, there may be more in the area and they might still be "live"

~Fred


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## treeguyfred (Aug 4, 2021)

treeguyfred said:


> The arrow or pike motif on multiple D.H. Smith bottles including a Codd type..
> my friends, @ROBBYBOBBY64
> ~Fred


Oh geez friends so sorry this got posted under the wrong thread! Is there an administrator that can move it or delete it and Ill repost where it belongs! 
SMH- Fred


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## UncleBruce (Aug 4, 2021)

treeguyfred said:


> Oh geez friends so sorry this got posted under the wrong thread! Is there an administrator that can move it or delete it and Ill repost where it belongs!
> SMH- Fred


Unfortunate there is no delete.  Needs to be.  You can edit your own posts though.  That could be used to change the content and remove the images... I think...


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## RCO (Aug 4, 2021)

nhpharm said:


> Wow-that's it for sure!  Thanks so much!  I wonder how the heck a pinfire cartridge ended up in the middle of the woods here in Texas.
> 
> Now to figure out what the other thing is.  Now I'm really intrigued.



it used to be a lot more common for people to use firearms in the woods for various purposes 

such as target shooting , small game hunting . things weren't as built up as they are now and you used to be able to buy guns at the hardware store without any questions being asked 

so is many possible ways it ended up there


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## ROBBYBOBBY64 (Aug 4, 2021)

treeguyfred said:


> Oh geez friends so sorry this got posted under the wrong thread! Is there an administrator that can move it or delete it and Ill repost where it belongs!
> SMH- Fred


I still got the message. You have a quart blob too. Sweet! That one is arched like the codd I got it was used from 1905- 1915.
ROBBYBOBBY64.


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## Crockett (Aug 4, 2021)

nhpharm said:


> We live in a new neighborhood that is built in an area that had not had much past development, but my son has a cheap metal detector and apparently is finding some odds and ends that appear to have some age in a random spot in the woods behind our house.  He's found a little bit of glass there too that appears to have some age as well as it has purpled.  Nonetheless, the photo shows two items he found...one looks like a 22 bullet but there is some sort of strange protrusion from the shell and the other is a rivet (like for a piece of clothing) that has something impressed on it (maybe a flattened eagle or a cross or something?).  Anyone have any ideas?  I promised my son I'd try to figure out what these were.


Lefaucheux pin fire cartridge and a rivet most likely from horse tack


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## willong (Aug 11, 2021)

Crockett said:


> and a rivet most likely from horse tack


Thanks for adding that note. The shank length looked too long for a trouser rivet or a shoe or boot application--I should have thought about tack too! (Sometimes the obvious escapes us.)


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## willong (Aug 11, 2021)

nhpharm said:


> I wonder how the heck a pinfire cartridge ended up in the middle of the woods here in Texas.


Hunting is the most likely activity, with military campaign or frontier conflict being another possibility.

Since someone (Crockett) pointed out that the rivet is likely from horse tack, the romantic notion is that your son has stumbled upon the site of an early military campsite--what route did the Texans travel to get to the Battle of San Jacinto?





__





						what route did the Texans travel to get to the Battle of San Jacinto? at DuckDuckGo
					

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Also, keep in mind that what is wooded today might well not have been during the era of pinfire cartridges. The prosaic interpretation is that your son has uncovered relics from a field that was hunted either before or after a 19th century farmer broke a bit of harness on his plow horse.


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## vannix (Aug 11, 2021)

hi there.. both are civil war area... the first thing is a civil war knapsack grommet.. its what held the material together..  they where also used on other things like backpacks, belts cartridge box most anything made with leather.. the pin fire cartridge is for a  colt dragoon they came in 40 cal and 44 cal.. they quit making them around 1866... tell your son to keep digging  there might find some buttons there too


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## relic rescuer (Aug 15, 2021)

nhpharm said:


> We live in a new neighborhood that is built in an area that had not had much past development, but my son has a cheap metal detector and apparently is finding some odds and ends that appear to have some age in a random spot in the woods behind our house.  He's found a little bit of glass there too that appears to have some age as well as it has purpled.  Nonetheless, the photo shows two items he found...one looks like a 22 bullet but there is some sort of strange protrusion from the shell and the other is a rivet (like for a piece of clothing) that has something impressed on it (maybe a flattened eagle or a cross or something?).  Anyone have any ideas?  I promised my son I'd try to figure out what these were.


That is a pinfire cartridge, and is the first attempt at putting a bullet in a case with a contained primer. Very cool find. The rivet to me just looks like a malformation in crimping?


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## nhpharm (Aug 16, 2021)

We've done a bit more metal detecting in the area...its still a bit of a puzzle.  Basically, there is an old pipeline (coming from the Humble Oil Fields) that runs through the woods that I believe was installed in the 1910's with an access road that ran along it.  There is a stretch of this access road about 100' long that had these items as well as some cast iron odds and ends in it along with a bit of 1910's glass.  It appears that the material for the road is what contains the artifacts but I don't know where this material came from; it looks native to the natural soil in the area so I doubt they brought it far.  Gonna keep exploring.


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