My next coin digger!
celtex
--
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative
and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and
should do for themselves."
Abraham Lincoln
Relichunter
<jimdn...@suddenlink.net> wrote:
>http://www.harborfreightusa.com/usa/itemdisplay/displayItem.do?itemid=93167
I sure could have used this thing a bunch of years ago. 13" and 186
pounds. Digging that out was one heck of an afternoons work. And, I
was a lot younger:(
Warmest Regards,
Relichunter
celtex
news:gdcth51a9ahki5449...@4ax.com...
Wow! That is one big marble! Is it safe?
Relichunter
Yeah, it is a safe old marble:) The fuse's back then were made out of
wood and tamped into the fuse hole. Over the many years underground,
the wood allowed water to enter. Black powder attracts and holds
moisture so the powder inside was more the consistency of a heavy mud.
The fuse body was pretty deteriorated but I managed to save about 1/2
of it. The fuses had a hole punched through the side so as the fuse
powder burned down, it would time out at the hole and set the shell
off.
The powder won't burn today but you can still smell the sulphur used
in the mixture.
Getting it out of the ground was the hard part. It was maybe 2' down
to the balls surface. I ended up digging a big hole around it so I
could use a broken branch as a lever and roll the ball from side to
side in the hole. I would roll it to one side of the hole then put
some fill dirt back in on the other side. Then I rolled it up onto the
fill dirt and filled the other side of the hole back up a bit more. By
rolling the ball and filling the hole I was slowly able to get it to
the surface. It must have taken a good 3 or 4 hours. A hot mid summer
day and dry hard ground.
I only have one shell I found that I would consider dangerous. It is a
12# round Civil War era shell with a Borman type fuse. The fuse was
punched to go off but it must have either not caught fire or didn't
blow out the tin in the back of the fuse and into the shell. So I
can't really say what the condition of the powder inside is. Needless
to say I am still a little more than careful when handling it:)
Speaking of marbles, I have a few old ones (made from clay) that I
found when coin shooting an old park. They were in the hole with the
target signal. Cool little things when you think kids played with them
back at the turn of the last century.
Warmest Regards,
Relichunter
Rick
Relichunter
Don't reckon I really know but would guess around maybe the $1,000 or
so range. That's the biggest whole shell from the F&I period I have.
That size is a scarce one.
I also have a 10" mortar shell and an 8" howitzer shell from the F&I
period. The 8" howitzer was never fired, it was supposed to have been
destroyed. There are some marks on it where you can see it was struck
but didn't break apart. My bet is the soldiers were tired and scared
and just gave up on breaking it.
One day I'll finish building new display cases and put the stuff I
have in them (I'll photograph them at the same time). I got as far as
buying some of the plywood. But there is always something else to do
that gets priority:( I am sure everyone knows that feeling:)
Warmest Regards,
Relichunter
celtex
some true relics as well. A real nice arrow point, a flint thumb scraper and
a small flint knife. We also found lots of coins, tokens and other items
from the late teens to newest coin I found was 1935. Dump looks to be about
2-3 foot deep an covers about 4 acres. But bad news is owner doesn't want
use to dig any more as every where we did weeds sprouted up and he wants
grass. I am thinking we can negotiate we fix it by planting grass and maybe
do some weed mediation as well.
celtex
Did you see this?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353998,00.html
Learn! LOL and be careful.
Jim
"celtex" <jimdn...@suddenlink.net> wrote in message
news:4b1940df$0$5345$bbae...@news.suddenlink.net...
Relichunter
<jimdn...@suddenlink.net> wrote:
>Relic,
>Did you see this?
>http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353998,00.html
>
>Learn! LOL and be careful.
>
>Jim
>
Oh how sad, another one went and did it. This guy was experienced too,
like many others that did the same thing to themselves. Over the many
years I have read of numbers of people doing the same thing. Wasn't
too many years ago some young girl lost an arm or a leg by shrapnel
from a shell being disarmed. A black powder shell of maybe 8" in
diameter can pretty much blow up an entire house.
Back when metal detecting and especially when VLF detectors hit the
market it seemed like at least one person would blow themselves up
every year while trying to disarm a shell.
Though they mention sparks and the shell fuse in the article, the
article has another interesting statement that his wife suspected it
was a defective shell. Very possible. Maybe he had disarmed the fuse
but the shell still contained powder. There could easily have been a
defect in the shell's casting.
At the battle of Fort Niagara, the commander general Prideaux was
killed by a 4" mortar shell that went off prematurely after being
fired at the fort. Even back then, failure (holes) in the balls iron
casting could set off the ball prematurely so strict rules were made
by the British for manufacturing. For example plugging of casting
"holes" by pounding in an iron nail was strictly prohibited. Like
today, people cheated. I have a piece of 4" mortar shell (it was
purposely destroyed, not fired) that you can clearly see the remains
of a nail that had been driven from the outside on the inside surface
of the piece to plug a casting hole. So even grinding away at the
surface of an unexploded shell can be dangerous. I would expect
contractors took the same shortcuts during the CW period too.
The usual safe method of disarming a shell (that I am aware of) is to
slowly (and preferably by remote control) drill a hole into the shell
casing with plenty of water flowing then flood it with water and wash
out the powder. A plentiful supply of water is required to constantly
keep the drill bit temperature down. Sometimes people get distracted
and do something "stupid" and let that water supply to the drill bit
slow down too much or stop altogether. Then the heat generated where
the bit and casing meet gets above the temperature needed to set off
black powder and that heat is transferred to the inside of the shell.
Then someone gets hurt or killed.
In one instance a very experienced fellow was in a hurry because he
had an important engagement that evening. Instead of drilling slowly
for the entire thickness of the shell, he tried to speed up the
process by drilling faster on the outside and slowing the drill down
as he got closer to breaking through. From what I remember he had told
others he had been doing it that way pretty often and it saved a lot
of time. In his death investigation, they figured that maybe the shell
casting was a somewhat thinner than normal at the point he was
drilling and thus passed the heat to the inside much faster.
There is one particular fuse that scares the heck out of me. It was
some sort of acid in a glass vial and another chemical such that the
glass in the fuse would break on impact mixing the 2 chemicals.
Somewhere around the study here is a book dedicated to all the types
of CW shells and fuses. Anyway, simply dropping that shell or maybe
even hitting it with a shovel while digging could set it off.
Fortunately not many of those fuses were used in the war.
I have kind of been playing with black powder since I was a kid. Later
I really got into hunting with a flintlock. So I still have many
pounds of that stuff in my basement along with the reloading equipment
and a bunch of cans of smokeless powders.
It's hard to believe just how powerful black powder can be unless you
have played with it and maybe did stupid things. (I ain't saying I did
but...)
Old prospectors used to take a hammer and a star drill and pound a
couple of holes through the gold bearing quartz rock walls in a mine.
From what I understand, they sort of drilled them into the side in a V
shape. Then they put in a little black powder into the holes, lit the
fuse and blew out some big chunks of quartz. I think there are still
people doing that today.
Thanks for the article. I am sorry to read about it but then again it
drives home "safety first".
Warmest Regards,
Relichunter
celtex
> Thanks for the article. I am sorry to read about it but then again it
> drives home "safety first".
>
> Warmest Regards,
> Relichunter
>
doing what he liked! My wife would have said "I told him he would blow us up
some day!" LOL The damage that shell did was pretty awesome. And the part of
it being a Naval round made it more dangerous since they needed more
destruction per pound to be effective on the targets encountered in naval
engagements.
Be careful there Relic!