Because Nothing Says "Springtime" Like a Bormann Fuse

Not every Dirt Girl post needs to be epic. I’m going to try for a short one: just a quick recap of recent finds.

In the beginning of March, Cheryl and I found ourselves back at a torn-down house site we had explored a year ago. It’s right in the midst of Battle of Nashville territory – a very fancy neighborhood now. It was kind of strange that it’s just been sitting here all this time – a big, old rain-filled hole surrounded by trash – but we took it as a sign that there was more to find. Found mostly junk, including this weird item, below. I was sure it was a piece of modern plumbing and almost threw it out. Instead, I posted it on Facebook and was surprised when a bunch of the Club guys responded, “Wow! Nice Bormann fuse!”

Plumbing? Please. I am a deadly Bormann
cannonball fuse. The notches are for the
soldiers to set my timer so that when I
explode, I do so at the appropriate time.
I am actually a rarer "Braille" Bormann
fuse -- with dots instead of numbers
so that the soldiers can set my timer
in dark and smoky conditions.
Plumbing? Seriously? Sigh.

Friends in Franklin invited me and Cheryl to come over and hunt the yards and pastures of their new farm. Delicious! We spent two sunny Saturdays there. Here's a sampling of our finds:

Beautiful mystery item + Williams cleaner.

 

Did not expect to find this in the horse pasture.
It's some kind of trophy from the 1950s.

This, too, was unexpected. Turns out it's a
1950s trophy for German shepherd dogs. The
 previous property owner was a veterinarian
who raised German shepherds.

Yup, that's "Muddy" -- the family pig. I touched him.

We noticed a huge church across the street and and got permission for all that property too. It’s obviously been hunted for decades, but we managed to pop out a few more tasty treats.

Previous diggers left behind this beautiful,
small sledgehammer head. Here it is all
cleaned up and polyurethaned. Apple is for
scale. Because apples are pretty.

This, my friends, is very interesting to me. I believe this
is actually a Spanish real (pronounced "ree-al") coin!
Look at the edge, at about 9 o'clock. Do you see the "I S P"?
That's part of the "HISPANIA"!
I  do not know what happened to this coin.
Perhaps it went through a fire?
What do you think????

 

Here's another real I found last year, for comparison.
In this case, the "I S P" is at about 2 o'clock.

My obsession with electrolysis continues unabated. At the last meeting of the MTMDC, some of the guys gave me some old, rusty junk to clean up and I’ve been slowly going through the pile. Why this is fun, I have no idea.

From top left: animal trap, step to get into a carriage,
tiny spike, horseshoe, colonial era (?) axe head.
Banana for scale...

Handles and a buckle thing.

Shears of some sort. 

Yesterday, I received an email from a woman who found this blog online. Seems her brother, Bob, had been playing football in his backyard last November when his platinum wedding ring flew off his finger. He’d rented a detector but had not found it. Would I be interested in helping? I was!

This afternoon, Cheryl and I met up at Bob’s house in a subdivision in Franklin.  I found the ring on the other side of the back fence, next to some unmowed grass. The signal had the distinctive sound of “not deep” and I knew pretty quick this was the ring. I could see its outline in the dirt; just reached down and picked it up. 

The surgical gloves give this
image a certain je ne sais quoi...

Got a nice text from Bob. He promises that his wife will spread the story far and wide to all her FB friends and score us some sweet Franklin properties to hunt – the only “payment” I wanted.

We left the ring with Bob’s neighbor (who invited us to hunt his great-grandmother’s land… you know: the place where she buried $250,000 IN MASON JARS IN THE GROUND THAT WERE FOUND WHEN HIGHWAY 840 WENT THROUGH THE PROPERTY. Yup, that place. We said yes.)

Drove back to the church property for another look around. These cool spring days won’t last long and it was pretty sweet. 

58 minie ball.

 Home by five. A very good day with only one tick.