Wow! I can’t believe I found another intact Civil War artillery shell. This is another James pattern I sub pattern I. Just over the fence line from the hay field where I found my first James shell the dirt turns to a dark alkaline clay. That is where I was detecting when this beauty popped up.

I don’t know why but I’ve been wanting to dig a sawmill token. I added it to my bucket list a few years back. This may not seem like a big deal if you live in East Texas but for me they are harder to come by in Fort Worth.
This year I had two opportunities to hunt a sawmill site in East Texas. On my second trip I scored my token. However, I didn’t find it at the actual sawmill site. It ended up
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What a random find in a cotton field! This revolver is an 1853 Lefaucheux pinfire. When I dug this little jewel up I thought it was a toy. This area of the cotton field we were hunting was an old house site and other toys had already been found.

I had to make a quick business trip to Cedar Creek, TX, but rather than making the drive down there and back to Fort Worth in one day, I decided to turn this into a weekend detecting trip. I have a good friend and fellow detectorist who owns property in the ghost town of Muldoon. His place in Muldoon is a weekend get-a-way for him and his wife. It was only about 35 miles from where I needed to be in Cedar Creek so I met him in Muldoon Thursday evening. After my quick trip to Cedar Creek on Friday we spent the rest of the day and weekend detecting around town. Continue reading →

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We came across a construction site in downtown Fort Worth. It was the beginning of a new parking lot. For the past 20 years or so it’s been a half grass and half broken asphalt parking lot. It’s history lies in 1909 when a large fire swept that part of town burning every house on this block and many more. Right off the bat we started finding old coins and one of the guys came up with a watch fob. I wasn’t having much luck in the coin category save for a few wheats. However, my redemption came in the form of a nice Fort Worth saloon token.

The Post Office Saloon was located at 708 Houston St. This particular token has the proprietors initials on it, C.A. W. (Charles A Wood), which allowed us to narrow the time frame to 1899-1902.

Eventually I found a few silvers on this site but the token was the top find!

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Although the date is correct on this post for the hunt, I’m actually typing this in November. I wanted to wait and post after the James shell was restored. This ended up taking 26 days.  26 loooong days of electrolysis and tedious hand work. I put together a small gallery of images at the end of this post that shows some of the steps to restore the shell. Continue reading →

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Out of all the different types of treasure hunting and metal detecting, hunting ghost towns is my absolute favorite. This particular town was an oil boom town. It sprang up fast but like other boom towns it faded into history almost as quick as it came. Continue reading →

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I had the chance to do some beach hunting in Corpus Christi,TX  this week. It’s the first time I have ever put a coil to the sand there. I hadn’t been detecting an hour when I got the ring pictured above. I was out in the surf about waist deep when I dug it. The surf was pounding so I didn’t spend much time looking at it. I could see the gold toned edges and the tarnished middle so I assumed it was junk. Continue reading →

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