My First Shoulder Scale

[tomh]

Folks,

I had the extreme priviledge of participating in "Diggin' In Virginia X" a couple of weeks ago and wanted to show my best find. DIV is an organized relic hunt on private property and involving more than 300 diggers. The ground is chosen by the organizing committee and selection is based on the probability of a high number of artifacts remaining on the property. This event took place on more than 1100 acres of the Brandy Rock farm in Culpepper, VA and the resulting relic recoveries were great. We found a CS Cavalry camp, a New York camp (with a small Wisconsin and Connecticut presence) and two other Federal camps.

On the second day of digging I found this Federal shoulder scale (my first) in a gully below the NY camp where a stream had run at one time. Because the area had formerly been swampy it was down about a foot and involved some major digging (I dug a hole big enough to bury a microwave).

I also found five dropped bullets, one flattened bullet, half a pewter spoon, a federal belt grommet and 18 fired bullets from a federal practice range. The other 5 guys in our group found two "script C" CS Cavalry buttons, the tongue from a CS two piece buckle, a VMI Cadet button, various grommets and attachments and more than three hundred dropped bullets. A great time was had by all.

TomH

 

[M E Wolf]

Dear TomH;

Congratulations on your 'dig' finds!

The shoulder scale is rather interesting to me.

Was there any initials on the underside? Rank of what was on the scales?

Will you be posting more photos of your 'goodies?'

Respectfully submitted for consideration,
M. E. Wolf

 

[30th_il]

I would love to do some searching with a metal detector. It must have been pretty cool finding the scale after so much effort in digging. Good job!

 

[diddyriddick]

Nice find! Thanks for the image.

 

[tomh]

Scales

Gents,

Thanks for the replies, it was a fun dig and a rare find for me. Generally my job is to remove the cut nails, tractor parts and other trash from the field so the other guys can find the artifacts

ME,

No marks of any type on these scales. All the iron parts that make up the underside and mounting pieces were reduced to razor thin pieces of rust after spending 140 years in what is a swamp at different times of the year. All that remained was the brass. It is my understanding that there would have been no rank on these scales which were used by both Cav and Arty line soldiers early in the war. There was one other partial set found in the field and seven other sets (complete with all the iron parts) found in a trashpit on another part of the farm.

This property was crossed and camped on from 1861 through 1864 so there was a liberal mix of early war through late war artifacts found.

Later,
TomH

 

[gary]

Good find. Kudos.