Sharp Bits of Glass & a Heer Buckle

This weeks first metal detecting trip was an evening one.

After work and dinner the GirlfriendWife was going to check on one of her insect traps, and when that was done and we had returned to the car with a jar filled with all sorts of insects, we went to re-locate something that could be a dumping pit I had found when the ground was still frozen.

We could see hectic insect activity in the beams of light the evening sun sent between the trees so we had been wise to bring along the mosquito nettings, coz they were swarming us! In so big numbers that even drawing a breath with open mouth gave you a dose of protein.

Since I hadn`t been here since late May it was difficult to recognize the place, and at first I couldn`t find back to what I thought could be a ditch full of relics. Instead I got distracted in a slope digging out cream tubes, food tins and a few uniform buttons. There, from under a small cluster of blueberry bushes, I dug up a quite nice steel belt buckle. A de-nazified Heer buckle!

Very close to where the buckle had been the Nokta Legend picked up another good signal, and also this time it was a interesting little find. A cross, rough in shape, cut from thin aluminum.

Sometimes soldiers made themselves something like a key fob to put Finnish travel badges and Nordfront-/Lapplandfront-/Eismeerfront Crosses on, and sometimes such fobs had a "iron cross" with engravings mounted under the abovementioned crosses. So I wonder if the rough cut cross could be for such a project,,but we will of course never know.

In the end we managed to re-locate the ditch, but it was late and I decided to spend the next day here.

A de-nazified Heer buckle.

Roughly cut aluminum cross.

We found ripe Cloudberries.

The next morning I decided to begin with going over the slope once again, but this time with my old Fisher F5.

At a spot where I had picked up a few buttons, despite the Nokta giving off only weak and bad signals from them, the Fisher immediately told me to dig with a clear and firm signal. It was another button..but this makes me more unsure about which of the detectors I prefer. More field tests are needed.

I opened up the suspected dumping ditch, but sadly it was nothing but a thin layer of roofing zink and some flattened chimney hats in the wet mud. Just behind the ditch I found a small fragment of a Stalag tag, and from there I spotted a leather strap sticking out from the ground.

The strap was hiding a small dumping pit! Several bits of leather had been buried, together with a pair of boots (rotted of course) a karbid lamp, food tins and bottles. On the very edge of the rubbish spill was a spoon made from aluminum. I pulled it free from the ground and it was such a large spoon. Like a fun joke spoon made for a large fellow I thought before realizing it is a common serving spoon. But even better, it had a nice Luftwaffe marking!

I found a spot with a mix of metal garbage, but in between some of it I found a few german coins and the emblem from a Finnish bicycle produced in Waasa.

Following the signals around there I was soon opening a small trash pit, dragging to the surface a couple of mess kits, a bakelite drinking cup, rusted spoons and forks and to my big amusement a pionier-/Tellermine wrench I had always wanted to find! On the bottom of the pit was another very good relic. A flare gun cleaning rod! Not everyday we find something like that.

A couple of hours later I was finishing another small dumping hole, where nothing interesting had been thrown into, and I was pulling out bits of window glass to get to a good signal when sticking my hand out for the next piece I feel a little slice and a knock to my index finger.

Oh, man it was bleeding. Dripping out of the glove. I gathered my stuff and found my way back to the backpack where I could apply a little first aid.

The cut was just below the mid knuckle on the finger. A bit more than a centimeter and I think that if the finger didn`t have a bone it would be gone now.

There was little else to do than call it quits and get back home to properly care for the finger. This of course meant that there would be no more digging the rest of the week, and possibly much of the next, so while the finger heal I will look into chain maile gloves :D

Hopefully I will get some searching done this week anyway, and in any case I am having time for searching maps over mountain positions to visit later in the season.

Thanks for reading and have a nice week :)

Small piece of Stalag tag which POWs wore.

A leather strap was sticking out of the ground.

A spoon!

Such a large spoon!

Luftwaffe markings.

Toothpaste, coins and a mystery part.

"Tecalemit" I think it is something oil related to a U.S vehicle..

Finnish bicycle emblem. Ekesent, Extra. Produced by L. Hasselblatt in Waasa.

Messkits and drinking cup.

T.Mi. tool.

Flare gun cleaning rod.

A common relic hunting injury.