[color="black" size="2"]Hi All,
Just signed up. Dug a 6 footer on Tuesday the 29th. It was cold and windy as hell, but the in-laws were visiting and I had the opportunity to get out. The pit I probed out turned out to be 4' wide, 6' long, and 6-6 1/2' deep. The water started at around 3 feet deep. I dug the pit in three sections. The back right area was my bail hole. I would dig it down and bail until the water dropped. I then took down the rest of the pit, minus my front left corner step for dumping the 5-gallon buckets of water out. The ash layer started at around 2-feet and traveled down to around 5 feet. No bottles were found in these layers. At around five feet down I took down the bail hole area and poof 100's of black seeds floated to the top. I quickly dug around with my rake and pulled out a renne's pain killer medicine. I carefully rooted around and cleared out the area for bailing more. Stoneware quart beer halves and redware sherds were all over. I was surprised the pit was this early as the house did not seem to be. The next whole bottle out was an unmarked quart size stoneware beer. I was pretty excited since there were broken bitter squares around. I kept raking, bailing, and shoveling out. I started to save piles of redware and stoneware to see if I could piece some stuff back together later. The water and slop I was shoveling out was freezing in piles outside the hole. Everything was wet and covered with mud and slop. I nixed the saving sherds idea and decided to just dig it out as fast as I could as it was getting later. There were two broken forest green Hostetters, then an iron pontil green townsend's broken under a storage jar. Then large barrel bitters frags were popping out. They had thrown a Turner Brothers barrel into the pit. Luckily, a black glass ale landed on it and smashed it to pieces. The people who lived in the house had money and liked to drink so I did recover some neat bottles. Three green squats came out intact, one from woodbridge conn, one from New York city, and one from Mauch Chunk, pa. Also recovered two quart stoneware beers, a smaller early stoneware beer marked F. OTTO, a few aqua squats, sand pontil black glass ale, french mustard and cologne, and misc. bottles and pipes. Never seem to find as many good bottles as you hope for, but couldn't complain too much when the layer came to an end. It has been awhile since I dug three green squats in one pit. The fill in job was not too fun. The huge piles of dirt where all frozen on top and soaked underneath. Made the best of it and finished her up as the darkness hit. It was great to finally get home and hit the hot shower. Jim[/color]
Just signed up. Dug a 6 footer on Tuesday the 29th. It was cold and windy as hell, but the in-laws were visiting and I had the opportunity to get out. The pit I probed out turned out to be 4' wide, 6' long, and 6-6 1/2' deep. The water started at around 3 feet deep. I dug the pit in three sections. The back right area was my bail hole. I would dig it down and bail until the water dropped. I then took down the rest of the pit, minus my front left corner step for dumping the 5-gallon buckets of water out. The ash layer started at around 2-feet and traveled down to around 5 feet. No bottles were found in these layers. At around five feet down I took down the bail hole area and poof 100's of black seeds floated to the top. I quickly dug around with my rake and pulled out a renne's pain killer medicine. I carefully rooted around and cleared out the area for bailing more. Stoneware quart beer halves and redware sherds were all over. I was surprised the pit was this early as the house did not seem to be. The next whole bottle out was an unmarked quart size stoneware beer. I was pretty excited since there were broken bitter squares around. I kept raking, bailing, and shoveling out. I started to save piles of redware and stoneware to see if I could piece some stuff back together later. The water and slop I was shoveling out was freezing in piles outside the hole. Everything was wet and covered with mud and slop. I nixed the saving sherds idea and decided to just dig it out as fast as I could as it was getting later. There were two broken forest green Hostetters, then an iron pontil green townsend's broken under a storage jar. Then large barrel bitters frags were popping out. They had thrown a Turner Brothers barrel into the pit. Luckily, a black glass ale landed on it and smashed it to pieces. The people who lived in the house had money and liked to drink so I did recover some neat bottles. Three green squats came out intact, one from woodbridge conn, one from New York city, and one from Mauch Chunk, pa. Also recovered two quart stoneware beers, a smaller early stoneware beer marked F. OTTO, a few aqua squats, sand pontil black glass ale, french mustard and cologne, and misc. bottles and pipes. Never seem to find as many good bottles as you hope for, but couldn't complain too much when the layer came to an end. It has been awhile since I dug three green squats in one pit. The fill in job was not too fun. The huge piles of dirt where all frozen on top and soaked underneath. Made the best of it and finished her up as the darkness hit. It was great to finally get home and hit the hot shower. Jim[/color]
] welcome to the site.~matt
