Todays Privy Finds

[Bottleman]

Finally I get to see the finds from a real digger! Not to be rude but am glad to see the finds from an early pontiled hole rater then some 1920s dump. Did you find any sodas in the hole or just meds?

~~Tom

 

[baltbottles]

Hi Tom,

Sadly there was only one soda in the hole and it was smashed. It was a green pontiled W. Coughlan / Baltimore. Baltimore is a tough town to dig sodas in and when you do find some there usually Philly or washingtion dc I think last year we dug about 150 privies and we found 4 baltimore squats 2 Dc squats and about 20 from philly. But it was a great year for pontiled meds and stoneware. You been finding anything good?

Chris

 

[Bottleman]

Come to think of it, I really haven’t seen very many Baltimore sodas out there at all. I am surprised though for how big of a town it was back then. I actually collect squats from Philada but don’t usually get the chance to dig them where I live. I have not been out digging for the last few weeks because of the snow but I did some privy digging in Pottsville and reading, PA last month. I posted some pics a few weeks ago of the 15 foot brick liner we dug in reading which turned up some pretty nice pontiled bottles.

Good luck digging, Tom

 

[wootten]

okay okay-loved reading this thread-first of all how do you all dig in the winter-? Where do you find these sites-my husband has found bottles out while hunting and such-
next-tell me again what is pontiled again-I am so trying to absorb all of this-I have a picture of the bottles that I have listed and talked about with so many FINE people-let me know what you think-I love all the new people here and vlaue everyone's help-I hope others look through the old threads-should we all start fresh again? wendy

 

[wootten]

here is the picture-

 

[Bottleman]

Hello wootten. You have to be able to stand up to the cold if you want to dig in the winter and defiantly dress for it! Because the ground is frozen it’s pretty hard to break through the icy layer. I usually use a large steel bar to bash the icy. It takes a while unless you have a hole already opened up from an earlier dig. I just went back to a dump the other day where the ground was frozen but after I crawled back in my hole about 4 feet it was not frozen and was about 50 degrees. Because of the heat of the earth, anything below 3 feet down will stay about 50 degrees all year around. Your bottles date from the 1890s-1930s. For a starting digger, I would just say to look over hill sides in and around towns for dumps and look for ash and broken glass on the top. You will very rarely find a good bottle on the top so you have to dig for them. The deeper you go the older the bottles will get. The best bottles that you will ever find will most likely come out of outhouses. That’s where Baltbottles got his nice pontiled ones from. Here is a link that will tell you how to tell the age of a bottle and tell you what a pontil is: pontiled bottles

Hope this helps, Tom (Bottleman12)

 

[wootten]

Tom-how cool that is so helpful-do you all just dig on land and hope that no one minds? I know that sounds dumb-so I just had my husband read your message-he says yes I know-geezzzzzzzzzzzz-he said it is fun to find where the outhouses were-I said fine-you can ask about the bottles that you find-I was excited about this news-ohhhhhhhhhhhhh-we will probably get new stuff (or find the old ones in the shed that we do not have in the house later) it is so cold and yucky-two teenagers keep you from anything but them-wendy