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Backyard buried treasure.... I'm stumped

249K views 1K replies 295 participants last post by  3d cad 
#1 ·
:confused:

OK, what the heck is this thing?






It's aluminum, about 2 1/2" thick, and as far as I can tell it's LONG! I kept digging and digging but didn't want to trash too much more of the yard. It's actually shaped like a thin walled I-beam.... like a track of some sort. It's level and about 1 foot deep.

I was walking the yard with the metal detector and had a small hit. I dug down 4 or 5 inches and hit a slab of rock, 6 more inches and an old charcoal grill pan, then 5 more inches and THIS thing showed up.
I have No idea what it is. Guesses?
 
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#7 ·
You might want to check with your local utitily company, to make sure it's not something that should be dug up...If it is not theirs, the way the price of scrap alumnium is going now you might want to scrap it out and buy more parts for the camaro!!:p :D
 
#13 ·
Looks like a piece of aluminum scaffold?? Being you found some other stuff makes me think the builders dug a hole and burried the trash that may have been on the property durring the construction of the house.
When my father built his house he burried 3 junk cars and an old log home that were on the lot when he bought it.
Know any history on the property?
 
#14 ·
Oh no!!! A gas line!!! Hehehehehe just kidding!
Seriously, try to pin point the length with your detector. The width will help also if your detector will do it. Looks to me like you wouldn't have to dig a very large area if you just dig at it's widest point.

I do a little treasure hunting myself. I haven't had it out in a while but plan to do some more soon. I built my house on an old house place that dates back before the turn of the century. Heck there wasn't even a road here when it was established. The deed shows the road went in around 1926. I have "worked" my front yard several times and have come of with some cool stuff. The only thing I cannot understand is most of the coins I have located are dated in the mid '20's. My back yard is littered with a lot of old zinc canning jar lids and the old man that lived here was a shoe cobbler so I am finding a lot of aluminum show arches. But, that is what makes this hobby so cool, you never know what you'll find!
 
#15 ·
Bomb shelter came to my mind too. Does your Guard company have one of the ground Xray machines? Borrow it and take a pic and post it here ;)
 
#18 ·
The house was built in '68. The neighborhood and surrounding area was all farm land and forest until then. That piece of aluminum is out in the backyard.... about 12-14 feet from the back of the house. Directly off the back of the house on the family room side is a big concrete slab poured in '69 as a patio. The "thing" is about 4 feet out from that. The backyard is not on a hill.

I bought the kid a metal detector for X-mas and I've been chomping at the bit to use it ever since. The weather and ground conditions are finally perfect.... warm and wet. I had a decent hit and started digging and the detector just kept going off so I kept digging with bigger shovels. ;) The wife was at the grocery store. I first hit a 14x14 slab of some kind of hard stone and STILL had a hit so I dug more and came to the old charcoal grill. After I yanked it out I was STILL getting hits, finding a lot of garbage and rotted wood. Then THE MOTHERLOAD!

I thought for sure someone buried a box and hid it beneath the stone and the grill, which was rusted and rotted away. But the more I tried to unearth the "thing", it got longer and longer. I stopped at about 4 feet. The first owners poured the patio so that must be where all the garbage came from.... things like plastic clothes pins, an old rag, a tin can which I couldn't read, a toy car wheel.... that kind of junk. All of it between 6-12 inches down. There's no way the detector would have found this thing. I'm surprized it hit on the grill because it was 4 inches below that rock slab which was 4 inches below the grass.

Sixd8rs said it might be part of a scaffold. That seems pretty close to me because it's shaped like an I-beam, as if you could insert something inside along it's edges. But it's 2 1/2" wide?

The reason I stopped digging is just as Wilmarwil said.... so I could probe the ground and see how long it is first. And the neighbor was wondering how much aluminum goes for too. ;)

In the three days I've been walking the yard, I've only found about $.75, nothing older than 1961, some nails and construction staples, pieces of foil, a toy VW bus that was obviously shredded by a lawn mower years ago, this "thing" and a whole bunch of little hits that I haven't dug up. Yet! ;)
 
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