Plumb crazy

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B’hamMan

Joined
May 18, 2026
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Recently I went metal detecting looking for a rear corner post on our property. Prior to development of the neighborhood in the early 60’s the land was owned by U.S. Steel. I found the iron corner post about 3“ down. I also got additional signals and found some buried single strand barbed wire running along the back of the property. A few feet along this line I got a very strong signal. Six inches down I unearthed a single bit axe head lying flat. The face up side was more heavily pitted and rusty than the other side. After a couple of day’s soaking in Evapo-rust I was able to make out PLUMB inside a rectangle and 3.2 above that. The top of the head is flat and the beard extends down about an inch and a quarter below the base. What is making my identification difficult is the shoulder is curved. I cannot seem to find any examples of this design except possibly one, that being a Rockaway pattern. So far I’ve been unable to attach photos to this post so I’m hoping from the description someone can confirm the ID or steer me in the right direction. I would love to know the approximate age of the axe. I found no remnants of a handle and I’m wondering if someone buried the head on purpose.🤔 I’m sure being a suburb of Birmingham a replacement handle would have been available at a downtown hardware store back in the day.

Thanks in advance for any help!
 
By "shoulder" do you mean the bottom of the eye, or do you mean the jawline of the axe? To post photos here you need to host the image elsewhere and use IMG tags around the URL or have a paid membership, in which case you can upload directly. Many Plumb axes of the era it seams like you're describing have round lugs, with many folks confusing the more common round lugged Jersey pattern axes for Rockaways.
 
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RevDevil

Thread 'How do I post pictures from a.....'

Whatever kind of device you have? There may be an app for that. Look for a picture/file sharing host. Prefreably one that is NOT porn related. You can use imgur.com, flickr, or any others. There are tutorials online on the "How To" part, search for it. In the mean time, searching here for threads on the subject is also a good idea. It's not a new question by any means.


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Bob
 
Great information, thanks! I got the Rockaway term and “shoulder” from an eBay listing. It was the only listing I could find anywhere that matched exactly the axe head I found. Interesting learning the nomenclature for axe heads.
 
Plumb Rockaways look a little different from normal Rockaway axes, and they made them at the same time they made round-lugged Kentucky and Jersey axes, which often get labeled as Rockaways on ebay due either to ignorance or deception since Rockaways are considered rather "en vogue" and more collectible than the others. Now, what you have COULD be a Rockaway, but it's more likely one of the others. Round lug Jerseys are considerably more common.
 
Several of those I’ve shown this to and described how and where it was found had the same questions - how and why did it come to be apparently intentionally buried there? I suppose everyone likes a mystery and this is one with few if any leads. When our house was built in 1964 there was 40 acres of woods behind us that was owned by U.S. Steel. A lot of that has been developed but there is enough wooded area left to support deer, fox, coyotes, etc. USS still has the mineral rights to what’s underneath all of us though the nearest coal mines were miles away. Less than a half mile away is a church that was founded in 1853 and some of the descendants of those founders still live in the community, so it’s the history of the place that really intrigues me.
 
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