About This Tool
A second pair of blacksmith-forged wrought iron scissors was found by Fred Nolan embedded in earth near one of the thirty-foot shafts he dug on his property between 1963 and 1964. Nolan described them to Crooker as a pair of very old handmade scissors, forged by a blacksmith, and said that Dan Blankenship had shown considerable interest in them. Nolan stated that his pair is not identical to the scissors Blankenship later recovered beneath the flood system at Smith's Cove, but that the two are somewhat alike in configuration. Crooker's book carries a photograph captioned to the same effect. The Blankenship pair was examined by the Smithsonian Institution and identified as Spanish-American work predating the mid-nineteenth century; no comparable examination of the Nolan pair is recorded. The date range assigned here follows the Blankenship pair by analogy only and should be treated as provisional. Two hand-forged scissors from separate parts of the island, found by rival searchers within a few years of each other, is a pattern that neither man explained.
Historical Context
William S. Crooker, Oak Island Gold (1993), chapter 23; photograph in same
Where It Was Found
Found at Embedded in earth near one of the two thirty-foot shafts Nolan dug on his property. Location: Oak Island, Nova Scotia, Canada.
