Here now. I am very pleased with the outcome. I am showing the " digging stick" next to a Fijian pole club a few cm longer than the "digging stick" which is 111cm. If you have handled Fijian pole clubs you will know they are made from heavy hard wood. The "digging stick" weight is 1.517kg a little heavier than the pole club at 1.432kg. After research I was expecting the shield to be made of a light soft wood. This shield is made of a heavy hard wood weighing 2.247kg. Both items show vintage and do not look like recent tourist work. The paint is not modern polymer paint, I say this as I paint myself, landscape in oils. The shield has many tool marks, I have scrutinised these marks with a x10 loop and cannot make up my mind as to whether these marks are from a metal rasp or file or the scraping and juddering over and over again of a simple tool such as a sharped flatted iron nail or glass or stone tool or a combination of all. The stick shows repair with a resinous substance. It is very difficult to show all the subtleties through a camera on to a PC. Knowing the area was just a telegraph outpost with a couple of huts until mining in the 1930s I see no reason not to think the pieces to be from at least the mid 20th century. I add one of my paintings, West Bay looking to Burton Bradstock, so that I do not appear to BS.
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