✅ SOLVED 2 bullet question

[scoremaster]

Solved 2 bullet question

well today was a great first time hunt with a new friend and a new site with a new detecter and of course it was my birthday . wow thats alot that went on today huh . but onto the question at hand we were digging in a campsite and the time period i guess kinda overlaps with the french and indian war through the civil war area . from what i can tell they are approx. 50 cal. and i was thinking maybe the one is a spencer but may be wrong for sure and the other one that has the point on it i have no idea and have spent some of the evening searching here on the world wide web to see what i could come up with and just can't seem to find any matchs .
also these were dug in alleghany county md
so with that being said i would apprec. any help i can get thank you in advance for all your help

thanks,
Scott

 

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[TheCannonballGuy]

Precise diameter measurement is crucially necessary for accurate bullet-ID. But since you say both of yours are "approximately .50-caliber" I can say that they appear to be generic civil war yankee .58-caliber (or perhaps .54-caliber) 3-groove Minie-balls. Both of them have been fired. The one of the right tumbled before it hit the ground, and by pure chance it landed butt-first, and hard enough "mushroom" the base outwards. The bullet on the left is what we civil war bullet scholars call a "hard-rammed" minie. That means the rifle's bore had gotten caked with gunpowder ash from repeated firing without cleaning, which made ramming the minie down the bore require much more force with the ramrod than normal. (There are documented reports of civil war soldiers having to use a rock to pound the ramrod down the rifle's bore after a day of continuous firing -- no spare time for cleaning the bore). Your minie's "nose" got compressed into a Springfield Rifle ramrod's mouth so hard that it took the mouth's pointed conical shape. The circular flat rim below the pointed cone was made by the rim of the ramrod's mouth.

I should mention, an Enfield Rifle ramrod's mouth is shaped like a shallow bowl, not conical. So, we know your hard-rammed minie was not loaded by an Enfield ramrod.

The photos below show some other examples of conical-tipped .58 minies created by hard-ramming with a Springfield ramrod.

 

[tennessee digger]

Great answer Pete. I learn something all the time from you. Not only good I.D. on the rammed bullet that scoremaster dug but also a good lesson about ramrods. I appreciate you sharing your vast knowledge with us.

 

[scoremaster]

awsome cannonballguy thank you for the info glad someone knows about such stuff .

once again thank you ,
Scott