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This post is an addition to an earlier thread,
“Bullet ID, Union or Confederate Manufacture?” by Yak1366.
A bit of history:
Back in 2010 or 11, I took part in an archaeological search of a Civil War battlefield for a historical group owning the land. The Cannon Ball Guy kindly served, via email, as the artifact expert and helped us identify the artifacts and aided us tremendously in the interpretation of that battle. The work done there was closely followed by the nearby National Military Park (with the blessing of the historical group). They accepted and approved the work we conducted there and have since incorporated such knowledge.
Having said all this, one of the issues we struggled with was finding fired 3-groove .58 minies in areas where few, if any, should have been found. In other words, there should have been only Confederate munition fired in this specific area. Although we were finding a majority of .69 round balls and Enfields, we also found these 3-grooves bullets as well - enough to make us wonder what might have been going on at that spot and what were we missing. We sent pictures of some of these minie balls to TCBG. Not surprisingly, TCBG solved the mystery for us by explaining that these particular minie balls contained the obvious ramrod markings left by an Enfield ramrod. We would have never known otherwise!
Anyway, one of the bullets we sent TCBG, was the one pictured below. We thought it might have a ramrod mark. However, he informed us (from my recollection) that it was not a ramrod mark, but a sprue made in the casting process.
After reading Yak1366’s thread, and TCBG’s response to it, I contacted the historian we worked with and cut and pasted TCBG’ response into an email. I asked him if he remembered the below bullet with the sprue, and asked him if he thought it might match TCBG’s description as possibly a Confederate manufactured type. He went to the museum and pulled it from the collection and sent me pictures of it. Of course, the historian kindly asked if I could contact TCBG to ask if this bullet fits the description.
So here I am....
In Yak1366’s thread, The Cannon Ball Guy wrote the following, and is what I sent the historian:
“Your 3-groove Minie bullets are a Confederate-made variety, because they are "nose-cast"... meaning the sprue from the filler hole in the bulletcasting mold is located on the bullet's nose-tip. Instead of being snipped off by the bullet's manufacturer (which is the normal procedure), each of yours had its projecting nose-sprue presssed down by a cone-shaped press, similar to the mouth of a ramrod. In your case, the lower circular groove has a slight pushed-up mound of lead below it, which tells me the cone-shaped press was pushed down onto the bullet's nose too hard, leaving an imprint of its circular lip below the sprue-line. I'm sure the imprint wasn't done by a ramrod because your bullets show absolutely no evidence of having been fired -- nor "pulled." (For certainty about that, I had to enlarge your photos and look very closely to make sure the grooves encircing each bullet's nose-tip were concentric, not the spiral which a bulletworm creates.) If the conical press had not been used to almost totally compress away the casting-sprue on your bullets, they would have been called Confederate "cap-nose" bullets. About "nose-cast" meaning Confederate-made:
The only yankee-made Minie bullets that I can think of at the moment which were nose-cast are the Williams Regulation type, which was formerly but incorrectly called a Harpers Ferry Pistol-Carbine minie. All three versions of the Williams Patent "Bore-Cleaner" bullets are nose-cast, but they are not Minie bullets. By definition, all the versions of Minie bullet have a large-sized cavity in their base. I said "large" in order to exclude the small cavity found in some version of Sharps bullets, and some pistol bullets.An important Caution-note about identifying nose-cast bullets:
Many-many times, I've seen pointed nose bullets whose nose-tip got flattened "accidentally" -- meaning it's not a nose-cast bullet, it is just a damaged pointed-nose bullet. Those can easily be mistaken for a snipped-nose nose-cast bullet. Actual nose-cast bullets whose casting sprue got snipped (cut off with pincers) tend to show a crisp clean cut, usually perfectly-flat and sometimes showing a slight raised line in the center of the flat spot, showing where the cutting jaws of the pincer met. For a good example of a true snipped-nose nose-cast minie, see the photo below. The other photos show and nose-cast minie with uncut sprue, and a "cap-nose" minie.For anybody who is still not quite clear about what a nose-cast minie's nose tip looks like, and what a "snipped sprue" nose-cast minie looks like... all Confederate Gardner minies were nose-cast, and many of them had their projecting casting sprue snipped off, creating a "flat-tipped" Gardner.”
This is the bullet we found years ago and sent to TCBG. At that time, we learned from him that it was a sprue, not a ramrod mark. However, does it by chance conform to TCBG’s above description as Confederate manufactured based on this sprue? If TCBG told us back then that it was or wasn’t we lost the paper trail on it. If so, I apologize to TCBG in advance.
“Bullet ID, Union or Confederate Manufacture?” by Yak1366.
A bit of history:
Back in 2010 or 11, I took part in an archaeological search of a Civil War battlefield for a historical group owning the land. The Cannon Ball Guy kindly served, via email, as the artifact expert and helped us identify the artifacts and aided us tremendously in the interpretation of that battle. The work done there was closely followed by the nearby National Military Park (with the blessing of the historical group). They accepted and approved the work we conducted there and have since incorporated such knowledge.
Having said all this, one of the issues we struggled with was finding fired 3-groove .58 minies in areas where few, if any, should have been found. In other words, there should have been only Confederate munition fired in this specific area. Although we were finding a majority of .69 round balls and Enfields, we also found these 3-grooves bullets as well - enough to make us wonder what might have been going on at that spot and what were we missing. We sent pictures of some of these minie balls to TCBG. Not surprisingly, TCBG solved the mystery for us by explaining that these particular minie balls contained the obvious ramrod markings left by an Enfield ramrod. We would have never known otherwise!
Anyway, one of the bullets we sent TCBG, was the one pictured below. We thought it might have a ramrod mark. However, he informed us (from my recollection) that it was not a ramrod mark, but a sprue made in the casting process.
After reading Yak1366’s thread, and TCBG’s response to it, I contacted the historian we worked with and cut and pasted TCBG’ response into an email. I asked him if he remembered the below bullet with the sprue, and asked him if he thought it might match TCBG’s description as possibly a Confederate manufactured type. He went to the museum and pulled it from the collection and sent me pictures of it. Of course, the historian kindly asked if I could contact TCBG to ask if this bullet fits the description.
So here I am....
In Yak1366’s thread, The Cannon Ball Guy wrote the following, and is what I sent the historian:
“Your 3-groove Minie bullets are a Confederate-made variety, because they are "nose-cast"... meaning the sprue from the filler hole in the bulletcasting mold is located on the bullet's nose-tip. Instead of being snipped off by the bullet's manufacturer (which is the normal procedure), each of yours had its projecting nose-sprue presssed down by a cone-shaped press, similar to the mouth of a ramrod. In your case, the lower circular groove has a slight pushed-up mound of lead below it, which tells me the cone-shaped press was pushed down onto the bullet's nose too hard, leaving an imprint of its circular lip below the sprue-line. I'm sure the imprint wasn't done by a ramrod because your bullets show absolutely no evidence of having been fired -- nor "pulled." (For certainty about that, I had to enlarge your photos and look very closely to make sure the grooves encircing each bullet's nose-tip were concentric, not the spiral which a bulletworm creates.) If the conical press had not been used to almost totally compress away the casting-sprue on your bullets, they would have been called Confederate "cap-nose" bullets. About "nose-cast" meaning Confederate-made:
The only yankee-made Minie bullets that I can think of at the moment which were nose-cast are the Williams Regulation type, which was formerly but incorrectly called a Harpers Ferry Pistol-Carbine minie. All three versions of the Williams Patent "Bore-Cleaner" bullets are nose-cast, but they are not Minie bullets. By definition, all the versions of Minie bullet have a large-sized cavity in their base. I said "large" in order to exclude the small cavity found in some version of Sharps bullets, and some pistol bullets.An important Caution-note about identifying nose-cast bullets:
Many-many times, I've seen pointed nose bullets whose nose-tip got flattened "accidentally" -- meaning it's not a nose-cast bullet, it is just a damaged pointed-nose bullet. Those can easily be mistaken for a snipped-nose nose-cast bullet. Actual nose-cast bullets whose casting sprue got snipped (cut off with pincers) tend to show a crisp clean cut, usually perfectly-flat and sometimes showing a slight raised line in the center of the flat spot, showing where the cutting jaws of the pincer met. For a good example of a true snipped-nose nose-cast minie, see the photo below. The other photos show and nose-cast minie with uncut sprue, and a "cap-nose" minie.For anybody who is still not quite clear about what a nose-cast minie's nose tip looks like, and what a "snipped sprue" nose-cast minie looks like... all Confederate Gardner minies were nose-cast, and many of them had their projecting casting sprue snipped off, creating a "flat-tipped" Gardner.”
This is the bullet we found years ago and sent to TCBG. At that time, we learned from him that it was a sprue, not a ramrod mark. However, does it by chance conform to TCBG’s above description as Confederate manufactured based on this sprue? If TCBG told us back then that it was or wasn’t we lost the paper trail on it. If so, I apologize to TCBG in advance.
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