Civil War guys take a look....found in one of Stonewalls camp sites

[TrpnBils]

Civil War guys take a look....found in one of Stonewall's camp sites

I was MDing a field today that was a known Stonewall Jackson camp. It's been hit hard as far back as the 70's and I only had about 45 minutes to kill there but I found a 3-ringer fragment and this thing.... It is a 5/8" diameter, not quite perfectly circular oxidized lead disc that is 1/8" thick. The oxidation is identical to that of the fragment I found. There are no markings and it doesn't appear to have been broken off of anything.

Any ideas?

 

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[creskol]

could it be the base to a Williams cleaner?

 

[TrpnBils]

No idea....never heard of that. To Google!

 

[duggap]

Hard to tell from the pic, but maybe a lead seal.

 

[TrpnBils]

Hard to tell from the pic, but maybe a lead seal.

For what?

I looked up the Williams cleaner bullet and it sure looks like the base to it, but this seems very clean and not like it ever broke off of something....hmmm.

 

[trikikiwi]

As duggap said, it might be a lead seal, known as bag seal or bale seal.
Does it show any possibility of any holes on the edge of the object?

Mike

 

[recondigger]

Could be a bullet turned into a game piece or the guy was bored. See what the weight is and it should give you a better idea

Dig until your arm falls off

 

[TrpnBils]

As duggap said, it might be a lead seal, known as bag seal or bale seal.
Does it show any possibility of any holes on the edge of the object?

Mike

On the edge as in the edge of the face of the object, or like INTO the edge of the disc towards the center? I'm not seeing either, but I'll look more carefully when I get home tonight because it may just be caked with dirt. I only rinsed it off last night a little to see if it had writing on it or anything. In fact, if you look at the picture I posted, there's a mark around the 1 o'clock position that I initially thought might have been a hole that was filled with dirt. I didn't pursue it though because I'm not seeing anything on the opposite side. I'll check it out tonight though...

Also, I looked these up and most of them have writing on them. I'm assuming since lead is soft it's not too hard to find one that the words have been worn off?

Could be a bullet turned into a game piece or the guy was bored. See what the weight is and it should give you a better idea

Dig until your arm falls off

Possibly....what would weight tell me though? It's definitely lead, but beyond that I'm stumped.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

To help you figure out whether or not your disc is a cut-off Williams "Cleaner" bullet's base-disc, I measured several of those with my digital caliper. A Williams base-disc is typically .55 to .56-inch in diameter, and .10-inch thick.

Just a friendly suggestion -- if you don't already own a digital caliper, it's well worth the $15 cost for a relic-digger to buy, because super-precise measuring of bullets, buttons, buckles, and coins is often needed to correctly identify those relics. A good-quality digital caliper can be bought for $15-$20 on Ebay, and at Harbor Freight Tools (either online ot at one of their stores), and at Home Depot.

 

[parsonwalker]

I'd vote for lead hammered or carved into a checker (for the game). Done quite often and found in many camps!

 

[TrpnBils]

Any of these would be cool...I doubt I'll ever know for sure, but it's neat to look at the possibilities!