Confederate Clay shot ??? solved as Shooter marble

nova treasure

Bronze Member
Mar 2, 2008
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Kentucky
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Primary Interest:
Relic Hunting
I have heard over the years that the Confederates in desperation toward the end of the War had made canister shot out of clay and than kilned it with it covered in zinc. I have never seen one until possibly now. I haven't weighed it yet, but it does weigh considerably less than iron or lead but with a hard coating . It is 1 1/2 " in diameter and crudely made. it was found at a Union camp, with several buttons including the one in the pic, bullets and camp relics. So I was thinking, if it is a clay canister shot than maybe it was taken as a souvenir :dontknow:.

I am sure the actual weight will help determine, but any thoughts will be appreciated.

Bill

I thought I would add a couple more pics, just to show alittle more detail of the ball. the dark color areas around the ball is like a coating and than the rusted color is where it had sat on something of iron for a period of time, but nothing was found in the hole with it.
 

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Re: Confederate Clay canister shot ???

I take no pleasure in popping a sincere relic-digger's bubble ...but I have to tell you the clay Confederate cannon-ammunition story is abolutely definitely false. There's a Historical reason why it is false, and several scientifically-solid reasons it is false. I'll start with the science:
1- The blast of firing will shatter clay projectiles, even "hardened" ones.
2- A 1.5-inch clay ball (even if it didn't shatter upon firing) does not possess enough weight to give it "penetration energy" (or bone-breaking energy) beyond a short distance from the cannon's muzzle.
3- Related to reason #2, a "fired" lightweight object will not travel nearly as far as a same-sized heavy object -- assuming the same amount of propellant energy is used for both. That is why you can throw a golfball a lot farther than you can throw a pingpong ball.

The Historical reason:
The basic premise/assumption of the story is a false history. Even at the very end of the civil war, the Confederates had not run out of the junk-grade iron they used for making cannonballs, canister-balls, and case-shot balls (which are "one-time-usage" items). The Confederacy ultimately did run short of the high-grade iron which is necessary for making "repeated use" items like cannons, and armor-plate for ironclad ships.

What you found has turned up previously, notably near Chattanooga TN, where an enormous quantity of clay balls was found by a relic-hunter who claimed they were Confederate case-shot balls. What you found is one form of ceramic tumbler-media. Google-search the term "tumbler media" ...and especially, "ceramic tumbler media." The clay balls are used in a Tumbler-Mill machine )or barrel), to clean/polish a quantity of raw-cast products.
 

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Re: Confederate Clay canister shot ???

I agree that it would be very hard to imagine they would use something like clay even zinc coated in a projectile, but I don't think this paticular piece was used in a tumbler. I guess it's possible but doubtful :dontknow:.

Bill
 

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Re: Confederate Clay canister shot ???

Do you think it could be an antique Bennington marble, shooter size? Does it have any resting point 'eyes?' Breezie
 

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Re: Confederate Clay canister shot ???

I was thinking the same thing Breezie. looks like a "shooter" to me.....NGE
 

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Re: Confederate Clay canister shot ???

No, folks... Nova Treasure's item cannot be a marble. The photo shows it is "significantly" lumpy-bumpy. Marbles are carefully manufactured to be quite round, so they'll roll straight. Lumps-&-bumps on their surface mean they'll wobble erratically as they roll. Please closely examine photos of marbles, even antique clay ones, and you'll see they are all quite round.

Related:
The "has-to-be-perfectly-round" rule also applies to cannonballs. They had to manufactured as a "true sphere," because being lumpy/bumpy (or out-of-round) would cause the cannonball to jam in the cannon's bore during loading or firing. If the cannonball jams during loading, the cannon is out-of-action until the crew can remove it ...which is not very easy to do -- especially in a combat situation. Even worse, if the cannonball jams in the cannon's bore upon firing, it can cause the cannon itself to burst explosively, killing the guncrew.

So, the Ordnance Inspector's job was to carefully inspect every cannonball (checking for perfect-roundness, and measuring its exact size, before the cannonballs even left the arsenal where they were manufactured. Any projectiles which failed to pass the Ordnance Inspector's tests were sent back to the ironfurnace to be completely melted down and re-cast in new molds.

So remember... anytime you see a "cannonball" on Ebay (or an antiques shop) which is out-of-round, or is lumpy/bumpy, it is definitely not an actual cannonball. Please don't spend good money on a false relic.
 

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Re: Confederate Clay canister shot ??? added pics

just looking for more opinion,

Bill
 

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Re: Confederate Clay canister shot ??? added pics

Yea all you nay sayers just wait, when Nova finds that giant confederate slingshot it's he that will have the last laugh. ;D
 

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Re: Confederate Clay canister shot ??? added pics

Digger54 said:
Yea all you nay sayers just wait, when Nova finds that giant confederate slingshot it's he that will have the last laugh. ;D

LMBO, I should change the thread title, but I really don't know what the ball is, so it's a good catch title in the mean time. I promised my son when i had some time that I would post a couple more pics and I always keep my word.

hmm, a Confederate slingshot, with the thousands of Soldiers that had passed or camped at this paticular area. a slingshot would have been interesting to have.

Bill
 

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Re: Confederate Clay canister shot ??? added pics

Here's one I recovered off a camp Hut floor excavation last summer, I'm thinking a field made shooter marble or some other game piece.
 

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Re: Confederate Clay canister shot ??? added pics

Va Dave said:
Here's one I recovered off a camp Hut floor excavation last summer, I'm thinking a field made shooter marble or some other game piece.

That's 5 people with Breezie being the first suggesting it's a shooter marble and with your added pic from a camp, I will call it identified. Thanks Breezie, Va Dave and everyone else that replied.

Bill
 

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I am wondering about your objections to the idea that porcelain coated in metal, presumably lead (the materials used to form the objects that were said to be found in Tennessee), could be used as grapeshot. I purchased one of these recently. I don’t see any scientific reason why it could not have served as grapeshot. I have trouble believing that tumbler media would be coated in lead, and if these things were marbles, why would anyone have covered the beautiful white porcelain with lead?

Here are some things that occur to me:

1. Porcelain has a high compressive strength (it's harder than granite). That's why it can be used for dental crowns and hip replacements. At a compressive strength of 25,000 psi, why couldn’t porcelain have withstood the force of being fired from a civil war cannon? (By the way, the southeastern United States is rich in kaolinite, the primary ingredient, along with feldspar or quartz, in porcelain.)

2. The kinetic energy of a projectile is relative to both its mass and its acceleration. Unless you know the muzzle velocity of the projectile, its specific mass, and the energy needed to penetrate a specific target, it's not possible to judge how effective it would be as a projectile. If lead-coated porcelain grapeshot were accelerated to a high enough velocity it could certainly do horrific damage to a human target.

3. The comparison of a golf ball and ping-pong ball does not tell the whole story. Yes, you can throw a golf ball a greater distance than you can throw a ping-pong ball because of the difference between them in mass, but try increasing the density of the golf ball by a factor of 10,000 and see how far you can throw it. Newton's second law, F = MA, indicates that if you fired a ping-pong ball and a golf ball from cannons loaded with the same charge, in a frictionless environment both would have the same ability to do work. The more massive golf ball would move at a slower speed and the lighter ping-pong ball would move at a faster speed, but they would have exactly the same ability to do work when they reached their targets. Wind resistance accounts for the fact that you can’t throw a ping-pong ball as far as a golf ball. A ping-pong ball has little mass, so wind resistance is a significant factor. As you increase the mass, however, the wind resistance, which is the same for same-size and shape objects, becomes decreasingly a factor.

F = MA indicates that as you increase the mass of the projectile its acceleration decreases if the force acting upon it remains constant. If you use the same cannon and the same charge to fire projectiles that range from having almost no mass to having extreme mass you could expect the following: increasing the mass of the projectile would cause it to travel farther but only up to the point that the increased mass made wind resistance negligible. After that, increasing the mass would cause a decrease in the acceleration of the projectile. If you increased the mass enough, the force of the cannon's explosion would no longer be sufficient to accelerate the object at all. In other words, light objects CAN sometimes travel much farther than heavy objects of the same size and shape when the same force is applied to both.

I see no reason why these objects could not have served as grapeshot. Whether they actually did or not is, of course, another story.
 

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Help

Don't mean to hijack the post but anyone know what this is? Its a Lead coated nature Stone??
 

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Found these at the base of a small mountain in Atlanta. A friend of mine said they were possible grape shot. Took them to a lady that runs a Civil War relic/memorabilia store and she basically laughed at me because they were made out of “concrete” is what she said instead of led. Any help in figuring out what these are would be greatly appreciated.
 

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Fascinating mystery stuff! Crusader, it looks like someone put a piece of spherical granite inside a musket ball mould and poured molten lead in around it. There was not enough lead to fill the space between the mould and the stone. A pour seam overlap is visible in the top of the photo and the mould seam impression goes around.
HMM, approximately spherical, lumpy balls of concrete or grainy rock of a variety of sizes nicely arranged for display. I'm wondering whether they are from a tumbler, originally less spherical than they are now?
 

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Heismansmommy said:
> Found these at the base of a small mountain in Atlanta.
> A friend of mine said they were possible grape shot. Took them to a lady that
> runs a Civil War relic/memorabilia store and she basically laughed at me
> because they were made out of “concrete” is what she said instead of led [lead].
> Any help in figuring out what these are would be greatly appreciated.

Because this is (mostly) a metal-detector users forum, when you said you found these "balls," we assumed you meant you found them with a metal detector. But of course, that can't be what happened if the balls are not made of metal. Did you find 'em with a detector, or not?

Simple solution:
Hit one of the "balls" very hard with a hammer. If it is made of lead it will simply get a flat-spot... whereas a concrete (or ceramic) one will tend to break -- or remain completely undamaged.

Please let us know the result of that test.
 

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