Musket ball with odd impressions in it...

[Swartzie]

I dug the most bizarre lead ball today. It has several impressions on it that has me wondering how they got there. The ball for the most part is round. Anyone ever see impressions like this on a ball? The only thing I can think of is ramrod marks if the ball was still somewhat warm and soft when it was rammed in. Or maybe the ball was hit with buckshot. The diameter is around .48

-Swartzie

 

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[easytime]

I've read somewhere that during the CW, soldiers would sometimes load a round on top of another round in the heat of battle.... Thinking they have fired, they would then reload an additional round on top again. Could the impressions be from multiple loads having been fired at the same time?

 

[NGE]

Looks like buck 'n' ball load, multiple rounds of buckshot on top of ball, I think that would make those kind of indentations on each other..IDK. JMO......NGE

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Swartzie, you say the ball is around .48-inch in diameter. For that reason alone, I think we can exclude it as the ball from a Buck-&-Ball load. I've never heard of b&b for a caliber smaller than .54-caliber. Second reason: a fired "main ball" in buck-&-ball shows the imprint of the three buckshot all on the same side of the main ball ...never on several sides. That is because inside the musket's barrel, the buckshot all sit grouped together, either atop the large main ball, or below it.

At "around" .48-inch, your ball is most probably from a civil war 3"-caliber Schenkl Case-Shot artillery shell. When a Schenkl Case-Shot shell impacts on a solid object (such as stony ground or a large rock) and it bursts, the soft lead antipersonnel balls inside it can get crushed together in a way that causes the balls to leave their imprint on each other. That happens even more often with Hotchkiss Case-Shot ammo ...but the lead antipersonnel balls in a Hotchkiss are usually about .58-caliber (which is larger than your ball).

 

[Monty]

Looks like a chewed bullet. Troops sometimes put one in their mouth to chew on to keep their mouth moist when on a long march. Monty

 

[Dano Sverige]

Teeth marks same as Monty. As well as his use for them, the more probable cause (as they're very hard bites) would be "biting the bullet" during an amputation or field operation. My guess anyhow.