Need some help with this really old casing. Could it be CW related?

[Nathan6309]

I just recently found this rim fire casing that appears to be mashed at the top. It has a 5/8 inch diameter base and is a little over 1 inch long. It also appears to have no back mark of any kind, except some dents around the edges where the rim was struck to fire the bullet. I’m not exactly good with casings this old so could somebody help me out with this one.

 

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[Fullstock]

Looks like a Spencer Carbine (or rifle) bullet casing.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Nathan, a civil war Spencer cartridge casing is a good guess from simply going by the photo... but nope, because you say your casing is "a bit over 1 inch long," and a Spencer casing is about .92-inch long. I have some dug ones handy, and I measured their length for this post. Your find might be a civil war .52 Sharps & Hankins casing. We need you to borrow a caliper and give us your casing's diameter measurement just slightly above its wide base-rim. If it is out-of-round, you'll need to measure it in several directions and give us the average of the measurements.

 

[pistol-pete]

"Cartridges of the World" shows 56-50 Spencer cases to be 1.156". They were used during and for many years after the War Between the States

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Pistol-Pete, thanks for the length info on a Spencer .56-50 cartridge casing. However, if that is what Nathan found, it means a "No" answer to his question about it being from the civil war. Insofar as I'm aware, the .56-50 Spencer cartridge didn't get issued until after the war's end. That's why it is not shown in the "Handbook Of Civil war Bullets & Cartridges" by James and Dean Thomas. The only civil war Spencer cartridge in that book is the .56-56 casing.

If Nathan's casing turns out to be a .56-50 Spencer, it might be from use by yankee troops during the postwar Occupation of the defeated Confederate States.

For anybody here who doesn't already know:
The SpencerRifle/Carbine's is a .52-caliber (meaning, its gunbarrel bore diameter is .52-inch). But its ammunition is not called .52 cartridges. Spencer casing nomenclature is different from almost every other casing's nomenclature. For the Spencer, the first number (.56-inch) is the casing's diameter slightly above its wide base-rim, and the second number (.56, .52, or .50) is the casing's diameter at its mouth.

We are still waiting for Nathan to provide precise measurement of his casing's diameter just above its wide base-rim. That measurement is an extremely important clue to the casing's correct ID.

 

[Nathan6309]

I'm so sorry about not getting back with the diameter. I have had my big school tests this week and I don't have any calipers at my house. I have not forgot, and I'll try to use some of the ones in my school's wood shop.