nice old bullet

[relicmom]

after digging about 6 holes few and far between and nothing but junk, i managed to pull out a bullet.....i would assume it is civil war era....

 

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[parsonwalker]

For sure! A yankee 3 ring minie, and the base indicates a "swaged" bullet.
Google Image Result for http://www.greybirdrelics.com/swage%2520star%2520(1)_small.jpg

 

[beez0404]

That's a great bullet

 

[vpnavy]

 

[Old Dude]

Nice find. You're in a state that probably doesn't think twice when finding one, but I feel lucky to have mine. Great find.

 

[CoilyGirl]

Very nice find!

 

[WHADIFIND]

For sure! A yankee 3 ring minie, and the base indicates a "swaged" bullet.

I have a bullet like that except it has 6 little marks like that one. What was the purpose of "swaging" a bullet?

Here's a pic of mine, if that helps.

 

[Old Dude]

This might answer some questions.
http://www.chuckhawks.com/benefits_lead.htm

 

[relicmom]

For sure! A yankee 3 ring minie, and the base indicates a "swaged" bullet.

that's interesting.....the items i have found on our property have leaned toward yankee......and it's rumored that this house was part of the underground railroad.....so that would make sense......

 

[Tnmountains]

I have never found one nor can I remember seeing one posted. Great find.

 

[462]

Here's a picture of a 6 point swaged three ringer I found a couple months ago!

 

[Davers]

I have never dug a Swaged Minie b
before , but I hear their pretty common in the Southern & Western Theaters of the War.

NOTE. The Minie in the Greybird Site has a small Star at the deepest part of the base.

Davers.

Still a good Find.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

WHADIFIND asked:
> What was the purpose of "swaging" a bullet?

Here's a cut-&-paste of my What-Is-It forum reply to an ID-request about that type of bullet:
--------------------------------
That specific version of bullet is called a "Machine-Pressed-&-Turned" (MP&T) bullet. It was not made by pouring molten lead into a bulletmold. Instead, a lead slug was placed into a machine which compressed the lead slug into the desired shape of bullet. Then, body-grooves were cut into the bullet's sides by a lathe. That is why it is called a "machine-pressed" and "turned" bullet. Due to a naming error in an old book on civil war bullets, we civil war relic diggers call that type a "swaged" bullet, but in actuality it was not made by swaging the lead.

The indented lines in your MP&T bullet's base cavity were made by the part of the lathe machine which held the bullet firmly in position while the grooves were being cut into it. On rare occasions, the bullet "slipped" a little bit when the lathe's cutting-tool first dug into it, causing small ridges to form alongside the indented lines in the base. See the photo below.

The 3-groove .58-caliber "Machine-Pressed-&-Turned" minies with 5 or 6 "spokes" in their conical base-cavity do not show up on battlefields until 1863. (For example, they did not yet exist at the time of the 1862 Antietam battle in Maryland.) Therefore, they are somewhat rarer than the common moldcast-lead versions of 3-groove minies, which were used throughout 1861-65. However, by early-1864 the yankees were using their bullet-making machines to produce multi-millions of the incorrectly-named "swaged" bullets. They have been dug in significant quantities at 1864-65 battlesites in nearly all of the Southern states. So, they are not greatly rarer than their cast-lead cousins.

Rarity-rating info, for Tnmountains:
Rarity-rating on a 1-to-10 scale (with a 10 rating being the rarest). I would rate the unfired 5-spokes MP&T minie at 2.5, and the unfired 6-spokes version at 3. I think their price at civil war relic-shows is a more "tangible" indicator. Typical unfired yankee .58-caliber 3-groove CAST-LEAD minies sell for about $2. At civil war relic shows here in Virginia, nice-condition unfired 5-spokes MP&T ones "retail" for about $5, and 6-spokes MP&T minies "retail" for about $6.