✅ SOLVED Old Musketball

[coinsareawesome]

I bought this in a museum store. I know what it is(obviously), but I want to know how old it is and when it's from.

 

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[Bryanhashemi]

Need size of it

 

[NOLA_Ken]

Hard telling on age of a musketball. If you can get ahold of some calipers and give us the exact diameter we might be able to give you some possibilities of a gun and general age, but keep in mind musketballs have been in pretty much constant production for hundreds of years and there's basically no difference between one made today and one made hundreds of years ago. The white patina suggests it's an older one, but modern home made balls will grow that same patina over time since they tend to be purer lead with fewer alloys mixed in than a commercially made ball.

The best way to judge age comes from knowing the history of the place the ball comes from, but since you said you bought it at a store, there's probably no way to know that.

 

[coinsareawesome]

It's about 1/2 inch in diameter.

 

[coinsareawesome]

I bought it at a museum store. The guy there worked with Mel Fisher discovering shipwrecks.

 

[NOLA_Ken]

"About half an inch" leaves a lot of possibilities, .44, .45, .50, .54 calibers are all around half an inch. Pictured here is one of my modern .50 cal rifle balls. In the world of bullets small measurements can make a big difference.

 

[coinsareawesome]

It is 12 millimeters.

 

[gunsil]

Musket ball is somewhat of a misnomer. Muskets were originally military arms, and your ball is way smaller than those used in muskets. Most folks fail to realize that there were probably as many round balls fired in non military use as in military use. Target practice, hunting, etc. The round balls were used in pistols, smoothbore long arms, shotguns, rifles, and even slingshots. They came in a plethora of diameters as many early guns were made here and in Europe in many different calibers. Muzzle loading guns were used well into the late 1800s by folks who couldn't afford the more modern guns and their more expensive ammo. There was a re-birth of muzzle loading hunting and shooting started in the 1960s and it has grown ever since. Lead grows a white oxide on it's surface with time and exposure to the elements. This oxide coating then seals the lead and it will no longer oxidize further. Hence, it is almost impossible to tell the difference between one that has been in the ground for 75-100 years from one that has been in the ground for 200 years or more. Even finding one near or on a known battle area doesn't mean it was necessarily used by troops since pretty much all battlefields were hunted in before and after the battle. As military weapons became outdated they were sold off as surplus and often used as is or lightened down for hunting guns. You have an old round ball, but any attempt at positive ID of it's history will be simply conjecture.

 

[coinsareawesome]

Probably a fake. Thanks.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Probably not a fake. Now that you've told us the ball's diameter-measurement is 12 millimeters (which translates to approximately .47 or .48-inch), I can tell you that it is the correct diameter to be a .50-caliber rifle ball. There were a lot of .50-caliber rifles manufactured in the very-late-Colonial era (latter-1700s to early-1800s).

 

[coinsareawesome]

Thank you all for your replies.

 

[HomeGuardDan]

I concur with Cannonball and gunsil. I will add one other comment. The spru mark looks more so like ones I find in mid 1800's sites than earlier. (dimple in the spru and wider) This is not scientific, just expierence in recovering many of them over the years. I would say most likely from a .50 hunting (Kentucky or Pennsylvania type) rifle. Typically the ones I find in 1700's or earlier sites have a smaller spru and a very crude mold seam. It could be 1800's or even 1900s. My gut tells me if I found that one that it would be 1825-1870, but that is just a gut feeling.