Real or Not

[Bridge End Farm]

I found this and would like to know if it is real or not, and also live or not


20 inches in circumference and very very heavy





Have to assume real for now I guess so I have it in a safe place

 

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[Charlie P. (NY)]

20 inches! Did you mean circumference or diameter? If diameter it would weigh a ton!

The Dictator, the famous 13 inch mortor of Vicksburg siege fame used a ball that weighed 200 pounds and was the largest "common" mortor. Never heard tell of a 20" mortor.

 

[Bridge End Farm]

20 inches! Did you mean circumference or diameter? If diameter it would weigh a ton!

The Dictator, the famous 13 inch mortor of Vicksburg siege fame used a ball that weighed 200 pounds and was the largest "common" mortor. Never heard tell of a 20" mortor.

Good catch 20 inches in circumference not diameter right around the middle and it does weighs 40-50 pounds I guess

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

The size of actual Artillery balls is listed by their diameter, instead of circumference. So to determine whether or not your ball is an Artillery ball, let's do the math. A circumference of 20 inches, divided by Pi (3.1416) equals 6.37-inches in diameter.

Now, we go to the US (and Confederate) Ordnance Manual's charts for the various sizes of Artillery balls used in America from the Revolutionary War through the civil war.
www.civilwarartilelry.com/shottables.htm
The historical data charts there show that there was no Artillery ball which was 6.37-inches in diameter. But, in case your measurement of the ball's circumference is not perfectly correct... I'll mention that the Manual does have a ball which is "close" to the diameter of yours... a 32-pounder caliber cannonball, which was 6.25-inches in diameter. So, we must move to the next step in the identification process.

The Ordnance Manual says a 32-Pounder caliber Solid-Shot (not hollow) cannonball, made of cast-iron, weighed precisely 32.4 pounds (32 lb 6.4 oz). You'll need to weigh your ball on a precision weighing scale, such as a Postal Shipping scale, because typical household bathroom weighing-scales are notoriously inaccurate.

I should mention:
A hollow (explosive) cannonball which is approximately the same size as your ball weighed 22.5 pounds when empty, plus about 1.5 pounds of gunpowder, for a total of 24 pounds. You said your ball weighs "40-50 pounds I guess." So, if your guess is even "close" to your ball's actual weight, it is a Solid-Shot (not hollow, explosive) ball. The only way a Solid-Shot can hurt you is to drop it on your foot.

In summary:
If your approximately 6.37"-diameter ball weighs more than 32 pounds 6 ounces, it is definitely not a cannonball. Weighing more than that amount means your ball is made of Steel, which is typically about 10% heavier than simple cast-iron. No steel cannonballs are known to have ever been used in America. The only known Steel cannonballs were British Navy 10"-caliber Solid-Shots that were made in Britain, and weighed about 140 pounds. None were used here in America.

 

[EccentricInTexas]

If it is a live round there will be a circular spot where the charge hole was sealed up. Usually screwed in then set with a chisel. A long time ago when I was a kid my neighbor found a cannonball on the rail road tracks in Georgetown Texas. We played with it all day then showed it to my dad as he was a civil war buff. He instantly realized that it was live and called the city. The cop they sent picked it up and after my dad had showed him pictures in the book of it just tossed it into his car and drove off. Later we found out that he set it on the Chiefs desk as he had heard the Chief also like civil war stuff. He knew what it was too and after they evacuated the building they had the Austin bomb squad pick it up and dispose of it. I am pretty we used up most of our luck that day as we had been throwing that thing around for hours before my dad got home.

 

[nhbenz]

-just thought I'd say glad to see you you back! Haven't seen that avatar for a while!

 

[Bridge End Farm]

-just thought I'd say glad to see you you back! Haven't seen that avatar for a while!

Yeah been gone a while thanks I still do some digging

 

[Bridge End Farm]

The size of actual Artillery balls is listed by their diameter, instead of circumference. So to determine whether or not your ball is an Artillery ball, let's do the math. A circumference of 20 inches, divided by Pi (3.1416) equals 6.37-inches in diameter.

Now, we go to the US (and Confederate) Ordnance Manual's charts for the various sizes of Artillery balls used in America from the Revolutionary War through the civil war.
www.civilwarartilelry.com/shottables.htm
The historical data charts there show that there was no Artillery ball which was 6.37-inches in diameter. But, in case your measurement of the ball's circumference is not perfectly correct... I'll mention that the Manual does have a ball which is "close" to the diameter of yours... a 32-pounder caliber cannonball, which was 6.25-inches in diameter. So, we must move to the next step in the identification process.

The Ordnance Manual says a 32-Pounder caliber Solid-Shot (not hollow) cannonball, made of cast-iron, weighed precisely 32.4 pounds (32 lb 6.4 oz). You'll need to weigh your ball on a precision weighing scale, such as a Postal Shipping scale, because typical household bathroom weighing-scales are notoriously inaccurate.

I should mention:
A hollow (explosive) cannonball which is approximately the same size as your ball weighed 22.5 pounds when empty, plus about 1.5 pounds of gunpowder, for a total of 24 pounds. You said your ball weighs "40-50 pounds I guess." So, if your guess is even "close" to your ball's actual weight, it is a Solid-Shot (not hollow, explosive) ball. The only way a Solid-Shot can hurt you is to drop it on your foot.

In summary:
If your approximately 6.37"-diameter ball weighs more than 32 pounds 6 ounces, it is definitely not a cannonball. Weighing more than that amount means your ball is made of Steel, which is typically about 10% heavier than simple cast-iron. No steel cannonballs are known to have ever been used in America. The only known Steel cannonballs were British Navy 10"-caliber Solid-Shots that were made in Britain, and weighed about 140 pounds. None were used here in America.

I appreciate you looking at this for me and I do have access to a real scale so I will get that info and also use a cloth measuring tape to get better info. The white spot on it is what had me concerned that it might be a live round or a fuse to it. But I have never read up on this.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

In actual fact, logic indicates that EXCAVATED cannonballs are not dangerous to drop.
The proof:
We relic-diggers have excavated over 100,000 cannonballs. Nearly every one of those got struck by the shovel during the digging-up process. There seems to be no report of even one of them exploding from being hit with the shovel. You'd expect that such an event would have been reported in a newspaper... but my extensive research on that subject hasn't found even a single such report.

According to newspaper reports, ALL of the (very few) people who been killed or injured by a civil war shell since about 1900 were using a Power-Tool on the civil war shell... such as, "provoking" it by using a drill or electric grinder on it.

Please note that I mean EXCAVATED shells from the civil war or earlier. (By the way, in the US, the Army and Navy Artillery stopped using cannonballs by approximately the year 1900, declaring them to be obsolete.) Of course, bullet-shaped artillery shells from the 1880s through today can still be sensitive to the shock of dropping or hammering. But there seems to be no evidence at all that a cannonball excavated after more than a century in the ground can explode merely from being dropped.

 

[Bridge End Farm]

If it is a live round there will be a circular spot where the charge hole was sealed up. Usually screwed in then set with a chisel. A long time ago when I was a kid my neighbor found a cannonball on the rail road tracks in Georgetown Texas. We played with it all day then showed it to my dad as he was a civil war buff. He instantly realized that it was live and called the city. The cop they sent picked it up and after my dad had showed him pictures in the book of it just tossed it into his car and drove off. Later we found out that he set it on the Chiefs desk as he had heard the Chief also like civil war stuff. He knew what it was too and after they evacuated the building they had the Austin bomb squad pick it up and dispose of it. I am pretty we used up most of our luck that day as we had been throwing that thing around for hours before my dad got home.

Yes old ordnance isn't nothing to play with and I wasn't sure if white circle area was a type of fuse still in it

 

[Bridge End Farm]

In actual fact, logic indicates that EXCAVATED cannonballs are not dangerous to drop.
The proof:
We relic-diggers have excavated over 100,000 cannonballs. Nearly every one of those got struck by the shovel during the digging-up process. There seems to be no report of even one of them exploding from being hit with the shovel. You'd expect that such an event would have been reported in a newspaper... but my extensive research on that subject hasn't found even a single such report.

According to newspaper reports, ALL of the (very few) people who been killed or injured by a civil war shell since about 1900 were using a Power-Tool on the civil war shell... such as, "provoking" it by using a drill or electric grinder on it.

Please note that I mean EXCAVATED shells from the civil war or earlier. (By the way, in the US, the Army and Navy Artillery stopped using cannonballs by approximately the year 1900, declaring them to be obsolete.) Of course, bullet-shaped artillery shells from the 1880s through today can still be sensitive to the shock of dropping or hammering. But there seems to be no evidence at all that a cannonball excavated after more than a century in the ground can explode merely from being dropped.

Thanks for posting this and your previous reply as it does calm my nerves