The Gold coast:

[Peg Leg]

I had an old man stop by my house this past week and had a few item he was interested in trading.
He had a box of CANNON BALLS that he said he collected from the beaches of Brevard county.
I have asked a few on this forum about thes balls and was told that since they were lead that they could not be cannon balls.
I thought they may be from the 1715 fleet but was told that the cannons balls from that time period were all IRON.
These balls range in size from Ping Pong ball size to Baseball size.
I took the worse one in the group and did a little testing on it.
It was lead mixed with a trace of zinc, silver and copper but the main ingrediant was lead.
Sorry no picture YET.
As soon as I make up my mind if I want to trade then I will provide some photos. One thing I do know is that they did NOT use lead balls in a Ball Mill.
Is there anyway I can tell if these are real cannon balls. He also has a box of smaller lead balls he said were musket balls and must are about the size of small marbles.
Thanks
Peg Leg

 

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[Donovan]

Peg,
The Spanish did use lead cannon balls in the 14 and 1500's. We found some on the St. Johns wreck, ( 1564 ). Possibly named the Santa Clara, a couple of miles North of Memory rock in the Bahamas. There were also some found in England on a couple of 1500's English wreck sites.
That said.... We have seen a number of lead balls about 4 inches in diameter that were used as down riggers for deep trolling along the Atlantic coast line. Several were brought to us and the finders thought they might be cannon balls. They can be found in most fishing stores.
Musket balls often have their mold tailings still attached.
Good luck,
Donovan

 

[Peg Leg]

Thanks
I think that I will pass on these until I can do more research.
Thanks again
Peg Leg

 

[pcolaboy]

Peg,

I have also read about Spanish using Lead as well as Bronze cannon balls. There was wreck found off Panama dated from the mid-1600's that had lead as well as iron and bronze cannon balls.

Get that dang digital camera running!!! Let me know if you have trouble getting it setup.

Pcola

 

[Peg Leg]

I will sure try.
The main reason that I was interested was that he said he recovered them from the beaches and if we made the deal he would SHOW ME the areas.
Here is something that I did.
I took the worst ball there was and melted it down and then I check what metals were in the ball.
When the lead reached about 900 degrees there was a lot of smoke-this told me there was zinc in the mix.
There is another little trick that I did.
I took a hair dryer and attached a 4 foot stainless Steel tube to the hair dryer and started blowing the molten lead.
The temp was at 1400 degrees.
When lead gets this hot and you blow on it is will turn to a brown powder called lithage. You are blowing away the lead.
After 1 hour all the lead was now powder. I then let the metal that was left cool off.
I checked it and it turned out to be Copper and Silver. With out acids I was not able to go any further and have no idea what the percent the copper and silver would be. But there would not be enough to claim.
My point is that I KNOW HOW THE SPANISH CLAIMED THEIR SILVER FROM ORE.
If you were to take a large iron kettle and crush Galena ore which contains silver. You cook the crushed ore till it becomes molten then up raise the temp until the lead start to boil. You then reduce the temp down until the boiling stops. You let it sit this way for about 1 hour. Now you take a wooden ladle and scrape off the top layer and put this material into another iron pot. This second pot will contain the sliver mixed with lead.
You again melt this material and do it all over again in another iron pot.
When test show that there is a high content of silver present you bring out the BELLOWS AND START BLOWING THE MOLTEN LEAD AND SILVER. THIS GETS RID OF MOST OF THE LEAD AND LEAVES SILVER AND WHAT EVER COPPER IS PRESENT.
So what did they do with all the left over lead. They made LEAD SHEATING AND A FEW CANNON BALLS. But this was LABOR INTENSIVE. So they started to make IRON CANNON BALLS and used the lead for SHEATING the ships.
Only through modern refinning could they recover all the silver.
I do not know why I even asked the question when I think I had the answer all along. Age sometimes causes one to forget certain things until the subject comes up and then BANG you start to remember some things. I remember selling PIG LEAD to refineres in MO until I figured out a better way and made more money. I used to process about 10 tons a day of Galena Ore east of Rogers ARK until the DEP shut me down. Then I went the acid route until I was shut down again GOOD and the DEP took away everything I had.
Sorry everyone for so much trouble but maybe someone learned something here.
Peg Leg