Big Boys Hobbies

First musket ball and appears to be rifled?

jayreef

jayreef

Elite Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2010
Messages
591
Location
Northwest UK
Hi

This is my first post, as i am new to detecting

I think i have found a musket ball - see image, it has a white patina and appears to have rifle marks.

I found this in the uk (north west), and am looking for any info i can find out, as you can see from the ruler, it is quite large approx 11/16ths of an inch

possible weapon and age - is 11/16ths similar to .577

thus meaning it would have been fired from a pattern 1853 enfield

all info most welcome

musket-ball.jpg


Thanks
 
thanks, and thanks

it puts into perspective something i found the other day at the same site

a piece of lead with a strange pattern, i mused for days, and now i think it could be a piece of lead that has fallen on the ground when the musket balls or something similar was being cast.

see pic below

I am finding loads of stuff on the site, most dates to around the the 1860's and victorian period, except for the spear head which is currently with the county finds officer for examination - will post pics when i get it back

lead.jpg
 
welcome to the forum and congrats on your finds!
 
It's strange the way the groves run down that ball. Muskets that fired a round ball like that were ussually smoothbores. The Minié ball was used in a rifled musket.

The rifled muskets of the American Civil War were much more accurate and combat ranges of 300 yards were practical. The term 'ball' lingered on in that conflict as applied to the standard ammunition used by both sides - the Minie ball. However the Minie ball was not a ball, but a conical lead bullet designed to be fired down a rifled barrel. With the invention of the Minie ball and the development of the bullet cartridge or round, the musket ball became obsolete after the middle of the nineteenth century due to its inaccuracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket_ball
 
Hi Jay
From the looks of that rifling, it was probably late 1800's.
I'm guessing a rifle used for hunting.
I don't have the time to search for photo's right now, (maybe later?)
In that era, the grooves were cut much differently.
Do a Google or Bing search for images of rifles of that era and try and find ones that show the muzzle.
Rifling was quite a different design from what we use today.
You might be able to narrow down the model of the gun by the number of grooves.
 
thats what is confusing me

someone said to me the other day

"normally when you find something old you are normally left with more questions than the one original one - i wonder if i will find anything?"

lol.. but very true
 
Marcucco said:
Hi Jay
From the looks of that rifling, it was probably late 1800's.
I'm guessing a rifle used for hunting.
I don't have the time to search for photo's right now, (maybe later?)
In that era, the grooves were cut much differently.
Do a Google or Bing search for images of rifles of that era and try and find ones that show the muzzle.
Rifling was quite a different design from what we use today.
Click to expand...

good call - thanks
 
what you found there is a lead scrap..Back then lead was used for about anything you can think of, Pot mends, which I am certain is not what you have there..

I find lead scraps all the time.. so what you have there mate is in good words crap :cheers: so dont worry about trying to figure out how old it is.. its pretty hard to identify a date on lead scraps unless maybe it was a pot mend..
But the musketball is cool.. and you will find lots of them musket balls...!
 
FrankieOwls said:
what you found there is a lead scrap..Back then lead was used for about anything you can think of, Pot mends, which I am certain is not what you have there..

I find lead scraps all the time.. so what you have there mate is in good words crap :cheers: so dont worry about trying to figure out how old it is.. its pretty hard to identify a date on lead scraps unless maybe it was a pot mend..
But the musketball is cool.. and you will find lots of them musket balls...!
Click to expand...

The field I am working is full of iron ore and old iron bits and bits of Victorian pottery. Most of it is bits of farm machinery that have fallen apart and dropped to the ground. There is a a lot of evidence to an old building or structure on the map of the area. I found an 1860 dated one penny also.

Makes me think the spear head might actually be a knife blade with it's tang from the same period.

Thanks for all the welcomes folks
 
hi j,new to the forum meself....the musket balls come in different sizes. i get them all the time. if ure finding lots of lead, keep on the pitch mate. sounds a good spot.
 
1853 Enfield had 3 grooves and your bullet has way too many markings. Thus it is rather unlikely it's been fired from Enfield. More modern replicas have more grooves, but as I don't know how long it takes for lead ball to oxidize I won't make a guess about how long it has been in the ground.

Voriax
 
The fact that the ball is round doesn't tell me much other then it probably wasn't military.
Rifling a barrel was a complex process and by the time the military adopted it they already were using heavier cylindrical projectiles.

When you load a ball like that, it's nested into a round "patch" of cloth greased with tallow to form a gas seal, so the rifling needed to be very pronounced.

muzzle_23_3at300a.jpg


The common wisdom was that the ball will travel more accurately if the casting sprue was front and center. From the way that rifing is perfectly centered around the sprue, that particular ball was very carefully loaded for accuracy, rather then rushed in the heat of battle.

The other thing is the grooves on the ball themselves.
They're cut in pretty deeply and rounded which tells me it came out of a barrel like this:

ttmm001-h.jpg


If you count the number of groves in the ball we can probably make a guess as to what kind of gun fired it.
I betting it will turn out to be a fancy hunting rifle rather than a military piece
 
great stuff guys

thanks ever so much for the time

so we know its not an Enfield

possibly a hunting weapon, that has 15 grooves of rifling
 
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