Civil War .58 bullets

[teufelhunde.ret]

I had recently bought a C.W. USMC artifact from the battle of Honey Hill. These two rounds showed up as a gift. What rifle fired these? I presume they are not worth much - a display item / giveaway? Thx, s/f D,

[teufelhunde.ret]

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[teufelhunde.ret]

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[arclight]

They appear to be your average .57 cal.

Pretty common for CW bullets, but always neat to see. Are there any designs in the bottom of the cone?

[X_redcatcher]

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look like a normal union 3 ring .58 cal too me, and there not worth much, your right, one looks like if it had been wormed (pulled) you will find these on EVERY Civil War battlefield. My guess and the chances are great that it was fired from a Springfield rifle.

[jagjetta]

They look like two .58 Minie' bullets--pretty standard fair. The one with the hole in the nose has been "pulled" (had a worm screwed in the top and withdrawn from the barrel manually). You can check the diameter...if they are .58, the actual measurement will be around .575213...give or take.

 

 

John

[X_redcatcher]

They appear to be your average .57 cal.

Pretty common for CW bullets, but always neat to see. Are there any designs in the bottom of the cone?

 

forgot about that one, if there is a star or some other mark in the cone there worth a little more then

[teufelhunde.ret]

They appear to be your average .57 cal.

Pretty common for CW bullets, but always neat to see. Are there any designs in the bottom of the cone?

looked into cone w/ loop, could not seen any marking... they are well encrusted w/ limestone.

[rrobertscv]

After a uncle of mine died 15 years ago, I was going through his fishing tackle box. He had a handful of these in the bottom of it. He would use them for weights when he catfished. We live near 3 battlefields and his family had lots of farmland, he just picked them up when he saw them.

[Jason G]

The 'standard' .58 caliber soft lead projectile. Known in CW parlance as a "Conoidial Ball". First invented/developed by a Frenchman, Colonel Minie', in the mid 1850's, he was trying to develop an actual 'rifle' bullet that could be used and made easily, compared to other rifle'd rounds of the era. Most military forces did not use a percussion, rifled, weapon until Minie' makes his breakthrough (the trick is in the cone in the bottom, which expands the bullet on firing, allowing it to grip the rifl'ling on the inside of the barrel). Think of it as flying through the air exactly like a football. The 'flint' type weapons of the day fired a variety of calibers, mostly in the 59-65 range. That round sort of 'bounces' down the barrel. Another round was 'buck and ball', a large 'roundball' with 3 smaller balls as well. This, for all intents and purposes, makes your musket a 60 some caliber shotgun.

 

While very effective at ranges of under 100 yards, these weapons weren't much good beyond that. When Minie's 'conoidial ball' is adopted, it expands the 'no poppycock' range of rifled muskets to 500 yards and beyond. An added 'benefit'? The round balls cause simple round holes and simple fractures. Minie balls cause massive gaping wounds, driving flesh and shattered bone before them as they expand inside the human body. Totally unintended by Colonel Minie' and completely unanticipated by the first two major powers to use them in combat...the Union and Confederate armies. Alas, tactics do not catch up with technology and armies continue to stand in 'lines of battle' blazing away at one another, except now they have a 'better bullet' and a 'better rifle' to do it with.

 

One looks like a 'dropped' round (very, very common, probably more were dropped than were fired LOL) and the other, as stated, has been pulled out of a weapon using a 'worm' rod after being jammed. Little known is that after 15 or so rounds, using the 'dirty' black powder of the day, ramming a ball down the barrel was a true 'feat of strength' as the weapon would be so fouled. Thus, the need for the worm.

 

Common as they may be, they are still cool, to me, anyway.

 

Oh...the encrustation is from the lead literally deteriorating while they were in the ground. Oxidation, basically. It also causes the bullets to feel 'soft', as compared to a modern example.

[teufelhunde.ret]

Thank you all, for providing this information!