Caltrop, Scrapnel, Slug?

[Chris L Miller]

Can anyone confirm and identify the two items? Are they Civil War era artifacts? Is it a caltrop? Or used as scrapnel? Or neither? The Caltrop looking item is magnetic. The slug is not. The slug has a brass look to it. Both items were found in Tuscaloosa County near the city of Tuscaloosa.

Thank you for the forum.

Sincerely

Chris

 

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[creskol]

No, unfortunately it is not a caltop.

 

[Chris L Miller]

For future reference, why is it not a caltrop? If not a caltrop could it be a type of grape shot/scrapnel. At one time I had three of them.
Thank you for your reply.

Sincerely

Chris Miller

 

[NOLA_Ken]

I've seen those here before, and I seem to remember them being some sort of industrial tumbler media, not sure if that's right though

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Yep... several years ago I wrote an extensive post here in the What-Is-It forum about these small 6-pointed objects. They come in varied shaped but they consistently have 6 "arms" arranged in a geometric pattern. They are definitely 20th Century "tumbler media" (sometimes called tumbler-stars or mill-stars) used in the metal-casting industry to clean casting sand and burrs off of raw metal castings when they come out of the casting mold. Their identification was confirmed by a couple of T-Net members who've worked in that industry or in metalworking shops.

An actual caltrop ALWAYS has ONLY four arms/spines... which are arranged in a tetrahedral pattern, so that the caltrop will always sit with one spine sticking straight upward, to impale or horse's hoof or a soldier's foot. See illustration below. You can't make the 6-armed tumbler media sit with one arm pointing straight upward... their form is not designed to cause injury.