✅ SOLVED Cannonball Identification

[ChopperGuy]

Hello everyone,

I am new to this site and found treasurenet while attempting to do some research on a recent "barn find". The ball I found weighs 16.5 pounds, but it does have some sort of hard residue inside the hollow cavity that you can hear clunking around when you shake the ball. It is very rusty and pitted and measures anywhere from 5.48" to 5.54" in diameter depending on where you measure it. It was measured with a surface plate and digital height gauge. The threaded and counterbored hole has a diameter of 1.65" on the larger bore and 1.05" diameter for the hole that penetrates into hollow cavity. The ball also has 4 pronounced ridges on the first half of the ball starting on the side where the holes are. So, the big questions are what is it, what time period does it appear to be from and does it have any value. I do not plan to sell, just curious mainly. Thanks in advance for the help! I have attempted to attach a couple of photos. One more detail, both the 1.65 counterbore hole and the 1.05 through hole is threaded. I cannot tell what thread size due to rust / corrosion.

 

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[gsxraddict]

I don't think that's a cannon ball, because of the ridges.

But it looks like a boreman fusehole.

 

[taz42o]

Definitely not a cannon ball.

 

[ChopperGuy]

The ridges are what threw me too. At first I thought it was some form of early rifling, but that just doesn't make sense for a cannon ball. So if not a cannon ball, what could it be?

 

[DigIron2]

The only thing that comes to my mind is possibly a Ball for Leg iron, possibly a slave.How old is the area?

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Everybody's guesses are "reasonable" ones, because cannonballs were not manufactured with ridges on them. However, I assure you, this object definitely IS a cannonball... specifically, a civil war era Bormann-fuzed 24-Pounder caliber Case-Shot (antipersonnel) shell. The size and shape of its fuzehole is what tells me it was made to use a Bormann fuze. Both the Union and the Confederacy made Bormann-fuzed shells, so this COULD be either a US or a CS one.

Explanation of the "ridges" on it:
As some of you already know, iron is the exception to the rule which says do NOT clean your dug relics. Unlike brass, lead, copper, silver, etc., an excavated IRON relic will continue to corrode after it is removed from the ground. In fact, the corroding will happen much faster than it did when the iron was underground, because it is now exposed to lots of oxygen and humidity in the air. The excavated iron relic's uncleaned surface will begin "scaling" (flaking off) -- and if the rusting-corrosion isn't stopped by a "neutralizing" process such as Electrolysis, the iron can lose as much as 1/4-inch deep into its skin.

The excavated cannonball in ChopperGuy's photo was dug up many years ago, but never got cleaned, and his measurement of its diameter proves it has lost about .14 to .20-inch of its original 5.68-inches-in-diameter size, due to post-excavation "scaling" of the uncleaned iron.

As mentioned above, it did not have any "ridges" on it when it was manufactured. Here is the detailed explanation of why it now LOOKS like it has ridges. First, please examine the three photos at the bottom of this post. When ChopperGuy's cannonball was issued to the artillerymen for use, it had a short cup-shaped wooden "sabot" which was attached to the ball by four long thin iron sheetmetal straps and a circular iron sheetmetal "collar" which fit around the fuze. The four sheetmetal straps were soldered onto the "collar" and their other end was nailed onto the wooden sabot. See the photo below.

Unlike most cannonballs, ChopperGuy's still had its iron sheetmetal collar-&-straps and wooden sabot on it when it got buried. The sheetmetal collar-&-straps protected the ball's surface UNDER them from rust-corrosion while the ball was underground. (The rest of the ball's surface was directly exposed to the dirt and groundwater, so it got more seriously rusted.) After this cannonball got dug up, but wasn't cleaned, and "scaling" happened, the unprotected surface scaled badly. But the area that was under the collar-&-straps did not scale away as badly. I'm 100%-certain about what I'm telling you, because I've seen it happen to quite a few other excavated cannonballs which were found with the collar-&-straps on them. In fact, I've still got a couple of them in my dug-relics collection.

 

[ChopperGuy]

Wow, CannonballGuy, thank you so much for the detail information and the pictures. I own a sheetmetal fabrication company and have access to blasting media booths and other types of processes. Could you please enlighten me on what I should do to stabilize and protect this ball? The last thing I want to do is anything that would take away from this relic. Again, thank you for your help!!!

 

[taz42o]

I would never have thought that.
Guess that will teach me to say definitely.
I learned something though.

 

[tennessee]

Congratulations on the find ChopperGuy. Thanks for the lesson CannonballGuy.

 

[DigIron2]

Good info man,I never would have figured that out.Guess ya don't go by thecannonballguy for nothing.Looks like you got ya a nice ball ChopperGuy.Probably a more uncommon one because of the ridges.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

ChopperGuy wrote:
> Could you please enlighten me on what I should do to stabilize and protect this [excavated iron] ball?

ChopperGuy, your photos show my long-experienced eye that your excavated iron cannonball has already done just about all the "scaling" that it would ever do. Meaning, the part of its surface that rust-corrosion percolated about 1/4-inch down into has already scaled off, and the iron that remains is stable. Thus, at this stage, there's not much point to treating it with a rust-neutralization process like Electrolysis. I should mention, if your photos showed that the scaling was still "active," I would recommend the Electrolysis treatment, but it looks like the game is already over. If I owned that cannonball, I would put three coats of "Satin Finish" (low gloss) clear Polyurethane on it, which seals out oxygen and humidity. You can buy a spray-can of MinWax Fast-drying Satin-finish "Clear" Polyurethane at Wal-Mart for about $7.

 

[cw0909]

ChopperGuy, go see if the iron sheetmetal collar-&-straps and wooden sabot, are still in the barn

a question for CannonballGuy, why were the C balls with the iron sheetmetal collar-&-straps and
wooden sabot, packed this way is it so when transported they didnt explode

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Cw0909, from the early-1800s onward, most Field Artillery sizes of cannonballs had a short cup-shaped wooden sabot (French word for shoe) strapped onto them so that a cloth powder-bag which contained the cannon's "propellant" powdercharge could be attached to the ball. Having the projectile and the propellant attached to each other was called "Fixed" ammunition. It saved the time-&-effort needed to load the ball and the propellant powder-charge separately, thereby speeding up the cannon crew's rate-of-fire.

The "collar" part of the strapping was only used on explosive cannonballs (a.k.a., "shells"). It fit around the shell's fuze, thereby keeping the fuze facing "outward" (away from the propellant powdercharge) during loading and firing. You didn't want an explosive cannonball's fuze to be facing the propellant charge when it was fired, because the tremendous firing-blast would drive the fuze into the shell's powder-cavity, causing the shell to explode prematurely. Solid-Shot cannonballs had no fuze, so for those, the thin iron sheetmetal sabot-straps just crossed each other in an X pattern.

I should mention, the wooden sabot and its thin iron sheetmetal straps were blown to bits when the cannonball got fired. So, ChopperGuy's cannonball, which shows the sabot-straps were still on it when it was buried, HAS to be an unfired one. That makes it a very uncommon find, because artillerymen rarely threw away unfired ammunition.

 

[ChopperGuy]

Thanks to everyone for the information, this is a very good site.

 

[markp]

nice find