Case shot or Round ball?

[RustyRelics]

I have been diggin' through piles of lead, trying to find out what belonged to what, and which side fired it. I was wondering...Is there a way to tell the difference between case shot and round balls? Here is a Mason jar full of either one or both along with some buck shot. All Civil War finds. Let me know if you need more pics.

 

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[RustyRelics]

I noticed that some of these balls have a mold seam, and some don't.

I also noticed some diggers at DIV say that they had found some roundballs on a hill, and others say the found case shot over the next ridge. How do they know what is what?

 

[RustyRelics]

Bump! Threads get lost quick around here!

Case shot is the stuff they fill the artillery shells with. Round balls are fired from a musket. Again, what's the physical difference?

 

[xcopperstax]

Bump! Threads get lost quick around here!

Case shot is the stuff they fill the artillery shells with. Round balls are fired from a musket. Again, what's the physical difference?

I could be totally wrong here but I think the difference is that musket balls where mostly made of lead (there have been cases of pewter) and case shot or grapeshot was made of iron.

 

[BLK HOLE]

I was just at the recent DIV and dug what I believe to be case shot vice a round ball. All the case shot I found all had a flat spot on them, which makes sense when you think that lead is malleable and if I packed 100 into a can the pressure over time would cause the shot to flatten against one another. At least for me the shot I dug was found in an area where other evidence of artillery were located which is another data point.

 

[JoshW]

One give-away for case shot is that it is crudely made and has a pronounced mold seem. The picture is from case shot recovered from Gettysburg. You can see that it is not 100% round, so it couldn't possibly fit into a musket. It is hard to really tell though if the shot is mangled from firing.

Josh

 

[RustyRelics]

I was just at the recent DIV and dug what I believe to be case shot vice a round ball. All the case shot I found all had a flat spot on them, which makes sense when you think that lead is malleable and if I packed 100 into a can the pressure over time would cause the shot to flatten against one another. At least for me the shot I dug was found in an area where other evidence of artillery were located which is another data point.

The balls I dug at DIV were obviosly case shot.

A. there were fragments from Hotchkiss shells everywhere, and it was a known artillery barrage point.

B. they were quite mangled.



My dad, who has been digging this stuff for years says that roundballs only came in .69 Cal. I tend to believe him, although I am sure there are variants. I really need a caliper.