Civil War bullet with flat base? Please help with ID!

[OldNorthwest]

Hello everybody,

I recently found this bullet that appears to have a flat base (pictured on the left and bottom). Unfortunately, the body is kind of mangled. For size comparison I put it next to a standard .58 3-ringer that I found nearby. What do you guys think?


Thanks for your help!

 

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[ivan salis]

that my friend is a union "Williams" type "cleaner bullet" the base "scraped" the barrel clean --one was issued in each 10 round packet of bullets -- the old guns used black powder and after several shots the fouling would clog up the barrel make pushing down the bullet next to impossible --so troops were told to use a cleaner bullet every so many rounds to keep their barrel clean --because the base made it a bit hard to ram home some troops "discarded" their cleaner bullets * however by the looks of it yours was a "fired" round.

 

[OldNorthwest]

Awesome, thank you for the info. I definitely learned something new today!