✅ SOLVED found this today in a park.

[Kype]

was burried about 8 inches deep. the top and bottom is rusted however theres a middle piece on it that is not rusted. bottom is flat. top is pointed. heres some photos with measurements. sounds hollow inside. any ideas before i start to clean it up?

disregaurd the last photo. cant seem to delete it from post.

 

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[eyemustdigtreasure]

interesting.
Side view and
End view would be helpful.

 

[Retired Sarge]

Off hand it appears to be a projectile.

 

[Kype]

Off hand it appears to be a projectile.

yeah and for the life of me i cant figure out why that center strip is not all rusted like the other parts of it.

 

[Kype]

here it is when it came out of the ground.

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

The reason your projectile's "center section" isn't rusted is, that part is not made of iron, but instead it's a copperbrass band (a version of brass which contains a higher than usual percentage of copper). Your projectile appears to be an "early" (Span-Am-War era to WW-One era) 37mm Solid-Shot Armor-Piercing projectile. Don't worry, "solid" means its body does not contain a cavity for an explosive detonation charge. It's solid steel, all the way through, except for the copperbrass "band sabot." The total absence of rifling-marks on the sabot means your projectile was never fired.

Your projectile MIGHT be the 37mm-x-136R Hotchkiss in the photo attached below. For certainty of ID, we need you to clean every bit of rust-encrustation off of two spots on opposite sides of its body, and then use a Digital Caliper to tell us the precise diameter in inches and in millimeters. (For example, a 40mm Hotchkiss is only slightly larger than its 37mm little brother.)

 

[Kype]

The reason your projectile's "center section" isn't rusted is, that part is not made of iron, but instead copperbrass (a version of brass which contains a higher than usual percentage of copper). Your projectile appears to be an "early" (Span-Am-War era to WW-One era) 37mm Solid-Shot Armor-Piercing projectile. Don't worry, "solid" means its body does not contain a cavity for an explosive detonation charge. It's solid steel, all the way through, except for the copperbrass "band sabot." The total absence of rifling-marks on the sabot means your projectile was never fired.

Your projectile MIGHT be the 37mm-x-136R Hotchkiss in the photo attached below. For certainty of ID, we need you to clean every bit of rust-encrustation off of two spots on opposite sides of its body, and then use a Digital Caliper to tell us the precise diameter in inches and in millimeters. (For example, a 40mm Hotchkiss is only slightly larger than its 37mm little brother.)

thats awesome! i will clean it up very well and keep everyone updated.

 

[Kype]

The reason your projectile's "center section" isn't rusted is, that part is not made of iron, but instead copperbrass (a version of brass which contains a higher than usual percentage of copper). Your projectile appears to be an "early" (Span-Am-War era to WW-One era) 37mm Solid-Shot Armor-Piercing projectile. Don't worry, "solid" means its body does not contain a cavity for an explosive detonation charge. It's solid steel, all the way through, except for the copperbrass "band sabot." The total absence of rifling-marks on the sabot means your projectile was never fired.

Your projectile MIGHT be the 37mm-x-136R Hotchkiss in the photo attached below. For certainty of ID, we need you to clean every bit of rust-encrustation off of two spots on opposite sides of its body, and then use a Digital Caliper to tell us the precise diameter in inches and in millimeters. (For example, a 40mm Hotchkiss is only slightly larger than its 37mm little brother.)

cleaned it up and used my caliper to measure length and width
length- 4.926 inches or 125.12mm
width- 1.484 inches or 37.69 mm

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Thank you for providing the super-precise diameter measurement I requested. Your report confirms my suspicion that it is a 37mm-caliber artillery projectile. (Projectiles made for use in Breechloading cannons & firearms are manufactured very slightly wider than the gun's bore-diameter -- which ensures the projectile will "grip" the gun's rifling-grooves inside the barrel's bore. As indicated in my previous reply, I believe your projectile is an unfired 37mm Hotchkiss Armor-Piercing Solid-Shot (non-explosive), from the late-1800s into the early 1900s.

 

[Kype]

great. thank you cannon ball guy. i appreciate your knowledge on this and taking the time to reply. this find will go on display on my mantle.

kype.

 

[CreakyDigger]

If unfired would it still have gunpowder within that could go boom? Or is it likely inert by now?

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

CreakyDigger asked:
> If unfired would it still have gunpowder within that could go boom?

Although there was an explosive-shell version, Kype's find is definitely the Solid-Shot version, which as the name strongly indicates, is solid metal through-and-through. It doesn't have an internal cavity for an explosive charge.

At the time of the civil war, all "cylindrical" explosive shells had their fuze in the front end of the shell's body. But experiments were already being made with locating the fuze in the shell's base. So, ever since then, you cannot rely on seeing no fuze in the shell's nose... you have to look VERY closely for any sign of a base-fuze. The base of Kype's 37mm Hotchkiss is clearly smooth flat solid iron/steel. A base fuze would show as SOME form of "irregularity" in the base, such as a slot (or slots) for screwing the fuze into the shell, and a circular indention, etc. Artillery fuzes are usually made of brass or another kind of non-iron metal... but a few steel fuzes do exist, so you must look super-closely for one of the clues (like I mentioned above) that a shell has a steel base-fuze.

Note, for anybody here who doesn't already know about Tracer ammunition:
MANY post-civil-war Solid-Shot artillery projectiles have a small SHALLOW (3/8th-to-1/2-inch deep) round hole in the center of the projectile's base, in order to hold the Tracer chemical, which burns very brightly when the projectile is fired, so the Gunner can "trace" where his projectiles are going, to help improve his aim. The shallow Tracer hole is not evidence of a Base-Fuze. It is sometimes a bit deeper than 1/2-inch on very large projectiles.

 

[Back-of-the-boat]

Very cool find, you might look at putting some kind of stabilizer on it to keep rust from coming back maybe wax or something like that I don't know, but a lot of guys on here do preservation on iron objects so maybe they can point you in a direction for that.

 

[ivan salis]

the non rusted part might be a sabot type gas seal thatis not made of steel