✅ SOLVED Help on a bullet

[McCDig]

Dug this bullet today from a site that has produced musketballs and post-colonial buttons and coins.

It is 25 mm long and 13.5 mm wide. Weight is 30 grams.

Note the hollow conical base.

I thought it was a minie ball when I first saw it in the hole but it has no rings.

Your help in getting an id is appreciated.

 

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[jewelerguy]

looks kinda like an Enfield that someone shoved home really hard with the ramrod

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

Jewelerguy is correct. It appears to be a fired civil war Enfield pattern Minie-bullet. Measuring 13.5mm, it was a .54-caliber, fired from a US .54 "Mississippi Rifle" or an imported .54 Austrian Rifle. Both sides in the war used those rifles, and both sides used Enfield-pattern Minies. But, insofar as is known, the yankees did not manufacture .54 Enfiled-pattern Minies, so your find is a Confederate-made one.

As Jewelerguy astutely indicated, when a blackpowder firearm was fired multiple times its gunbarrel quickly became "fouled" with a buildup of black gunpowder ash. It could get thick enough to make loading the bullet from the muzzle down into the rear of the guunbarrel very difficult. There are battlefield eyewitness reports of soldiers having to use a rock to pound the ramrod down into the gunbarrel. That is what made the "gutter" imprint which encircles your bullet's nose, and caused the very prominent rifling-ridges on your bullet's sides. It is what civil war bullet collectors call a "hard-rammed" fired Minie.

It was definitely fired during long-duration hot combat, which prohibited the soldier from having time to clean out his rifle's ash-fouled barrel. That's no "target practice" fired bullet. To some of us, that's a very cool find.

 

[McCDig]

My thanks to jewelryguy an The CannonballGuy for this id. Until I looked at replica ramrods and your explanations did I see that this is indeed a deformed Enfield!
Much appreciated guys!!!!