Rare Gardiner explosive bullet

[Digger70pa]

The snow melted & ground thawed out enough to get out to do some relic hunting finally. I went after work also. Ive been working 7 days a week & have cabin fever lol. So I went somewhere close to home. Glad I did because I recovered a pretty rare bullet. These Gardiner explosive bullets were only used in two major battles. Chancellorsville and Gettysburg after that they were deemed too barbaric to use. These were dumped by the 2nd New Hampshire regiment of the 3rd corps Army of the Potomac a day before the battle began.

 

[The Rebel]

WTG on a stellar hunt!

 

[pepperj]

Good recovery, and thanks for the post as I learnt something today.

 

[Centsless Detecting]

Looks like a good hunt. I'd love to find a jhook some day. How did they explode?

 

[Digger70pa]

Looks like a good hunt. I'd love to find a jhook some day. How did they explode?

Thanks buddy. They had a capsule that held a small charge of explosive substance called fulminate of murcury. There's a fuse train of slow burning black powder in it. In theory when fired it would take a second to a second and a half to reach the bursting charge. It would blow up into several small jagged pieces inflicting terrible wounds. They were experimenting with new weapons & only used these rounds in two major battles Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. They quit using them because they deemed them too barbaric for use. Mine are Gettysburg bullets. Here's a couple photos of these bullets cleaned up. I might add the Federal government only bought 110,000 of two calibers total during the whole war. They're pretty rare bullets.