Round ball by why this color!!??

[Beeps in my sleep]

I was hunting a church built in the 1700s today that is no longer in use. I found this round ball. You can see the sprue on it. Every round ball I have EVER found was the famous white Patina. I know people can say yes round balls are used today however.. This is a 1700s Church and a militia was raised there. It is a large ball too and looks dropped. I was told by the property owner the trees and soil may be why its not that color and is much darker. Black Walnut I think he said they were. Anyways check it out and let me know what you think. HH!!

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Cry Of The Eagle: History And Legends Of The Cherokee Indians And Their Buried Treasure - Grab it through Amazon!

[TomPA]

Not sure why, but it happens. I dug 2 Civil War roundballs in VA that looked the same. They came out of a 20" dia hole that had over 100 mixed bullets in it. They were the only 2 that looked "new".

 

[Beeps in my sleep]

Wow, yea it has me confused, other detectorists I talked to told me that if near walnut trees and mine were black walnut it can turn lead black and keep it from turning white. I did scrape it and it is lead. Here is a new size photo. It is on top of a quarter

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

There are two possible reasons why a century-old (or more) musketball can come out of the ground without showing "the usual" white-ish Lead Oxide patina. Both of the reasons involve chemistry.

1- As said above, the white-ish patina is composed of Lead Oxide. If very little oxygen reaches the lead ball, oxidation of the lead cannot occur. If the soil surrounding the bullet contains a goodly amount of water, little or no oxygen reaches the lead. I've personally dug lead bullets in wet-ground environments (or underwater) which came out of the dig-hole almost shiny lead color. An extreme example are the civil war bullets recovered by scuba divers from the bottom of rivers. Those absolutely genuine civil war bullets are difficult to sell, because they have little or no patina on them. I still own a jarful of yankee 3-groove minies found on the bottom of the Pamunkey River by a scuba-diving relichunter friend of mine, nearly 20 years ago. They've still got no patina on them (they are blackish-grey), and I still can't sell them, even though there is zero doubt that they are the real thing.

2- Although "most" musketballs (and other civil war bullets) were made of 100%-pure lead, many were not. The presence of another metal along with lead in the ball causes less Lead Oxide to form... and sometimes, very little to no patina at all. Certain varieties of civil war bullets are famous for always lacking the familiar white-ish patina... for example, Burnside bullets. They were made of what is called "hardened lead," which is a lead-alloy containing a small amount of tin or antimony, to makes the lead harder. The purpose of using hardened-lead bullets was to prevent lead buildup in the gunbarrel's rifling grooves.

I should mention, most post-civil-war bullets were made of hardened-lead, and you may have noticed that the postwar bullets you dig rarely have white-ish patina on them. Now you know why.

In summary... your no-patina musketball may have been found in "wet ground"... or, it may have been made of a lead-alloy instead of 100%-pure lead. In the musketball era, many civilians and even some soldiers tossed whatever easily meltable White-Metal scraps were handy into the pot to make bullets... pieces of broken pewter, bits of old solder, fishing-sinkers, etc. The recipe didn't matter to folks in those days, because the cast ball would still shoot just fine, regardless of whether it was made of pure lead or extremely impure lead.

 

[Ocean7]

it is a musketball. black walnuts chemistry in that ground. Rain hits the trees and then drips on the grounds below mixed with sap from black walnut tree. As I recall, these trees have a self-protective capacity in their sap that can kill any tree planted close or under them.

"Black walnuts contain a chemical called "juglone" which can be allelopathic to other plants. According to Purdue University Cooperative Extension, "Juglone has experimentally been shown to be a respiration inhibitor which deprives sensitive plants of needed energy for metabolic activity." What that means to the gardeners is that many plants growing in the vicinity of a black walnut tree will either be killed or will struggle to live, with yellowing, wilting leaves."
What Can't I Plant Under a Black Walnut Tree?

 

[Tnmountains]

I know the ones I detect from the creeks and rivers have zero patina maybe a little pitting is all. The ones from the heavily forested pines are brown. Cool find and great explanantions.

 

[reale bill]

probably bronze grinding balls from a gunpowder manufacturing operation. I have found several of these in the vicinity of an early gunpowder factory known as the Bellona Powder Mill
here in Baltimore Co.Md.

 

[Beeps in my sleep]

No it is definitely Lead. I scraped a small part of it to get through the Patina and shiny lead appeared. I had to be sure of what I had but it is definitely lead.

 

[FreeBirdTim]

Most of the musket balls I find here in RI are brownish, probably due to all the evergreens in my area. Here's a few that I found a couple of months ago: