What is this rare thing?

[architecad]

Hello everybody

What is this?

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Agony and Death on a Gold Rush Steamer: The Disastrous Sinking of the Side-Wheeler Yankee Blade - Grab it through Amazon!

[shaun7]

Is it lead?

 

[architecad]

I think it's lead

 

[architecad]

reminds me of a sand dollar is there a hole in the bottom?

No hole in the bottom

 

[TheCannonballGuy]

The object is the solidified leftover molten lead from the bottom of a lead-melting pot (used when casting bullets or fishing-sinkers - or in olden times, putting cast-iron plumbing pipe-ends together).

Flip your object over, rounded side down, and you'll see what I mean.

Anybody who has used a lead-melting pot will probably recognize the object you found. (Except, of course, at the time it was discarded, the solidified leftover lead doesn't have patina on it.) Many years ago I cast up some bullets for my reproduction .36 Colt Navy Revolver, by putting the lead-melting pot on the kitchen stove, and melting down fired civil war bullets I'd dug. Even though my civil war revolver and its bulletmold were reproductions, there was a particular thill in using it to shoot bullets made from Original civil war bullets.

Having done bulletcasting myself, I recognized the object when I dug two of them. One was at a 1910 house-site, apparently discarded by the plumber who assembled the house's "main drain" pipe. The other one was in a civil war camp - some soldiers were casting bullets for their revolvers (which we know they did do, because of the quantity of pistol-type bulletmolds which have been dug from civil war sites).

 

[NGE]

Could be the back off of a bridle rosette JMO........NGE

 

[CRUSADER]

I find quite a few similar lead objects, some like that, some cut up. I think they call them lead 'pancakes'. The easy way to 'harvest' lead is to melt it into a shallow 'dip or bowl' made into a few inches of sand. A very simple moulding technique used since the Roman times. These 'pancakes' were easily transportable by person & bits could be cut off to cast muskets balls or bullets or repair holes in objects.

Of course being lead it may have just been melted from any other number of items by accident. However, the regular shape makes me believe it was deliberate.

Basically a kind of primitive 'homemade' ingot.

Below is a more 'official/regulated' modern version that has been stamped; (but the shape is the same etc..) Clearly mine is broken but would have be the same shape & profile.

Yours looks at least 100++