Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Whatiszit?

My buddy, Blacksmith, has been waiting 4 months to see me. Along the way, he gathered some belated birthday presents. One of them is a hunk of what appears to be pure lead, but the shape looks a lot like a Civil War-era artillery round. Before I go melting this thing down into musket bullets, I was just wondering if any of y'all have any idea what it might be:



Here's the business end:

Looks like muhdik

9mm. Probably blow out someones lungs with that.

Civil War era bunker buster.

Some good info:

I've personally laid hands on something like that...

Trying to remember when and where. Oldtimer's Disease.

The one I saw was more worn and beat up though.

It does sort of look like it could be a shell for a rifled gun minus the sabot. It even looks like it has a hole for an impact fuse. I've never heard of any of the shells being made of lead. The sabots yes, either lead or brass but the case of the shells were cast iron but maybe it was experimental and now rare and valuable.
If it is a civil war artifact it will be worth a lot more than scrap lead value.

I wouldn't get in a hurry to melt that.
When I was a youngun, my Dad and I went catfishing. Well the bite was pretty slow and I got bored so I went arrowhead hunting. It was a good field that we had hunted often and found lots of decent points back then. Anyway I picked up this funny shaped rock. It was about the size of my palm, round but flat with a dish on the two sides. I carried it around for several minutes until I had so many points that I needed both hands to carry them. So I tossed it. It wasn't until years later that I learned that it was a discoidal and kind of rare.

Had something similar years ago. It had 2 of them connected with a cable and connector. They were used for weights on power lines.

Hate to see it melted down. Use it for a door stop.

That’s a treasure. Don’t melt it.

What’s it weigh?

DigitalDan would have a geezer-gasm over that thing!

"Don't touch it! It's poisonous!" USFWS

Keep in mind some of those had a charge in the projectile which was "timed" with a fuse which lit, upon firing. As it got x number of yards out it would explode.

So make damn sure what you're melting, in other words lol

Cool find!

The Plot Thickens ..

I would keep that as is, its cool

I would not melt that. As others have suggested, it could contain an explosive charge.

To find out if it is solid or not .. thus room for a charge .. weigh it first pretty precisely, then sit it in a graduated cylinder to see how much water it displaces .. volume. Compute density. See if it matches lead, iron, or other metals used. If it is too light for the volume .. density too low .. it is probably hollow and could have an explosive charge inside which would detonate when you heat it to melt it.

.. and that's without considering historical significance.

PS: I can't see the original pictures so maybe they answer part of the concerns. I'm guessing blindly 'bout options.

I googledied up "Parrot Gun Round" and this is what I got:

I agree with y'all. I ain't throwing this in the smelting pot until I get a definitive answer. There was a guy a while back that dealt in Civil War Artillery Rounds. He sectioned them and sold them for big bucks. He finally found one that was still alive. They found bits of him all over the place.

Put it on the classifieds.

Fifty bucks, plus shipping.

Cool piece.