Recent Safari Finds

[TomH]

Folks,

I finally got around to scanning the results of my last few digs...

photo1: Day 1 action from Gettysburg. Private property with full permission
top row: fired roundball, "mushroom" bullet with flared lower rim and star in cavity, CS Gardner patent .54.cal and a conventonal three groove bullet as used by either side.
bottom row: Federal style knapsack hook and large cent

photo 2: spot west of town on the Army of Northern Virginia approach and retreat route and the Federal pursuit route
top row: melted "Camp Lead", fired .54 cal roundball (probable modern), modern environmentally safe shot.
bottom row: Federal machine pressed .58cal three groove bullet, CS Gardner patent .577.cal , CS Gardner patent .54.cal

photo 3: northeast of Little Round Top near major ingress road
4 Federal .58 cal three groove bullets (three on left are same pattern, far right is slight variant)

photo 4: Maryland side of the Potomac near Federal crossing
.52 cal Sharps, .54 cal roundball, camp lead, 1888 Indian Head

My Safari is consistently finding relics in areas that have been hammered since the beginning of time and in all conditions from wet and soupy to dry and cracked.

Thanks for looking,
Tom Henrique

 

[Elton]

n/t

 

[ngrelic]

Very Nice Tom. I love finding Gardners.

 

[TomH]

Elton,

Thanks for the input. There is something special about finding a relic that has been in the ground for 140+ years and wondering about the soldier that last held it and why it was dropped. Granted, 140 years is nothing compared to the age of the finds made by our Euro members but it is as good as it gets for us American Civil War nerds.

Barry,

We find a high percentage of Gardner patent bullets here in the Eastern Theater because of the proximity to the main manufacturing facility at Richmond. Mostly .577 and .54 cal with a few .69 cal monsters in the older sites. If you ever find yourself in the G'Burg area drop me a line and I can bring you over to a buddy's place where they have constructed a Gardner cartridge forming machine from the original patent specs and you can make a couple of repro cartridges for yourself. The attached photo is a near perfect example of a Richmond .577 cal Gardner cartridge from my collection.

Later,
TomH

 

[Onus]

Are the Gardner bullets the ones with the stars? Onus

 

[TomH]

Onus,

The Gardner patent bullets are the ones with two grooves. They were a CS design, intended to use less paper in the cartridge manufacturing. Conventional 19th century American cartridges used two papers, one to form the powder "charger" containing the propellant and one to wrap the bullet and charger into a neat single piece package (see photo below). The Gardner bullet was designed to use a single piece of cartridge paper. The bullet was cast with a flange that ran around the circumference of the bullet at the bottom of the lower groove. The bullet was forced through a die in the cartridge machine to fold that flange down and capture the cartridge paper between the resulting two layers of lead. You can actually see the scratches from the forming die on the base of the bullet in the cartridge photo above. A common misconception about the ACW is that the south ran short on ammunition because of a lack of lead and powder. In fact, the shortages were few and generally caused by a lack of the proper cartridge paper, lead and powder were generally in good supply.

The star based bullet is a Federal machine pressed bullet and the star is the result of an engraving on the end of the plunger that forced the lead into the die to form the bullet.

Hope this helps,
TomH

 

[jolin376200]

If I had a dollar for every musket ball I have found over the years I would be the holder of every bank note in the world.

 

[Adam(Va)]

n/t

 

[TomH]

Adam,

Thanks for the input on the website, it is still a work in progress. I bought a few western theater bullets and just recently got some nice, very rare cartridges and need to add them to the site.

I was digging down in Ole Virginny yesterday but got skunked. We were at a buddy's place in Berryville but between the scorching heat and concrete-like ground I came away empty. The soil was so baked that all target signals were whacky, the only things that I dug that actually read properly were a couple of lengths of heavy copper wire and a modern jacketed bullet. My glasses kept filling with sweat so it was like looking though an aquarium and it took about five minutes to dig an 8 inch deep hole. It was like chipping away at shale. After about four hours of that I retreated to the air conditioned car and watched the youngsters dig for a few more minutes before giving up and heading back north.

Later,
TomH