Strange musket balls.

Can anyone put a name and date to these strange looking musket balls??
They are after 1812 and were very problematic for loading judging by the "ram rod" marks on them, found a site with many of these around........HH....Johnnn

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Chris, they'd make a formidable anti-personnel weapon against mass troops if they were fired from a cannon......I could definitely see the application on a battlefield.

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@Mudflap - Good point.  I can't get a decent idea of size.  What I
remember of the projectiles in the maritime museum, they
weren't all that large, and were oddly shaped, much like these.

@BitburgAggie - I could see these as canister.  Some of the samples they had
up at West Point also had a fabric wrap of sorts, which could
still account for the imprint on some of those balls.

Most of the musket balls I'm familiar with are typical Brown Bess,
around .50 cal, and they're definitely more round, without the prominent
ridge/bulge these seem to have.

I wonder if the odd marks are leftover from the casting process?  I've
seen larger lead molds that leave large flash ends from the opening.
I wonder if those sort of star shaped marks are cut off spots...though
why they'd have to do that for grape or canister, I don't know.  Maybe
chain shot that was getting recycled, so the chain was removed? 
Yep...just guessing...

There's plenty of head scratching going on here...and it's not from fleas...
Then again, I love trying to figure stuff like this out.  It takes me forever to
get through a Flea Market because of things like this...

Cheers-

Chris

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Maybe they were used like personalized poker chips when the soldiers played cards?  Or did the Army surgeons use odd shaped musket balls to give the soldier to bite when sawing off a limb?  Or did the soldiers play a game like marbles and used some of these in the game?

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John,

I've found several of these at an early war CW site - belted musket balls.  I think the belt was used to get a better seal in a smoothbore musket and thus better accuracy.  It's possible they fit in a rifled groove in the musket but I doubt it.  I may be wrong but think I'm pretty close.

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