found a canon ball today

Cool find but dont think you have to worry about it exploding, a gun powder charge was packed into the cannon before the ball was loaded which shot the cannon ball out.  Depending on where you found it would be a good indicator of the time period if you research the history in the area you may discover some battle that took place. Or could be just from target practice in which case you may find a bunch more in the area. Most of your British and French battles took place in the states as well as the most of the battles between the early American armys and the Native American Tribes in which in some case the British and Canadian troops would aid the Natives against the American army inflicting great losses to the Ameircans up until General Wayne by chance beat the Native Ameircans and forever turned the tide of war in favor of the American Army who didnt suffer another major loss until Custer. The only land battle I know of between  the Americans and Canadians was somewhere around Ottawa where the Canadians crushed the American army and also blew the American ships out of the water when they sailed in. Not to say there were not more battles I am just not aware of much more then that. I am part Canadian, they say its the good half..lol  My family is originally from Ottawa.

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I have heard of those also but thought they were used mainly by pirates and had a wick they would lite then throw sorta like the early hand grenade. Havent heard of them using them in cannons and firing them, I would think they would blow up inside a cannon as it would ignite the charge within the ball itself also when the cannon was fired. Do you see anywhere on the ball where it has been bored into it. Even still any gunpowder still inside would be ruined by now being exposed to weather unless you uncovered in a sealed box where it couldnt have gotten wet all these years.   It is possible you located a battle field between the French and British, I dont know much about battles in your area. Either way i would go back out there and spend a lot more time searching all over the place who knows what you may uncover yet, if you happen to find a few coins you will know for sure what time period the ball came from. My best guess would be early 1700 or 1800,s  if its British, could be French which would mean even earlier, late 1500s or 1600s perhaps. Hope you find some coins then we will all know for sure. 

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I have found a few coins in the area dates very from mid 1700's to mid 1800's the cannonball was about 2 ft in the ground maybe deeper. A few old timers have said to me there was French and native battles where I was. I have also found revolutionary war , war of 1812 , and American civil war regimental buttons on the site, As well as some native artifacts spear points,arrowheads, bowls, beads, axes.  There seems to have been a lot that went on in the area .

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the thought of a grinding ball crosed my mine but then i noticed it doen't have rims like grining balls would. There is on slight indentation so I took it to a friends today who knows a bit about cannon balls and he says its a 12 pounder but there's no mark to determine who made it he also said it's a solid ball that holds no charge. so we cleaned it up a bit here's a pic

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Hi redrain22

Cool site you have found from what you are telling us I'm sure you will find a hell of a lot more stuff there .

All the best xavier

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Xavier