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Post by Toby Benoit on Apr 24, 2009 12:50:42 GMT 12.75
Old feller went outside to till up his garden and bumped into what he discovered was an unexploded shell. My stupid computer wouldn't open the link with the full article, so if anyone comes across it on the AP scroll and wouldn't mind posting it here, I'd appreciate it.
Questions though; weren't they filled with black powder? Would it still be explosive? Wouldn't the wooden plug rot away and expose the powder to moisture and such? Or, would it still go boom if bumped around a bit too hard?
I heard that sausage king Jimmy Dean had one fall from a tree a few years back. It was buried in the wood of the tree and as the rotting tree broke apart the explosive tumbled out and onto the ground. He kept it on his mantle for awhile until he was prompted to turn it over to the local bomb squad who blew it up to be on the safe side.
Wonder how many more are out there to be discovered. Never heard of one going off and injuring anybody though.
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Post by Bro. Freddie on Apr 24, 2009 13:07:23 GMT 12.75
Here is the article.
Fort Smith - Officials say a Fort Smith man digging in his garden unearthed a Civil War-era cannonball that's possibly still explosive.
The unidentified man was tending to his garden Tuesday at his home near the Hardscrabble Country Club in Fort Smith when he found the rusted, 4-inch-diameter iron ball.
Bill Black, the park superintendent of the Fort Smith National Historic Site, says the cannonball appears to be a live round that's about 145 years old.
Fort Smith Fire Department officials plan to shoot at the cannonball with a shaped charge, which will either detonate the round, break it open or put a hole in it. Black says he hopes to keep the remnants at the Fort Smith National Historic Site.
There were a number of Civil War engagements in and around Fort Smith, including the Battle of Massard Prairie.
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Post by Mars on Apr 24, 2009 16:58:14 GMT 12.75
Blackpowder doesn't have an infinite shelf life but under ideal storage conditions can remain potent for a long time. A round cannonball would not have an impact or timer type fuze so the chance of an explosion are about as close to zero as you can get. It would be no more and in fact way less dangerous then handling any container of blackpowder.
Like Toby, I would think that 145 years in the ground that the blackpowder is not only inert but gone and been replaced by mud.
Anybody that hunts using blackpowder would know how little it takes of weathering to ruin blackpowder.
I've found 4 cannonballs over the years in this area but they were the solid type.
Of course after rolling that grenade down the hill a week ago I can be a little sympathetic to calling a bomb squad.
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Post by Paws on Apr 25, 2009 1:20:55 GMT 12.75
Allright first lets set the record straight. Sausage King Jimmy Dean?" Boy, don't you know Jimmy Dean was a C & W star way before the Pilgrims invented sausage? Besides JD sausage is way too greasy! (IMHO) Now the gunpowder only malfunctions when it is wet. During manufacture it is mixed with water to ease processing and potentially improve safety. In the old old days (Korot era) before water was invented urine was used. After final mixing it was laid out to dry and did so in a brittle sheet. The sheet needed to be broken up accounting for the granular texture of the powder. That powder in that ball ought to be just fine if it is dry/dried. However since there is a marginal possibility the shell might be dangerous I believe it should be directly observed, for safety, by our illustrious Chief of Homeland Security. Maybe stick it in her britches!
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Post by shiloh on Apr 25, 2009 4:38:45 GMT 12.75
Black powder is only safe wet. Once dried back out it has the same power it did originally. There was a guy in VA last year that was killed while trying to drill out one as a side job. A guy in Columbia, TN had one go off in his den all by itself back in the 1970s. He'd been using a 12# case shot for a door stop. He had just walked through the door a minute befor and while in the other part of his house he heard a loud bang and thehouse shook. He looked outside to see what it was that had happened and not seeing anything realized he smelled smoke and looked in his own house. The door was shattered and the wall was blown apart where the ball had been. The US Navy used to drill them out, but don't any more. Some guys like the one in VA that did something wrong will do it still. Sadly today, the only safe way to have one is to have it blown apart by a bomb squad and then hope that you can get the pieces back to maybe super-glue back together. Owning one is technically illegal since they are class-3 destructive devices.
If it is "about 4" in diameter it is probably a 12 pounder adn many of those were indeed fused case shots. It would, if dry, still kill you dead if it went off close. The case rounds were meant to explode in flight with a small bursting charge. The fragments in balls incased inside would continue in the flight direction as a small cloud. These were not meant to blow things or people up like our higher explossive roounds today. They should be able to tell if it is a case shot based on the presence of a fuse. If it is just iron all the way around, it is a solid shot.
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Post by Toby Benoit on Apr 25, 2009 5:23:33 GMT 12.75
Lots of WWII armament still around here being washed up and uncovered on the various keys and barrier islands. The Navy and Army Air Corps used to use them for strafing and bombing practice.
Just a couple of weeks ago on one of the islands off the coast of St. Petersburg, six 100 pound bombs were uncovered in the sand and the bach was closed until demolition teams could detonate them on the spot.
On Fort Island, here in Citrus county, some kids found an enormous navy shell a year or two back that was blown up by the Sherrif's bomb squad. It made a helluva crater.
But, no Civil War stuff being found. Not much action went on down here, of the many small skirmishes that went on, there wasn't much artillery involved except for the big battle in Olustee. I think they had a whopping twenty pieces on the field between both sides.
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Post by OLKoot on Apr 25, 2009 6:08:52 GMT 12.75
Allright first lets set the record straight. Sausage King Jimmy Dean?" Boy, don't you know Jimmy Dean was a C & W star way before the Pilgrims invented sausage? Besides JD sausage is way too greasy! (IMHO) Now the gunpowder only malfunctions when it is wet. During manufacture it is mixed with water to ease processing and potentially improve safety. In the old old days (Korot era) before water was invented urine was used. After final mixing it was laid out to dry and did so in a brittle sheet. The sheet needed to be broken up accounting for the granular texture of the powder. That powder in that ball ought to be just fine if it is dry/dried. However since there is a marginal possibility the shell might be dangerous I believe it should be directly observed, for safety, by our illustrious Chief of Homeland Security. Maybe stick it in her britches! "KKKKOROT ERA", I resemble that remark
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Post by Mars on Apr 25, 2009 6:09:45 GMT 12.75
I'll continue to disagree in this case. In the ground, exposed to weather and probably other human activity and time that cannonball was probably nothing but mud filled. Even giving the powder was still intact and potent it would still require a source to set it off and a standard ball fuse is highly unlikely to have survived let alone the plug/holder like Toby mentioned. I don't believe any fuse would sit and "cook" underground for even close to that amount of time. I will concede that if the round was a conical that had one of the few impact or mechanical timer fuses I wouldn't go near it and would have called it in. Though like Shiloh posted it would suck to have to destroy it. The round in the tree should have been considered in storage.
I've had to blow up alot of WW II junk when I was in the Army. Fort Sill was and probably still is loaded with everything the military has used since Geronimo. You cannot hunt anywhere on that post without finding artillery shells laying around, usually just training(concrete) rounds. I ran across a washout that had hundreds of rounds up to 8" in it. The bad part of that stuff is the explosive is a gel and even exposed to the weather remains potent but most "modern" era shells are sealed anyway. The worst are those bomblettes from cluster bombs. Dang things are as touchy as a boobytrapped landmine.
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Post by Mars on Apr 25, 2009 6:27:11 GMT 12.75
Typical round ball fuse; 12 pound case shot; Conical type; These pictures are from a website that offers these shells for sale. A round ball is around $400. and the conicals run $3000.-$4000.. This the incident you refered too Shiloh? White's death shook the close-knit fraternity of relic collectors and raised concerns about the dangers of other Civil War munitions that lay buried beneath old battlefields. Explosives experts said the fatal blast defied extraordinary odds. "You can't drop these things on the ground and make them go off," said retired Col. John F. Biemeck, formerly of the Army Ordnance Corps. White, 53, was one of thousands of hobbyists who comb former battlegrounds for artifacts using metal detectors, pickaxes, shovels and trowels. Experts suspect White was killed while trying to disarm a 9-inch, 75-pound naval cannonball, a particularly potent explosive with a more complex fuse and many times the destructive power of those used by infantry artillery. Biemeck and Peter George, co-author of a book on Civil War ordnance, believe White was using either a drill or a grinder attached to a drill to remove grit from the cannonball, causing a shower of sparks. Because of the fuse design, it may have appeared as though the weapon's powder had already been removed, leading even a veteran like White to conclude mistakenly that the ball was inert. The weapon also had to be waterproof because it was designed to skip over the water at 600 mph to strike at the waterline of an enemy ship. The protection against moisture meant the ball could have remained potent longer than an infantry shell.
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Post by shiloh on Apr 28, 2009 6:53:23 GMT 12.75
That's the story. While no fuse has been "cooking" since the war, the charges if dry can ignite due to impact such as dropping or even shaking or can ignite from a static charge. Afterall they are iron and it can conduct static from outside the sheel right through to the iron balls inside and generate a static spark in there doing so. That is probably how the guy in Columbia I heard about had his go off. The guy in the article above may have generated a spark while drilling one out, or it may have had an impact system and he hit it or drilled into a cap inside or something. We occasionally have WW2 era rounds dug up in this area of Middle TN because it was used for training purposes before the artillery and tank units under Patton shipped over. "Sherman" tank rounds, usually solids turn up fairly frequently and are often mistaken for 3" Civil War shells.
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