One To A Billion

[desirableroasted]

Originally Posted by Raptor1

This is curious, as it looks like two Minié balls collided here. As far as I know, the Russians in the Crimean War used smoothbore muskets with rifles usually only issued to skirmishers, and even then they only begun to copy the Minié ball late in the war and didn't use it very much.

Thinking the very same thing. The chances of two minie balls colliding in the Crimean War? Vanishingly close to nil, if they were even used on the same battlefield.

From the American Civil War, there are many "examples," and thousands of fakes (I once counted 30 or so for sale at a rural flea market in South Carolina).

The one ball we can see has three grooves, not four. The fourth might have been obliterated, of course, but Civil War minie balls were three-grooved.

What catches my eye here, though, is the way the lead of the two rounds is melted together, with little apparent loss. Lead, while soft, is also fairly brittle -- slam a small piece of lead with a sledgehammer and you'll lose a lot to broken off bits. This looks a little "loss-less" for my taste.