Farragut Press vs. WBIR-Knoxville

[samgrant]

In which we find the, lately, somewhat atypical story about a guy who finds Civil War ordnance and DOES NOT blow himself up in the process of cleaning it.

I just wonder just what is WBIR's definition of a "ball".

The local "bomb squad" also referred to the object as a "ball".

http://www.farragutpress.com/articles/2008/08/8822.html

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story...=62118&catid=2

[Bonny Blue Flag]

What's the difference between artillery shell projectiles and cannonballs?

If you can't tell the difference between your projectiles and your balls, then you need a little more hands-on experience.

--BBF

[gary]

I don't think Civil War ordnance is included in the cirriculum of bomb disposal. Even if it isn't, the bomb squad would most likely blow it up as it is good practice when there's a real device out there. I recall them moving picric (sp) acid out of one building and depositing it into a hole they dug in the adjacent park. A safety corridor was created and boom!

[ole]

A pernicious quality of black powder is that, sans pollutants, it does not lose its lethality. They found a ball. If it needed to be destroyed, it was either shell or case. Both explode (or ought to ... if you find one, it obviously didn't). Shell just sends rather large fragments of its casing all over -- some of which till tear terrible woulds.

Case also contained some rather large metal balls to increase the shrapnel effect of shell.

Canister (whoa, there's a whole nother ball game.) makes the gun a very large shotgun.

And now I've forgotten where I intended to go. There is a precise definition of ball. The thing that was destroyed was not a ball, it was a case or it was a shell.