Inferior Fuses for the Confederacy at Gettysburg?

godofredus

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In several articles I have seen the phrase that the Confederate artillery barrage the third day at Gettysburg was complicated by "Inferior fuses..." Does anyone know why they might have been inferior? Was there a problem in quality control? I think that by 1863 fuses were being manufactured at Augusta, and the women (?) who manufactured them were being paid on a piece work basis, but I have no documentation handy on that.

The other thread was
Indescribably grand... a mere wast of ammunition: the Confedrate artillery at Picket's Charge

http://civilwartalk.com/threads/indescribably-grand-a-mere-wast-of-ammunition-the-confedrate-artillery-at-pickets-charge.98640/
 
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And I seem to have read that the fuse problem was not just at Gettysburg but a persistent one for the Confederacy. I also want to say I've read that the Union had some trouble with bad fuses, too, but that it wasn't nearly as big a problem for them.

I'd also ask if only certain types of fuses were prone to malfunction or if the technology of fuses, burning ones or percussion, was just not advanced enough to provide for consistency.

Somebody gotta know here.:help:
 
Fuses with incorrect and/or inconsistent burn rates, mixed loads causing gun jamming, smoke over the intended targets, and human factors are the reasons most frequently given for the failure of the Confederate artillery on July 3, 1863 at Gettysburg.
 
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According to E. Porter Alexander, quoted in Philip Cole’s Civil War Artillery at Gettysburg, the Confederate adopted the Bormann fuse, a mechanical fuse, in 1861 and immediately began having problems. “Careful tests being made of it, it was found that fully four fifths of the shell exploded prematurely, and very many of them in the gun…Repeated attempts were made to improve the manufacture, but they accomplished nothing, and until after the Battle of Chancellorsville the Bormann fuse continued in use, and premature explosions of shell were so frequent that the artillery could only be used over the heads of the infantry with such danger and demoralization to the latter that it was seldom attempted. Ernest requests were made of the Ordnance Department to substitute for the Bormann fuse, the common paper fuses, to be cut to the required length and fixed on the field, as being not only more economical and more certain, but as allowing, what is often very desirable, a greater range than five seconds, which is the limit of the Bormann fuse. These requests, occurring from our own guns among the infantry in front during the Battle of Fredericksburg were at length successful in accomplishing the substitution. The ammunition already on hand, however, had to be used up, and its imperfections affected the fire even as late as Gettysburg. The paper fuse was found to answer much better, and no further complaints of ammunition came from the smoothbores.”
 
My understanding is that the "new" fuses burned slightly slower than what the artillerists were accustomed to. "Slightly slower" can mean yards and yards off time.
 
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