Tell me more! How rare is this?

[Phogan87]

I recently purchased a dug Type III Williams Cleaner for $8 with the zinc washer still present. A family member was shocked at how rare of a find this is. I was kind of surprised by this and wanted to know a little bit out of this. It is true that I have not seen a single example in any artifact book with the zinc washer still in place. Any thoughts? Thank you very much!

 

[Phogan87]

A closer pic…

 

[Joe Whitworth]

FWIW I've dug one. YMMV

 

[Salterr]

It's a great addition to your collection and while most will have the washer missing or disintegrated, they are very common. Having the washer present is an added bonus though.

 

[UCVRelics]

Nice one. I have dug many of them over the years and most had the disc gone but have found some with the disc intact.

 

[Frederick14Va]

While less common to have the disk still intact, I would be reluctant to call them exceedingly rare. I have found a fair number of them still intact over the years as well. When these became standard issue each 10 pack of cartridges would have two of these included. They had a different color paper wrapping than the others. Soldiers habitually didnt like them, and many accounts of the soldiers simply tossing them. hence likely why overwhelming majority of these found are unfired.

 

[19thOhio]

So, what was their purpose and why didn't the men like to use them?

 

[Salterr]

So, what was their purpose and why didn't the men like to use them?

They are used to clean out the barrel after the rounds are exhausted. The disc expands and is supposed to clean out the barrel when fired. The paper was blue in the pack so they would know which was the cleaner bullet

 

[Frederick14Va]

So, what was their purpose and why didn't the men like to use them?

In standard issue non-plugged hollow base Minie, The discharge force would expand the skirt of the bullet into the rifling sealing the windage gap sending the projectile down range. However it was noted that the bullet typically traveled further down the barrel before this expansion fully took place. Hence the back section of the barrel the powder fouling would build up quicker since it wasnt being scraped or carried out by the discharge. This fouling would continue to get worse and soon make it more and more difficult to ram the next bullet all the way in. The Williams bullet design was an attempt to address and solve this problem. The disk and the improvement with the plunger and disk would engage the rifling much sooner in the barrel and scrape out the fouling including the section that majority of the fouling build up occurred using conventional Minie's. Thus using one of these periodically between five or so regular minies would in theory lessen the fouling problems. However many soldier accounts had much less faith in using them for the intended purpose as well as and host of claims they had very poor ballistics and accuracy as compared to the Minie. Not uncommon to find them unfired and simply thrown away.

 

[19thOhio]

Thanks, that makes sense.

 

[Phogan87]

I really appreciate everybody's insight. I've never seen one with the disc still in place so I was happy to run across this.

 

[Frederick14Va]

I really appreciate everybody's insight. I've never seen one with the disc still in place so I was happy to run across this.

If your happy with your find, then thats all that really matters, enjoy it.