Ammo Weight of a Civil War Bullet or Ball. + a rant.

Full box.jpg
48 rounds of Enfield Cartridges in this British design cartridge box weighs in at 4.18 pounds. The individual cartridges are 610 grains, X 48, divided by 7000 (7000 grains in a pound) = 4.18+ pounds.
The cartridges have a 523 grain bullet, 60gr of BP, and adding the paper involved.

An original Enfield cartridge would have a 530 grain bullet/wood plug, 68 grains of course grade BP, and the paper added for weight.

It's heavy after carrying it around a bit!

Kevin Dally
 
Check out this other thread.
http://civilwartalk.com/threads/i-have-a-first-at-vicksburg-medal-is-it-genuine.73688/

I had looked for a photo of a modern Army DUI Pin that had the motto "40 Rounds" but I couldn't find a photo of it. Then someone posted a photo of one they found with an inquiry as to its meaning. Basically, this unit's motto is based upon the lineage that dates back to the Civil War.

Look at the Corps Badge of the 15th Corps in the picture posted...it was a cartridge box with 40 rounds in it...
Corp Badges.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War_Corps_Badges

Kevin Dally
 
When did the army settle on 40 rounds as the standard and why did they do that? Is there also some God awful formula they came up with pertaining to the average strenght of a man and how far he could march under normal conditions burdened by X amount of weight times X distance marched squared, with the likely number of foes they would have to shoot at factored in?...heh. I can do the math jargon I just dont know how math works. Interesting stuff however in this post. I think.:confused:

In other words, "What did the president know and when did he know it." For you youngins that comes from the Nixon era.
 
This discussion whetted my appetite to make some more bullets. My supplies are getting low and after hearing of news of the fall of Vicksburg and Gettysburg, I thought I better make some ammo.

Photo of bullets I made for my Ruger .44 Old Army pistol. This is a Lee mold that casts a .45 caliber conical bullets with hollow point.



View attachment 5510

Now--- I'm ready to throw some lead. :cannon:

Nice pillow ticking you have there, where'd you get it and what's the thickness?
 
This discussion whetted my appetite to make some more bullets. My supplies are getting low and after hearing of news of the fall of Vicksburg and Gettysburg, I thought I better make some ammo.

Photo of bullets I made for my Ruger .44 Old Army pistol. This is a Lee mold that casts a .45 caliber conical bullets with hollow point.



View attachment 5510

Now--- I'm ready to throw some lead. :cannon:

That picture takes me back to when I was just learning about US history. My grandfather was a gunsmith and poured his own lead, we would gather wheel balancing weights and anything with lead and put it in the melting pot. He had a way of making points with few words (a trait I failed to inherit). So..Gramps asked me what I learned in school. I replied that we were studying US history, he took me over to the melting pot and asked me, "do you see that stuff on the top? That's scum, in a melting pot it rises to the top and must be removed frequently"
The words have been sinking in ever since.
 
Nice pillow ticking you have there, where'd you get it and what's the thickness?

I bought some pillow ticking from a fabric store, once, but it was too synthetic. This material came from an old pair of my father-in-law's carpenter overalls. I haven't used it for patch material in a long time so I don't know how thick it is.

he took me over to the melting pot and asked me, "do you see that stuff on the top? That's scum, in a melting pot it rises to the top and must be removed frequently"

After you scrap off the Dross, the lead looks like silver. I showed the photo to my friends who wants to go shooting and told him I had my silver bullets ready to go shoot some Vampires and Zombies.
 
It is easy to calculate the weight of a bullet, especially if it is a round ball. Just use the density of lead and the equation for a sphere. The Army Artillery Manual has some good tables for Steel shot of various sizes and it also has the correct density for the steel shot(not same as modern high-strength steel).

For a comparison, I carry my powder and balls for my 0.50 caliber Hawken---a smaller gun. But the powder does not weigh much at all. I carry a good supply in a powder horn. The balls are not as much as the leather possibility bag. Even if I pick up a tie bag of 30 or 40 balls, it doesn't seem to weigh anything near a pound.

I am still curious to know how much 40 cartridges would weigh.
Sixteen 75 caliber balls weigh one pound. Eighteen 69 caliber balls weight one pound. These were known as sixteenths and eighteenths in the 18th century.
 
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