Is this a bullet, artillery shell?????

Driving Band is simply older terminology.

GBExpat said:

Driving Band is simply older terminology.

Click to expand...

It's a dumb thing to fight over and I apologize. Driving Band is not a term that was in use when I was in the artillery.

During my time in the artillery every round that I saw was essentially a hollow case that was filled with explosives or submunitions or illumination rounds or smoke or whatever.

None of them were solid steel shot. I even got a chance to observe some reenactors from the late eighteen hundreds and even the ball on their Cannon wasn't solid steel shot it was a steel casing or an iron casing full of explosive and it actually had time fuse on it.

Based on that and working at that picture it looks like a solid steel piece I don't believe that's a live round. At best I could see it being a display piece

Trunk Monkey said:

I'm sorry exactly when did you actually do this for a living? In the 15 years I spent manning every artillery piece in the United States Army's inventory I never heard an obturating band referred to as a "driving band". Never read it in a -10. Never saw the term used in the 650.

Click to expand...

Not an artillery expert, but I've been aware of the term " driving band" for, oh, I don't know, 30 years as it pops up in military and history texts with some regularity. Had never heard of obturating until today. Thank you for the addition to my data base, Monkey......and thank you for your service.
I have no doubt obturating may be a term in common usage with US gunners, however, ten minutes of Interweb research suggests that "driving" is in fact a more correct definition, as the band is meant to impart spin by engaging the rifling, whereas "obturating" appears to be defined as deformation of the case and\ or the projectile to form a gas seal.
In much the same way as a magazine is not a clip, nor is a revolver a pistol.......
I certainly agree, it would not be an artillery shell, but I still think it could be a solid penetrator from an old tank or antitank gun. In either case it should be harmless....I hope....in theory.

Trunk Monkey said:

It's a dumb thing to fight over and I apologize. Driving Band is not a term that was in use when I was in the artillery.

Click to expand...

There was no issue and, therefore, no need to apologize.

Trunk Monkey, I have read/enjoyed/appreciated enough of your posts to know that your response was almost certainly just a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived questioning of your knowledge of the subject.

What is the diameter of the (for lack of a better word) shell?

What is it made of? (Magnetic?)

What is its diameter?

What does it weigh?

Sure looks like a projectile, except the recess for the letters or symbols on the base, seems like that would cause instability in a spinning body.

Rotating Band = Driving Band

An "Obturating Ring" technically does not impart rotation to the projectile, and is what is found on mortar projectiles (except the 4.2 inch) and fin-stabilized, discarding sabot rounds fired from rifled bores.

Trunk Monkey said:

What is the diameter of the (for lack of a better word) shell?

Click to expand...

It looks like the OPs tape measure is off axis a tiny bit, but looks like 83-85mm.

Hey, if it's made of lead then melt it
and start casting!!

Trunk Monkey said:

None of them were solid steel shot.

Click to expand...

My father has a projectile on his farm he collected off a beach used for WWII naval practice in Australia. Solid steel with a copper band showing rifling from being fired. About 75mm from memory. Flat base though. He called it a practice round, I just assumed it was AP.

What that rather looks like is a shot for one of the last of the muzzle loaders, right just before rifling was introduced.

Call that mid 1850s or so, by the time that ogived rounds were known to be ballistically superior to round shot. But for some ordinance that could not be rifled easily. Which was an issue with many period pieces.

Being 80mm diamter would be very close to a 24 pounder size. And meant to content with 3" or 4" Parrot or Dahlgren rifles. And, the jury would be out on whether MLR (muzzle-loading rifles) were superior on the battlefield, for taking longer to load and all.

The skirt-style base was common with muzzle loaders which used wads to complete obturation.

Holy Lord! We were using an M one ten H for practice lift weight!
(Or maybe something just like it, with out explosives.)

Very neat diagrams lysanderxiii .
(Edit: spelling.)

Trunk Monkey said:

What is the diameter of the (for lack of a better word) shell?

Click to expand...

Monkey, I'm assuming most of your service would have been with the 155mm guns, and I feel stupid for never wondering about this before, but were they rifled? If they are smoothbore, that would explain why they use obturating, rather than driving bands......
I think CapnMac is on the right track for the OPs question....but shells for those guns would have a charge cavity and fuse, no? Which would mean that thing could be dangerous.....

Since we have drifted into a discussion of bands on artillery type shells, here's a photo of a lamp made from a 3" 50 caliber round. The practice round came off of the original USS Henderson.



Now I always thought, cuz an old sailor told me, that the band at the base of the projectile was to engage the rifling in the barrel. Apparently, if the entire or even most of the projectiles length was in contact with the barrel the resistance would cause pressures high enough to burst the barrel.

What say the experts?

I guess I was suffering under the delusion that Obturating Rings did just that...They 'obturate', meaning they expand upon firing to fill the rifling...

Driving Bands do the opposite, and swage down to fill the grooves...

What keeps the shell centered in the bore is called the Bourrelet Band...

ADDING:

I am no 'expert'...

I just read a lot...

I don't think it is an actual projectile for anything.

What might be a cylindrical section is rough ground or filed, that would be the one surface that would be required to be as smooth as possible.

CapnMac said:

What that rather looks like is a shot for one of the last of the muzzle loaders, right just before rifling was introduced.

Call that mid 1850s or so, by the time that ogived rounds were known to be ballistically superior to round shot. But for some ordinance that could not be rifled easily. Which was an issue with many period pieces.

Click to expand...

Hard for me to see how a "cylindro-conical" projectile would work at all from a smoothbore.

There were shells with lead sleeves to take the rifling. If the OP's thing had one, it might do for a James rifle at 3.67" or so.

There is something going on at the pointy end. (Since we are not sure it is a firearm projectile, I avoid calling it the "nose.") If it were a shell, it would look an awful lot like a fuze. Playing it extremely safe, I think I would offer it to the bomb squad.

Jim Watson said:

Hard for me to see how a "cylindro-conical" projectile would work at all from a smoothbore.

There were shells with lead sleeves to take the rifling. If the OP's thing had one, it might do for a James rifle at 3.67" or so.

There is something going on at the pointy end. (Since we are not sure it is a firearm projectile, I avoid calling it the "nose.") If it were a shell, it would look an awful lot like a fuze. Playing it extremely safe, I think I would offer it to the bomb squad.

Click to expand...

Yep, saw that too....better safe than sorry.

Jim Watson said:

Hard for me to see how a "cylindro-conical" projectile would work at all from a smoothbore.

Click to expand...

Well, in the same way a Minié ball works, just with a better BC.
The last half of the 1800s saw some weird swings in technology. Metallurgy and powder were going through a bunch of technical swings. Which left some weapon systems behind, but still being fielded.

So, they learned that the long ogive rounds performed better at transsonic velocities. But, an army might be loaded down with smoothbore artillery, and rifled artillery either too slow or too expensive The Brits, well into the breechloading rifle era built Channel forts with Rifled muzzleloarders--part for being proven capability, but, also for dimension (IIRC the were like 132pounders).

Now, there's every possibility I'm wrong.

This could be just a finial for a huge wrought iron fence. Or a decorative shell for/from some long-gone monument.

Please expand. I have not heard of shooting a Minnie ball effectively from a smoothbore. Were they wasting their time rifling those 1842 muskets for Minnie balls?

Come on, people. It’s a Dagmar.

1950s Cadillacs had Dagmars on the front bumpers.

I have no idea what it is, but to me it looks like the bottom 2" are threaded. Maybe someone got creative with 3" drill pipe or something like that.

Matt

Bro of mine suggests we're all wet, that it's just a net weight from some big commercial net, like a trawl or seine ("purse") net.

Which gave me a good laugh; especially at myself.

CapnMac said:

What that rather looks like is a shot for one of the last of the muzzle loaders, right just before rifling was introduced.

Click to expand...

A projectile of that shape cannot be used in a smooth bore -- it will tumble wildly, since it has no stability.

I suspect that if it is an artillery projectile, it is base-fuzed, which was quite common right up into WWII. The cavity in the base is for the explosive charge, and the fuze closes the cavity.