Stupid Question

[Mutt]

Re: Stupid Question

United States Ballistics?

All I could come up with . . . for now.

[Charles Heath]

Re: Stupid Question

Uniformly Sliced Bacon.

How could you guys miss this?

Bill, I hope you mean ammunition box and not cartridge box.

[Bill]

Re: Stupid Question

Uniformly Sliced Bacon.

How could you guys miss this?

Bill, I hope you mean ammunition box and not cartridge box.

Man,

Everybody's a critic! :) Yes, I meant those wood crates, that are approximatly 14 3/4" long, 10 3/4" wide, and 6 1/3" deep, inside measurements. They were made to hold 1,000 rounds of .58 cal. expanding ball ammunition and usually 1,300 percussion caps.

Oh yeah, these crates are referred to as "Cartridge Boxes" in the 1863 Ordnance Manual. (I just checked.)

[Gallinipper]

Re: Stupid Question

I'm sure some folks didn't miss it, they were just being polite and respectful of our colleague! When I saw the term "handle" I was pretty sure he didn't mean an issue cartridge box.....

I'm sticking with U.S. Ball. :D

Charles, the "S" could always stand for Squirrel, couldn't it?

Rich Croxton

[minieball]

Re: Stupid Question

If I were to venture a guess it would be United States Ball. Which would distiguish it from Enfield or maybe other types of issued RM ammo like Shalers patent, etc.

[BrandonEnglish]

Re: Stupid Question

If I were to venture a guess it would be United States Ball. Which would distiguish it from Enfield or maybe other types of issued RM ammo like Shalers patent, etc.

I could be wrong, but I don't believe the US Army used the term BALL for ammo (i.e. 30 Cal. Ball) until much much later.

[Gallinipper]

Re: Stupid Question

It's OK Brandon, it's not too late for you to hit the EDIT button!

Rich Croxton

[BrandonEnglish]

Re: Stupid Question

I meant while labeling their ammo. I don't believe they actually labeled cartridges as ball ammo, like modern ammo is considers ball ammo. Yes of course their ammo actually were balls but when it came to labeling this is I believe a later practice.

[Gallinipper]

Re: Stupid Question

Here's a sutler that makes repop cartridge "Boxes", which I stumbled on trying to find the U.S.B. handle marking.

http://www.charliesboatworks.com/rifleandmusketammunitionboxes2.htm

Re: Ball. It might be worth a look.

Rich Croxton

[Pvt Schnapps]

Re: Stupid Question

According to Laidley's Ordnance Manual of 1862 (p. 270), there's Elongated Ball (pistol and carbine), Expanding Ball (rifled '42 and .58), and Round Ball (.69). So just saying "ball" would tell you less than ".574", which is already on the box. On the other hand, the arsenal is supposed to be marked on the inside. Still, if I have to guess I'm saying Benicia, because it just sounds so pretty.

[LibertyHallVols]

Re: Stupid Question

Maybe it really says "USP" and those are really pharmaceutical lead pills.
;)
(Sorry, couldn't resist! Must be some residual effects from yesterday)

[Gallinipper]

Re: Stupid Question

In the St. Louis Arsenal reproduction, "Expanding Ball" is also stenciled along with the caliber- .58 in this case, December 1861. It seems to have been common practice by some arsenals to list the type "ball" where applicable, in addition to the caliber, while others (the Frankford Arsenal example) did not?

Rich Croxton

[Charles Heath]

Re: Stupid Question

Charles, the "S" could always stand for Squirrel, couldn't it?

Rich,

Considering how you missed Chef Jerry Gouge's infamous Cartridge Box Belt soup at Shiloh during one of the SCAR NPS LHs, there is no way to compare that "squirrel" with a properly bile piece of gummit issue leather. Nawsuh!

Glad to see you are back amongst the living.

[Gallinipper]

Re: Stupid Question

Thank you sir. Alive and well and living in California. (We thought we'd see how far we could drive before we had to stop.) Sadly, I've fallen under the sway of the Keyboard Kampaigners, so thanks for tolerating me!

Rich Croxton

Cartridge Box Belt Soup? Sounds like a possible career-ending injury to me.

[Pvt Schnapps]

Re: Stupid Question

In the St. Louis Arsenal reproduction, "Expanding Ball" is also stenciled along with the caliber- .58 in this case, December 1861. It seems to have been common practice by some arsenals to list the type "ball" where applicable, in addition to the caliber, while others (the Frankford Arsenal example) did not?

Rich Croxton

It's difficult to generalize about an item of which so few originals survive of the many produced -- if you figure that the U.S. Army produced more than a billion cartridges during the war (I believe I got this from the end of war returns in Series III, Volume V of the ORs), then there ought to have been a million packing boxes produced by the various arsenals from ca. 1860 to 1865. I doubt that a statistically valid sample survive.

There's an interesting article in the Spring 1974 issue of "Military Collector and Historian" that discusses the general characteristics, requirements of the Ordnance Manual, and a few extant cases. One from the Allegheny Arsenal is labeled "1000 ENFIELD OR .58 IN. RIFLE CARTRIDGES" without saying "ball" or "elongated", "round", &c. A Confederate example reads "96 LBs 1000 Cart. Cal 57 or 58 ELONGATED BALL RICHMOND ARSENAL NOVr 1864"; an example in Lord's reads "1,000 BALL CARTRIDGES SHARPE'S CARBINE CAL. 52 1864."

What I find especially noteworthy is that, according to the manual, .58 rounds were "expanding" not "elongated" (which would apply to pistols and carbines), and that in the Lord's example cartridges for Sharps were marked as for "Sharpe's." These examples tend to indicate that, not only was there no absolute universal standard, but people occasionally made mistakes.

The example you cite differs from those discussed in the article, but I wouldn't be surprised to discover that it was perfectly authentic and that practices in St. Louis, and all the other arsenals for that matter, changed from time to time.

A wonderful example of the vagaries of nomenclature occurs in the 1863 "Instructions for Making Quarterly Returns of Ordnance and Ordnance Stores." In this document the Ordnance Department of the U.S. army is, in different places, referred to as the Ordnance Department, the Ordnance Bureau, and the Ordnance Office -- three different names for the same organization in the same publication put out by that organization!

Just more examples that mass production doesn't necessarily translate to uniformity, and sometimes being sloppy or screwing up is just as authentic as not.