Civil war item ...

[Digger]

Williams Cleaner bullet ...
Have never heard of it before ..anyone here familiar with this and how it was used ?
The Pics are from a metal detectorist find .

[Stopsign32v]

Three types of Williams Patent bullets, also known as "cleaner bullets", were used by the Union Army during the American Civil War in the standard .58 caliber rifle muskets. There was a fourth developed for use in the Union Repeating or "Coffee-Mill" gun. The inventor was Elijah D. Williams of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who filed an application for his patent on May 30, 1861. It was issued almost a year later, on May 13, 1862, but field trials on his "improved" bullet had already begun.

The concept of the design was that the discharge of the musket would drive the concave disks forward thus expanding the lead bullet against the interior walls of the rifled barrel.

Models
Type I bullets have a central post and two zinc disks with six slits. Type I cartridges can be found in both tan and blue cartridge paper. Type II and III's have a zinc base "plunger" (similar to a flat washer), and one disk without slits. Type II cleaner cartridges can be found in both white and tan cartridge paper. Type III cartridges can be found in red, blue and tan cartridge paper. Type III bullets are also the shorter of the three designed for rifle muskets. The fourth type for the "Coffee Mill" gun looks like the standard Type III at first, but is slightly larger in diameter.

According to "Round Ball to Rim Fire part 1" by Dean S. Thomas, in 1863 there is also mention of a .69 caliber version of the Williams bullet, but none were ever purchased by the US Ordnance Department.

At first the standard package of ten arsenal-issued cartridges contained eleven percussion caps in a separate tube and one Williams patent cartridge out of the 10 cartridges. Later this amount was increased to three of the 10 and then to six by August 1864. Originally Soldiers were instructed to use the special bullets as every tenth round fired.

Williams cartridges were made up in the same fashion as the standard .58 caliber cartridge with 60 grains of black powder, but no official documentation has ever been located indicating that the cartridges should be made up in a colored cartridge paper. Surviving examples show blue, red, green and a white / off white cartridge paper used along with the standard "buff" tan cartridge paper in their production.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUhAxfeTrUk

[Digger]

Excellent ! , thank you for that description and explanation ...
Was totally unaware that such a thing existed .

[bedbugbilly]

Cartridges were issued in Arsenal packs of ten cartridges alone with 13 musket caps in the Arsenal pack which were rolled up in the same paper that was used to roll cartridges. Each Arsenal pack of 10 cartridges contained three cartridges with Williams style bullet. They often got tossed as they were not well liked and some thought they made the 58 rifled musket kick harder.

I collected Civil War artifacts for 60 years. I have seen many examples - as well as having owned a variety - of "bullet wood" - i.e. mine balls and other projectiles that were shot and lodged in trees from battlefields and skirmish sites. I have also examined many examples ion museums. I am not saying that none exist - but I have never seen a piece of "bullet wood" that contains a Williams Cleaning Bullet - which I have often thought odd since hundreds of thousands of them were shot.

I performed and gave Civil War programs for 35 years. My "prize" example of bullet wood was given to me by an elderly gentleman who came to attend the program that I was giving at a college. He had no family to give it to and he thought I mike like to have it to show at my programs - which I did for many years. His grandfather had lived near Gettysburg and as a young man, in the 1870s, he had helped a fellow cut some trees down and clean brush out near Culps Hill. When they cut one tree down, sawed it into sections and split it for stove wood, they discovered a number of spent mine balls that were lodged in the tree - not uncommon for any battlefield. I sold most of my collection off a number of years ago, but that piece of bullet wood I kept as I have walked that battlefield a number of times.

Civil War bullets are fascinating - I think you could collect an entire lifetime and still not have a complete collection of all of the various projectiles that were used.

[megasupermagnum]

Interesting. If you hadn't said what that was, that could easily be mistaken for a Breneke Super Sabot slug, which I believe is also 58 caliber.

[Stopsign32v]

Civil War bullets are fascinating - I think you could collect an entire lifetime and still not have a complete collection of all of the various projectiles that were used.

Hard to imagine all of these different projectiles were only made to kill other Americans. I can't imagine what the tension must have been like during those times and into the 1870's.

The sheer amount of tavern and saloon fights and stabbings that must have been started from two drunks talking over the Civil War must have been common practice I'd imagine.