I.D. this 8" Bolt'

[John D. Bartleson Jr.]

Looking at its sabot attachment design tell me who made it.
Union or Confederate, why?
John

[CarlS]

I'll bite.  Looks like a US Parrott sabot to me on a Read shell so I'll guess the answer you are looking for is that it's a Read patent or design.

[Selma Hunter]

John -

Rabbited sabot = Parrot to me.

[John D. Bartleson Jr.]

Carl - select one or the other, only one will apply.
Selma- thank you for your post.
John
P.S. there is a reason I have asked this question and will explain after many have posted a reply.

[John D. Bartleson Jr.]

Only 2 out of 54, come on guys.
John

[CarlS]

I only submitted one answer: Read. 

[emike123]

I'll guess a CS Parrott bolt.  10 rabbets = Parrott style sabot but line line across the body beneath the nose section ogive = CS.  Also the blunt nose looks like other CS bolts

[joevann]

Confederate.  Fired from Howlett Battery.  According to Abbot, where this illustration came from.

[joevann]

Howlett's Confederate Battery on the James River

[John D. Bartleson Jr.]

Thank you for your posts.   
    Is the term  C.S. and Parrott like bread and butter, do they really go together?
I was always taught that the above type of sabot attachment indicated always a U.S. Parrot.
Below is a further hint.    What would we do without Gen. Abbot and Gilmore.
John

[joevann]

U.S. Parrott, of course.

[joevann]

I'm not sure where you are going with this, John.  It is well known that Parrott based his sabot on Read's design, and purchased the right to manufacture projectiles under Read's patent.  Parrott's later patent clearly states that his in an improvement on Read's patent, While Read claimed it was not an improvement but a patent infringement.

[Pete George]

First:
  Robert Parrott's "own" patented sabot is a band or short ring which was cast ONTO the projectile's body -- and thus it can easily be removed without damaging the projectile's body.  In contrast, Dr. Read's ring-sabot is embedded WITHIN the projectile's iron body -- and thus it cannot be removed without damaging the body. Study the patent diagrams and you'll see what I mean.

  Also... in his patent for the IRON-sabot projectiles he manufactured, Mr. Parrott himself specifically says the sabot is Dr. Read's design.

  It is known with certainty that the Confederates manufactured very-nearly-exact copies of Parratt's brass band-sabot. In the 1993 Dickey-&-George book, I listed an explosive-shell version of the projectile type shown in Bart's first post as a "CS Imitation" of Parrott's patented brass sabot. See page 412 in the 1993 D&G book.

  There is also a 30-pounder caliber CS Imitation Parrott, which has a copper band-sabot with Parrott's distinctive "rabbeted" top edge... but it's not shown in the D&G book, because the book doesn't cover that caliber of Army projectiles (just Navy ones).

 Some of the diagrams in Abbott's book say the various CS Imitation Parrott Band-Sabot projectiles were fired from the Howlett Line, and some unfired ones were found at the Tredegar Works after the city fell in April 1865.

Regards,
Pete

[emike123]

The bolt was made in the South (line and nose shape show that), paid for and accepted by the Confederacy and now we learn fired by the Confederacy.  There is no "US" in it.  As Pete posted while I've been typing this, the rabbetted sabot design is Parrott's however.  When you are killing each other off in droves, what's a little patent infringment to add to the ledger?

We have CS Dyers, CS Dahlgrens, and lots of different CS Parrotts so yes CS & Parrott go together like bread and butter in some instances, or for those of you from around Oxbow, Mississippi, like peas and carrots.  Some people call some of them Read/Parrotts.  I believe those are the smooth sided CS shells with the pre-rifled iron sabots from the Parrott patent for the "improved" sabot that Joe refers to, but I am relying on memory so that's a little dangerous.

[Pete George]

For Emike and anybody else who is wondering::
  Being smooth-sided has NOTHING to do with whether a projectile carries Read's name or Parrott's name.  Regarding those projectiles, it's all about the sabot.

Dr. Read's "elongated" 1857-to-1859 projectiles (with his ring-sabot) were smooth-sided, years before Parrott-designed projectiles were produced. See Jack Bell's book, especially the Comments on page 346, but also pages 333 and 341.

Historical sidenote:
  The earliest appearance of the name "Read-Parrott" occured in the 1960s, when it was coined by Tom Dickey and Syd Kerksis, in the desire to give Mr. Parrott some nominal credit for his "improvement" of Dr. Read's ring-sabot by machine-pressing rifling ridges/grooves onto the Read sabot's external lip.  In retrospect, that "conjunctive" name has caused so much trouble for collectors that I wish it hadn't been coined. In Abbott's 1867 book, the yankee-made projectiles which Dickey & Kerksis called a Read-Parrott are listed as US Read projectiles.

  As indicated in my previous reply, in Parrott's patent #33,100 (Aug. 20, 1861) he says his "swaging" of pre-rifling on the Read sabot's external lip is "an improvement upon the elongated projectile for which Letters Patent of the United States were issued on the 28th day of October, 1856, to John B. Read."

  Having smooth sides has no relevance in a projectile's name as a Read or a Parrott or a Read-Parrott.  It's all about the sabot. The only projectiles which are properly called "Confederate Parrott" are CS-made ones whose sabot is a copy of the specific form designed by Mr. Parrott (patent #33,099), a brass band/ring cast to encircle the projectile's base, held in place by ridges on the projectile's iron body.

  If a projectile has Dr. Read's sabot, it is a Read projectile, regardless of whether its body has smooth sides or a "sleeve" or a rebate or "rings" (bourrelets).  Fellow civil war projectile book-authors Jack Bell and Col. John Biemek recently told me they are in agreement with me about that.

Regards,
Pete