John D. Bartleson Jr. wrote:
> Can you give us a reading reference for the manner in which the CS Reads were cast.
> I find it difficult to locate that type of data.
Many 1800s-era documents survive which tell in deep detail how cannons were manufactured ...often including drawings to show the procedure and methods. Sadly for us projectile historians, it appears that very nearly no such documentation of artillery projectile-casting methods and procedures has survived.
I know of no such documents which give DETAILS about casting Confederate cylindrical shells, such as Read.
Dean Thomas has done us a valuable service by including info and diagrams from a pre-war US document about casting spherical projectiles (cannonballs). See "Manufacture of Projectiles" beginning on page 31 of his book, "Cannons: An Introduction to Civil War Artillery." (That book is available at the Thomas Publications website for a nicely inexpensive price.)
At the end of post I'll include a computer-graphic diagram (drawn by Dave Poche), based on the pre-war document, which shows a "cutaway" view of the mold for casting spherical Solid-Shot. Dave has added labeling to briefly explain the mold-seam, vent-hole, and mold filler-hole sprue.
Because we lack civil war era on-paper documentation of details about casting cylindrical projectiles (like the Read), the info I've posted is based on my decades of close-up observation and deductive-reasoning analysis of the clues ...such as the location of the mold-vent remnant on a cylindrical projectile's body. Also, you may recall my prior post about casting-flaw bubbles clustering inside the base of cylindrical projectiles, proving they were cast "upside-down" in a vertical orientation.
> Would that have been too high a location for a case shot filling hole?
Yes. A sideloader hole MUST enter the shell's cavity somewhere on the cavity's cylindrical sides. The hole must NOT intersect the cavity's "ceiling," nor go into the shell's fuzehole. On Aquachigger's Read shell, the vent-hole mark/remnant is located "up" the side of the shell's nose, a significant distance above the upper bourrelet. At that location, if it was a sideloader hole's plug, the hole would intersect the fuzehole or the cavity's "ceiling."
There are a few Sideloader Reads whose sideloader-plug is at the very bottom of the nose, where the plug's edge touches the upper edge of the bourrelet. That is "low" enough on the nose to not intersect the fuzehole or the cavity's ceiling.
Lastly, there seem to be NO civil war CYLINDRICAL shells known which have an iron sideloader-plug. That makes it extremely unlikely that Aquachigger's Read has an iron sideplug.
> Do you find it odd that no one seems to have any shells with the casting sprus(sp) still attached and left
> at a foundry site or nearby river or creek?
There's a good reason why projectiles with the casting-sprue (mold filler-hole sprue) still attached are not discovered at Foundry sites, or rivers near foundry sites. The presence of a casting-sprue means the shell's body is "unfinished." Shells come out of the mold with:
a casting-sprue,
mold-seam "flashing,"
casting-burrs,
a crudely-formed fuzehole, which needs to be reamed out and threaded,
and (usually) a slightly "oversized" iron body, which needs to be lathed down to the proper diameter.
Therefore, "the unfinished projectiles are usually NOT stored at the foundry, but instead quickly get shipped to a metal-finishing facility, for completion of the projectile-production process.
There ARE some shells which were found with the casting-sprue (mold filler-hole sprue) still on them. Specifically, they are "raw" (fresh out of the mold) 3-inch Read shells that were found "unfinished" at the bottom of an old filled-in well, located on the property of the civil war era Atlanta Machine Works. They'd been sent to that metal-finishing facility to have the sprue(s) removed, their crude fuzehole reamed and threaded, and their bourrelets be lathed down to the proper (approximately 2.92") diameter. When Atlanta fell to Sherman's army, the Machine Works' personnel didn't want to get caught with "war material" on the property, so they dumped the unfinished shells down the well.
> Do you know of any collector having a Bormann casting machine?
I am not aware of any Bormann-fuze production equipment being still in existence. If somebody else knows of such a thing, please speak up.
Don't forget, you'll need to click on the Solid-Shot casting-mold diagram (below) to see the large version of it.
Regards,
Pete
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