Alwion wrote:
> Did any 3" ringed sabot reids ever have brooke ratchets?
The answer to that question is No. The "ratchet pattern" you see on your chipped-base Read ring-sabot shell is the result of the cannon-firing blast pressure causing the sabot's top to "take the impression" of the bottom of the large iron chips as they began to split off the shell's lower sides. That is why, as you noticed (and mention in your post), the ratchet-looking impressions "line up under the 4 chips."
By the way, the odds are about 99% that your Read shell's ring-sabot is copper, not brass/bronze. The Confederacy's supply of brass was too limited to waste it on making single-use objects like artillery projectile sabots. Thus, the Confederate Ordnance Department almost always conserved the brass for making repeated-use items like spurs and sword-guards. But before the yankees captured the Confederacy's largest copper mine, at Ducktown TN, plenty of "plain" copper was available ...enough to spare for making artillery projectile sabots.
Common "yellow" brass is an alloy which in most cases contains approximately 75% copper and 25% zinc, or 80/20 copper-&-zinc. At higher percentages of copper, the brass's color becomes closer to copper's color, and is called orange-brass, red-brass, tombac, and copperbrass (depending on the percentage of copper in it). Bronze is an alloy of about 80% copper with 20% tin. Both zinc and tin were very scarce in the wartime Confederacy, and had to be supplied by "salvaging" or importing,. That is why the shipwrecks of civil war Blockade-Runner ships sometimes contain large ingots of European tin and zinc.
Regards,
Pete
