Alwion wrote:
> This X almost looks cast rather than thin tin
Please accept a well-intended correction. The "look" of a single specimen can lead the observer to leap to an incorrect judgment. A more-reliable result comes from closely examining as many specimens as possible.
Examinations of dozens of specimens have proved conclusively that:
The crossed straps always consist of two pieces of thin tinplated sheet-iron.
The crossed straps were connected to the sabot's exterior by soldering.
The crossed straps never go through the sabot to the shell's iron base. We know this because NONE of the many sabots which have been found detached entirely from the shell's iron base show penetration of the straps through the sabot to its interior side.
By the way... despite the Ebay seller's judgment that this shell is a groundburst one, it is in actual fact cracked by internal water freeze-expansion. Groundwater gets into the shell's powder-cavity, and if the shell is buried shallow enough, the water inside it can freeze during an extremely cold winter, creating splits in the iron shell body. I'm certain about that because I've owned several 12-pounder Sideloader Case-Shot which were found buried "still in a stack" at a CS cannon emplacement in the Petersburg siege lines. Several of the shells in that buried stack were cracked EXACTLY like this Dyer shell ...and beiing in a stack, they definitely were not "groundburst" shells.
