Five silver spill today

had a great hunt today with coin cosmo and son,great scores today 3 florins and 2 x 3d in one spill best spill in years,got a priests cassock cross looked too much like gold when it came out,not good at my time of life.wanting i d on this carbine round cartridge methinks its martini henry no headstamp,six shillings and nine pence wonder what you could buy for that in the 40s,lammerlaw should know,a big loss for someone,good luck…IMG_1956IMG_1958IMG_1960IMG_1959IMG_1961IMG_1963IMG_1964IMG_1965

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That was an awesome silver coin spill Roy just missing a half crown.

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Time for you to head back to Oz :grin:…great finds Roy

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Great finds - the crucifix wont be doing any damage to anything - its 'armless - the ‘bullet’ has me stumped - It isnt a ciggy lighter is it? The top rounded like that is unknown to me. If it had an ordinary top I would have said that it is a nice Snider case or similar!

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hey lammerlaw could it be a cartridge that could be fired in a reduced bore maybe a earlier round made to fit a later smaller bore;

Roy - I dont think so - it is not a sub calibre cartridge but to be honest I cannot identify it. The base of the case is VERY like a Snider while not being a Snider.

The closest to it is a Snider Whaling Harpoon Gun blank BUT it should not have a complete turned over top unless its a pattern I have never heard of.

The only Snider case I know with the same bottom half is the Snider drawn case blank.

looking for a projectile that fits it,enfields miniballs too big these two come close but they must be 45 cal,i think the british converted enfields with a smaller barrel to fit the new round,do they look right lammerlawIMG_1976

Hi Roy I no bugger all about old
amo but shotgun cartridge

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What is the diameter of the case Roy…this f****** phone will not let me load a photo…the phone is on Death Row.
If the case diameter is near enough to 5/8 inch or 16mm and about 4 cm long then I will stick with Snider blank.
If it was for a Martini Henry .450/577 then the neck has been cut off to make it look like a Snider blank with rolled over top.
I have been trying to put photos on but this phone, in Latin, ‘Phonearsus arseholus’ won’t let me.

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thanks lammerlaw ,yes its 1 1/2 inches long 5/8 in diameter cant see anything like it with that base and no headstamp.

If it is what I think it is then it will not have a head stamp. I have given up trying to take a f****** photo with my f****** cell phone - then transferring it to my f****** computer. I tried to take a photo just now with my good camera but the f****** battery has f****** well gone f****** flat.

POSTSCRIPT

I have FINALLY done it - these are different patterns of Snider bullets (photo number 3) - the end one is a blank which had a brown paper wad on top and it was apparently for greener Whale Harpoon guns. Now I cannot gaurantee that but it neatly and correctly fits into a Snider Rifle.

Photos 1 and 2 - The single cartridge is what I think is yours.

This exercise has made me BAD TEMPERED - more so than usual - but I was not going to give up until I managed to get there. Hope the information helps and the side and bottom of yours sure looks to be correct. Incidently a box of these turned up at Karitane about fifty years ago. There may have been 100 of them.

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thats it lammerlaw,what sort of round did it carry and what the … is it doing in ch ch,i can award you 10/10 for dedication to the job at hand.its got me wondering now why its the only one i have found in all these years.thanks.

I cannot gaurantee it but you might find that it Chambers in the whaling harpoon gun which is in the Christchurch museum and it certainly Chambers in a Snider. If it is for the whaling harpoon gun then they muzzle loaded a harpoon down the barrel and then breech loaded the charge, that is, your blank…and heaven help whatever ever got in the way…cars, houses, hippos, Jabba the Hutt and even whales.

They came in different styles - foil case and drawn brass. The following photo is the closest to yours I can find on internet for you BUT they are a LOT more modern while yours is an original 100 plus (maybe 1880s) year old one and is therefore slightly different.

They were used in a shoulder fired Harpoon gun - you can take it from me that if there were 126 men on a whaling ship these guns would have only been fired 125 times - no one would fire it twice and the last guy would chicken out. The photo shows you the size of these guns BUT yours went into a later breech loader.

It could also have been for a line throwing gun which was basically the same.

P1000723

my god it looks like a blunderbust,cool info lammerlaw ,its the first ive seen what would they have used it for on land,just for effect or something else,cheers.

Awesome find and a great bit of history as well.
Thanks for sharing.

I have no idea how it got to where you found it on land however it could faintly possibly fir into a .450/577 Martini Henry - in theory it SHOULD but in practice the rim of the ones I have here are marginally too thick so all my martini Henry rifles do not quite close to chamber them - they would if I used a little pressure but they should go in without using pressure or force.

They could have fired safely in a Snider, especially in a MkIII and they do chamber perfectly so maybe someone back years ago used one in their Snider to scare the living daylights out of burglars, prowlers, dead beats, drop kicks or stray cats. It could also have come from a ship having been souvenired by a crew member or taken it after it had been fired to give away to young lads as a souvenir and subsequently lost.

There is also the possibility that it is in actual fact a Snider blank as they came in several different lengths and form - cardboard sides, brass foil shell, drawn brass shell, short length and long length, rolled crimp and star crimp.

In any case my money says that it is either a Snider blank or a Whale Harpoon blank. It would have to be a Whale Harpoon Gun that used Snider type blanks but the similar/identical one I have here was definitely for a Whale Harpoon Gun but who is to say that they were not interchangeable. Some people might say that a Harpoon Gun cartridge would be too powerful for a SNider but I would say ‘No it would not be’ because the cartridge would be used in the Snider with no projectile - merely a blank but in the Whaling Harpoon Gun it would have the harpoon in front of it hence a barrel that is over three times thicker than the Snider.

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Totally mean Jesus finds.

.

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