1800s gun shot mould

hi all I was just cleaning out my truck and under the seat where I put stuff to be looked at later.I found what I thought was a set of nut crackers at the time. so I had a beter look at them and gave them a bit of a clean up turns out they are a moud for some kind of gun shot made by springfield arms any info would be great

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Niiiiice ! :+1:

Could be a fishing sinker mould though… But let’s say musket balls :grin:

Wow. You pour molten lead in there, then break them out.
Very unique.

Had a bit of a look on the net and looks like it is for making some kild of pistol rounds so interesting!

What diameter are the moulds, and anything embossed in them?

Nice find. If they are just under 15mm in diameter then it musket balls. I get hundreds of them out of the tide.

I left it on my tool box at work I will measure it in the morning but I think it might be smaller than that

just had a look at it am it looks like they are just under 10mm diameter

love it always been on my bucket list,

The smallest musket round I have is 13mm, so could be, as you say, pistol

The smallest I have are just under 11mm although they did do what was called a “Buck & Ball” where you had your normal musket ball and 4 smaller ones down the same barrel at once. I think these smaller shot were maybe round the 6 -7 mm size. Someone maybe able to correct me on that,

Solders were trained to shoot, reload and fire again in 20 seconds. That’s a lot of lead coming your way.

Same style as a Colt mold of the same era bit Colt molds were brass and had a ball cavity and a conical bullet cavity.
It will almost invariably be a pistol mold.
Examine it carefully to see if there are any markings - there may be a caliber marking in either imperial or metric, more likely the first, or a number denoting gauge e.g. 54 gauge which is about .44 or words such as COLTS PATENT or TRANTERS PATENT or ADAMS PATENT etc

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Ivehad a good look at it and it is brass I can’t see any numbers on it but it does have Springfield arms co on it

Springfield made a variety if arms from the early days of American gunsmithing right through to modern times.
Their most famous arms were the Springfield muzzle loader of Civil War fame which was later converted into a single shot breech loader known as the Trapdoor Springfield and then in 1903 produced the famous 1903 Springfield bolt action .30-06 of WWI and WWII fame.
In later years they produced some very good .22 rifles
They also produced accessories. So this mold is a Springfield produced double cavity ball mold to the same design as the brass Colt molds of the same era.

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Thanks lammerlaw it’s crazy to think this has been lying in the Dunedin bush for over 100 years

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Good find and sure wish it had been me who found it…you did well.

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