Hi guys,
I was going to melt down some lead for dive weights but thought I’d keep some of the cool old ordinances. I know some of you like things that go bang so I thought I’d post some pics. Interested in ID and possible age for these. The tapered casing is unusual?
Hi Matt. I am sure Lammerlaw could answer to a few of those.
It is crazy the amount of lead bullet heads one finds over the course of time detecting for gold. I have a couple of coffee jars full of them & that goes back quite a few years until I stopped collecting them. My thought was to keep them for making sinkers or diving weights like you have said. Living in Queenstown I have no need for sinkers unlike when living in the Coromandel & doing a lot of land based fishing I was always needing sinkers.
Best of luck out there.
JW 
Hit the coast man…Far easier[quicker] ways to accumulate lead to smelt for dive weights than bullets. (I often come off the beach with a kilo or two of bycatch lead). And recently dug 4 dive weights ready to go…
The lead bullet heads are just a by product of walking the land detecting for gold. Every target dug & recovered is always taken away & any rubbish targets are disposed of in the right manner. No point chucking it back on the ground as it will just be detected again at a later date when the gold has grown back.
JW
Need proper measurements to identify conclusively so these are a guess unless stated otherwise.
Brass cartridge case in last photo will be a .297/230 - smallest caliber used in rook rifles and also in Morris Tubes for practice shooting in Sniders .577 rifles and Martini Henry .450/577
Next photo up - hmm yes well they could be anything!
Fourth photo up the one on the right looks like a heeled bullet? Cant be - but looks like it. The hollow base might also support that. In which case it might be a Colt Frontier 1873 (16,402 made in .41 Colt from 1885 at around serial number 114001) OR Colt Thunderer DA .41. It would have been highly unusual to see one of those in NZ during the day of their use - 1877 to the early 1930s.
5th Photo up I need to know the diameters but the five long ones do look like Martini Henry .450/577 which was a bottle necked .577 Snider. The green thing is a weed…let it grow full size then smoke it!
Sixth photo up - could be Snider .577.
7th Photo up - more Martini Henry .450/577?
8th Photo up left hand side looks like a .455 Webley as used in WWI. The next two I dont know but guess 3rd from left possibly a .38 Hard to tell. Right hand end one maybe a .38
9th Photo up all appear to be .38s and the one on right a Military issue .380 - the cartridge case a 297/230 in all likelihood.
10th Photo up Left hand hard to tell. The next two are your best - these will be revolver bullets for Cap and Ball revolvers. Is the middle one close to half inch diameter - if so then for a 38 bore revolver. The right hand one - is it close to .44 or .442 - if so a 54 bore revolver. - the two cast bullets most likely for an Adams 1851 or Beaumont Adams or a Tranter. Very very interesting indeed. The right hand one might even come from a commercial (Eley?) paper cartridge for an Adams or Tranter (or other revolvers of the time - 1850s - 1860s and later.
11th photo up - unsure - could be from many guns but 99 percent chance cartridge revolver bullets.
12th Photo up - standard revolver bullets - cartridge and could be early cartridge or quite late. Maybe .38 or similar.
13th Photo up unsure - could be cast bullets for revolver but certainly pistol bullets.
14th Photo or top one - Yep far out fuck a duck! Well done keep it up. For me to keep it up blue pills required!
Thorough answer Graham. Will try get measurements for you. I’d like to get them in a case with labels on them. Thank you very much. Knew you’d be able to help!
Some bullets could be from many different firearms so cannot be pinned down to any specific firearm.
Fun finding and trying to identify though.
I reckon they are a pain in the arse 
& would rather it be a gold nugget. 
Here are the spoils of a HUGE waste of time digging crap. This from only one small jar that I came across in the garage the other day. I know of two other jars twice the size full to the brim stashed in the container out back.
Few old square nails & a small gauge tramway track rail spike. They are quite cool
Lots of lead, brass & shot gun caps & off course the odd one or two million shotgun pellets. 
To put things into perspective, every one of those bits where individually detected & individually dug by hand 
Enough to drive one nuts 
Give me gold any time.
On another note. I have just taken delivery of the newish 12 x 7 Nugget Finder Exceed Mono coil for the GPX 6000 detector. Pretty keen to take that for a spin today. 
Best of luck out there
JW
