Target Practice - Fired & Impacted Lead Bullets - Pancakes, Mushrooms & Shoot-throughs

[Stu]

I've found all these lumps of lead over a number of years and kept them together, and I just found them again in a box in the corner of a dark cupboard - and thought it worth a post. Here in England we luckily haven't seen any real internal military fighting since the English Civil War (c1640's) so most bullets and musket balls we find all over the place were from hunting, practice or just recreation (not from battlefields). From the time of Elizabeth I (c1570's) the focus has been local training and good practice just in case anyone decided to invade. In Victorian times local militia units, rifle companies and training took place pretty well everywhere.

These finds, are often not obvious and thrown in with the junk lead - I think are really good examples of what they are.  They also come in a massive variety of annoying smaller fragments. The Minie bullets I have phrased as mushroom (fairly obvious why) and shoot-through. A shoot-through from where the base of the bullet, after the bullet hitting something soft?, has pushed through the soft hot lead and turned the bullet inside out. There may be some technical phrase for these things, but in my mind this is what I call them if ever found. A pancake is a flat one, fired at something hard, and normally having an imprint of sandstone brick, or rough hewn granite - the common stone for dry stone walls, or gate posts for the well off farmers of old.

The silver coin is a Victorian sixpence. It has been used as a target and suffered the consequences - but probably from a later jacketed .303 bullet as tiny bits of copper are embedded in the silver after the massive force of impact obliterated it.   

 

[Rick N. MI]

They look cool. Would make a nice display. I like how they mushrooms out. One was perfect. I haven't found any mushroomed bullets.

[MSC]

Every piece of "trash" I find I put in a container in my side by side and keep until it's full. Found a lot of lead of all different shapes. As much as I hate finding lead, the mushroom ones are pretty cool, not very common to find in that shape.