Musket Balls, Musket Balls, and more Musket Balls

[handyman [Alan}]

Basically it's a tin can full of musket (type) balls, that you fire from a cannon which turns it in to a very big shot gun
Generally an anti-personnel weapon which is still used today in tanks when fighting infantry. A very nasty piece of kit

..............  the RAF called it 'flak'   

[Chef Geoff]

No, flak generally consists of very sharp pieces of copper from where the shell fragments at a certain height,  sending hundreds of bit's of metal in all directions.
This is a typical piece of WWII flak;

[Mike]

No, flak generally consists of very sharp pieces of copper from where the shell fragments at a certain height,  sending hundreds of bit's of metal in all directions.
This is a typical piece of WWII flak;

after tubes these are the bits i least like finding , great signal s#'t result 

[dances with badgers]

i just weighed in copper fragments of flak and got 35 quid for them,loads on aberavon

[win]

Regarding recording the position of musket ball finds, I did some metal detecting for arkies on a Civil War battle site a few years back. They were particularly interested in any jagged or uneven bits of lead (what we would regard as rubbish). They told me that these were used in cannons as they were more effective than the usual cannon ball, you can imagine the awful scatter gun effect in a battle. So I'd suggest that any objects like this were also properly recorded.

[Chef Geoff]

Yes good point Win, these are once again a sign of cannister shot. The importance of these is that it shows that the action was a "battle" rather than a skirmish as artillery took time to deploy effectively, and so rules out a skirmish

[dances with badgers]

im confused now,seems like a load of old balls to me

[Dyson]

Very interesting read nice one lads