A very educational example of the standard US Hotchkiss artillery shell used in the 3-inch Ordnance Rifle field guns, a widely used artillery piece in the Civil War.

The shell was made in three pieces- the shell proper, which would fragment when its internal charge detonated, a metal base cup, and a lead “sabot band” wrapped around the narrow base of the shell in between. When fired, the propellant charge forced the base cap against a lead band, forcing it to expand and take the rifling of the cannon barrel, imparting the spin that made rifle projectiles so much more accurate. The shell itself was detonated in the conventional fashion by a time-fuze inserted in the brass adapter screwed into the nose of shell, the gunner estimating the distance to the target and cutting the fuze so as to detonate over it.

The shell was sectioned lengthwise to illustrate its internal construction, preserving half the time fuze, the shell body, lead band and cup, with some of the matrix still inside that was used to create a powder chamber for the detonating charge- which was removed of course. The exterior is just as worth studying. The shell body, lead band, and base cup all show flame grooves that were an improvement to ensure flame from the propellant charge would reach and ignite the time-fuze in fuze-adapter in the nose of the shell.

The exterior of the shell is brown in color with typical shallow corrosion to the iron and somewhat bluish-gray tone to the lead band. Completely inert and a very illustrative piece in any artillery collection.  [sr][ph:L]

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