Original Items: 160+ years old these are totally Inert and unusable. Only One Lot of 2 Available. This is a rare opportunity to add not one, but two sets of unopened artillery fuses to your collections! These fuses are marked as being 4 seconds and 5 seconds and appear to be Federal issue/used. Civil War artillery fuzes, just like the projectiles, came in many different sizes, shapes, and varieties. While the primary purpose of the fuze was to explode the projectile among enemy forces, the methods used to accomplish this objective varied. In many cases, the artillerist was the one who decided what type of fuzing system to employ based on the range of the target, type of target, and type of projectile he intended to use. In other cases, the artillerist made the choice of projectiles and had to use the fuzing system manufactured into the projectile.

This time system was the most employed fuze system. Time fuzes were designed to explode a projectile after a predetermined number of seconds. Two basic systems of time fuzes were used. The first system was simply a powder composition, wrapped tightly in paper and pre-cut at the factory to determine the time before explosion. It was driven into a metal or wood fuze plug mounted in the fuze hole of the projectile. The second system employed a soft metal housing containing a powder train. The artillerist would cut through the train at the appropriate time mark before loading the projectile into the cannon.

Both time fuze systems relied on the flame from the exploding propellant charge in the cannon tube to ignite the powder composition. After the composition had burned down through the set number of seconds, the fuze flame would enter the powder chamber inside the projectile and cause the projectile to explode.

The most common projectiles found which employed the time fuze system are Parrott, Hotchkiss, and Bormann-fuzed spherical shells.

A lovely set of items that comes more than ready for further research and display.

These are being sold as display collectible items ONLY.

NOTE: Shipped UPS HAZ MAT Only. Not available for shipping to PO Boxes. Not available for export.