Talk:Shot Tower (Dubuque)

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Untitled[edit]

The Dubuque Shot Tower was rescently measured by the city of Dubuque and it was measured at 121 feet 11 inches!

Persistent nonsense about "musket balls"[edit]

Shot towers are incapable of making lead spheres of suitable size for combat use in muskets. The Dubuque shot tower was built in 1856, when the standard US Army musket was the Model 1842 which was of 0.69 caliber (17.5mm); the largest lead ball that can be produced by the free-fall shot tower method is #2 shot (3.8mm) and from the less-than 40m Dubuque tower the maximum was #6 shot (2.4mm).

Lead projectiles for muskets were cast. Some were no doubt produced locally --- Dubuque was home to a significant lead mining industry --- but most would have been imported from factories in the eastern US. And all --- locally made or imported --- would have been cast. The shot tower method was simply incapable of producing lead spheres of the size necessary for combat use, nor of the consistent size to be acceptable for such use.

Military use of shot tower-produced shot was very minor. Soldiers were issued shot for foraging: at the time hunting of small game and birds was encouraged to provide fresh meat. There were few soldiers in the Midwest at this time; certainly nowhere near enough to justify the cost of building a shot tower to produce shot for their trivial foraging needs. The primary reason for the construction of the shot tower was to produce shot, using locally mined lead, for sale to American settlers in the upper Midwest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.178.166.3 (talk) 18:04, 4 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]