Odd Object ID sought

[Zulu]

“When faced with a decision between something you can't trace to a source and something you can, there’s really no choice.”
 
Yep, when faced with a choice between an anarchist website and a magazine that was published between 1845 and the 1990s I know which one I would trust and chose!
 
Look up “Illustrated London News” issue of February 27, 1858. The article is there in print - with the engraving.
 
Starr

Starr,
I tried to find this yesterday.  Could you provide the link?
Zulu

[Starr 2011]

Zulu
It's hard-copy only. The library I looked at yesterday wouldn't let me photocopy their bound version of 'Illustrated London News'. Despite cannonmn's opinion these bound volumes are available in many city libraries in the United States, hopefully someone out there has a more co-operative librarian...
I should say that cannonmn's tank cleaner does look too good to be true.The screw threads on the filling hole are very well preserved, sharp and in "the white", for something that has been underground for 100 years or more. I wouldn't want the gullible to think that it might be 100% original.
Starr

[cannonmn]

Speaking of the threads, one thing that interferes with my believing this is 19th C. production of one or a few is the machine-cut threads in the large hole.  In this photo, you should be able to see the very regular machine "chatter" marks on the threads, most prominently at about 6:00 on the first thread.  I would think any one-off or even something where a few were made would have hand-tapped threads, but I'm not a professional machinist, only a dabbler.  Anyone care to comment?  If needed I can put up an enlarged, cropped version but trust me there are very regular chatter marks on all the threads.

[KABAR2]

What is odd is the threads look like the day they were made..... if this was in the ground water would have entered through the nipples.... and attacked the threaded hole on the end this should have be rusted shut.... there should have been some pitting somewhere on this if it was ploughed up out of the ground.....
As to the threads they most likely were done with a tap, it would be more work setting it up in a lathe to do internal threads.. what would be interesting it to see if the threads are a modern standard, metric, or one of the old forms......

[cannonmn]

As to the threads they most likely were done with a tap, it would be more work
setting it up in a lathe to do internal threads..

You help me make my point that this nozzle thing was made in a production lot, and threaded on a lathe or screw machine of some kind, thus the chatter marks.  A hand tap would not leave regular chatter marks like that.  To me the chatter marks mean the threading was done at a constant rpm (fps) which happens with a motorized machine, not hand-tapping.

[GGaskill]

Can you tell if that is a pipe thread or what the thread pitch is?

[cannonmn]

Can you tell if that is a pipe thread or what the thread pitch is?

I can't tell, all I have is the same photos you are looking at.  The people in charge at the Company of Military Historians asked me to solve the puzzle for a longtime member who sent the photos and specs in.  If we can solve it for sure using that info, fine, or if not we might have to get him to send the thing in for hands-on inspection where we could do things like measure the thread pitch, and get a good look inside to see how the two halves were joined, if any clues are visible.  We could also have the metal tested with handheld spark or x-ray spectrograph.  If there's any aluminum in the alloy, it is more-or-less post-1900, since aluminum did not exist as a contaminant in the scrap metal cycle much prior to that.
Unless someone tells me I'm way offbase, I'm happy with my conclusion that due to the machine chatter marks on the threads, the object isn't a prototype or very low-production "piece of ordnance" the owner thinks it is, but something that was produced on a production line with fairly modern machinery.
 

[GGaskill]

I suppose the owner could try a piece of half inch or three quarter inch pipe in it.  It looks like pipe threads to me but hard to tell for sure with so few threads.  Is the plug tapered?  Is there a plug?

[seacoastartillery]

Cannonmn:  "You help me make my point that this nozzle thing was made in a production lot, and threaded on a lathe or screw machine of some kind, thus the chatter marks.  A hand tap would not leave regular chatter marks like that.  To me the chatter marks mean the threading was done at a constant rpm (fps) which happens with a motorized machine, not hand-tapping."
 
 
       I'm sorry, Starr, but I'm going to have to go with Cannonmn on this one, but I do realize how compelling your Orsini bomb image is.  For those who believe that any self-respecting anarchist would chose the hedgehog device upon which to shape his destiny, I have only this to say:  balderdash!   These men were NOT the wild eyed fanatics that the industrialists of the age made them out to be.  From my considerable reading on the subject, I have learned that most were of high intelligence, with extraordinary ability to develop simple, but effective plans that their "useful idiots" could easily carry out.  No detail, however small was unconsidered.  That's why very few Orsini bombs were ever thrown.  After all, consider what the thrower would look like if he had ever tried to get a bomb built like the "hedgehog" to the point of execution:
 
       From Starr's post:   "It was first used by Felice Orsini in an attempt to assassinate Emperor Napoleon III in Paris on January 14, 1858. He had six made in Birmingham, England, tested three in London and threw two at the Emperor’s carriage. These first “Orsini Bombs” were near identical to cannonmn’s find, made in two parts with a “hedgehog” of percussion nipples at one end and a filling cap at the other. They were filled with fulminate of mercury, the same as used in percussion caps."
 
       My goodness,  you would almost certainly be "Mush" far before you reached the target!  Fulminate of Mercury was the Extremely Sensitive substance used in cartridge primers right up to the 70s.  Lead Syphanate is far more stable and almost as brisant an explosive.  Anarchists were not stupid people, just determined.
 
       Below you will find the American anarchist's choice of bombs.  All that we have read about in US history have been of this type.  Requiring no unusual  associated items like 60 or 70 percussion caps, a padded delivery box the size of half a hog's head barrel, a screw-on flinger stick (a-la-potato masher grenade) or any other extraneous material you could either leave behind as you started your mission or fumbled with at the critical moment of use.  American anarchists pretty much believed in the K.I.S.S. principle when it came to bombs made from easy to get 6 or 12 Pdr. shells or purpose made anarchist bombs like that believed to have been used in the Haymarket Square Police Bombing.  See link below:
 
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ichihtml/hayhome.html


     Simple, easy to make and deadly.  Confidently carried by any anarchist who had an escape plan memorized, there was very little to go wrong with these crude, but robust devices.   Take a close look at the "Hedgehog's" competition.  The initiation, (lighting of the fuse)  is not a problem when you consider that 75% of adult males smoked cigars back in those days!  Take a look:
 
 
 1886 Anarchist bomb used in Chicago, Ill.  Pretty hard to blow yourself up with something this simple before you reach your target.
 
 
 
 
 American anarchist's loved the simplicity of these bombs.  Just look,  it ain't too complicated.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

[cannonmn]

When faced with a decision between something you can't trace to a source and
something you can, there’s really no choice

Maybe I should have spelled out more precisely what I was explaining at the time.  There are photos of an original, documented Orsini bomb, the perfectly spherical, shiny one, with spines all over, which belongs to the Barcelona museum and was on loan to another museum when it was photographed ca. 2008.  This device appears in photos on more than one website, and I was convinced it was the real thing, an historical object.
The engraving however, London Times or not, could be an "artist's concept" for all we know, the artist may never have seen the real thing, which happened a lot in those days.  Nor is there a real object, with documented use as a bomb (chain of custody, as in the law enforcement world) which looks anything like the "artist's concept." 
That's what I had in mind when I wrote that.  And a photo is more reliable than a drawing.

[shred]

The News article claims it's a drawing from a photograph

Illustration is from a photograph taken by Mr. Oliver C. Phillips of the grenade in possession of the Birmingham police authorities.
 

but I'm a little skeptical of the design that it was heavier at one end so it would land on that end when thrown.  Five minutes experimenting with differently-weighted objects would have shown them that wasn't going to work very well.  Perhaps that's why this one stayed in Birmingham instead of going to France with Orsini (where everybody seems to show the usual all-spiked design), but then why make another?

[cannonmn]

Certainly the London Times illustration could be a near-perfect image, too, of the first pattern of these things, which later changed into the spherical spikey "sea urchin" one.  Hard to tell at this late date.  Here's a possible scenario for how the "tank nozzle" one came about.  Someone who worked around those tank-washing nozzles saw the London Times engraving and had a brainstorm.  "Hey I can make one of these, I've already got the body and now all I have to do is order a buncha nipples from Dixie Gun Works."  Then he made the thing, showed it to all his friends for years, died, and it wound up at that gun show without the London Times article.  If the seller had had that with it, it might have cost $25.00 instead of $5.
I'm about 94% certain the thing I'm supposed to be analyzing is the product of a 20th C. production line, and the machine chatter marks on the bright, shiny threads I think are the best evidence

[Starr 2011]

 Taking up Tracy’s challenge about anarchists, attached are the news reports of two trials relating to the Orsini Outrage. The first one dated February 16, 1858 was in England where a French police officer brings a bomb (empty) into court and describes its construction and its filling. The second two, from Orsini’s French trial and dated February 25, have French CSIs describe the bomb again and how Orsini actually made the fulminate himself. The description of how he made the yellow crystal bomb-filling is hair-raising, drying it by the coal fire and carrying it about Paris in a bag. A nice neighbour!
 
The clippings come from “The Times” newspaper in London, which covered the several trials of the terrorists in London and Paris in immense detail.
 
Orsini’s first bomb did have the advantage that you could safely lay it on its side when “primed” with percussion caps, the later Hanes-type ball-shaped bombs, entirely covered in caps, must have tested the nerves of the most determined terrorist.
 
I am sure that cannonmn is correct in saying that the “tank cleaner” is a more than likely a copy of the first Orsini bomb, probably made in the 20^th century.
 
Starr

[cannonmn]

Starr, thanks, very interesting stuff.  Yes the procedings were detailed and so are the articles about them, but some details I'd like to know are lacking.  One part of the article says one of the grenades was "extacted from a horse."  Of course.  But I'd like to know how it got into the horse, and from which end of the horse it was extracted.  The possibility also occurred to me that this "horse" may not be the animal which normally comes to mind with that term today, but an archaic regional nickname for some sort of fixture, appliance, or conveyance.  Perhaps you could clarify.  But in any case, good work on those articles!  Now I can avoid embarrassing myself the way I would have if I had claimed that there never was a device just like the one under investigation and that it wouldn't have worked anyway.

[Starr 2011]

 Cannonmn
 
It was fragments of the bomb that were extracted from the unfortunate horse.
 
What is interesting in the forensic report on the bombs is that they had “two parts which screw together which, when separated, form two cups or bowls”. Also two of the three bombs used were larger than the others, so there were different sizes.
 
Like everyone else, when I originally saw the description and picture of the first Orsini bomb several decades ago, I just could not believe anyone would fill a metal cylinder with fulminate (and live), assuming it was a mistake in translation, but the evidence quoted is pretty definitive. And they were carried about in coat pockets!!!
 
Actually Orsini didn’t live, he was guillotined.
 
Starr

[KABAR2]

if one were an anarchist and did not have a machine shop to build infernal devices I expect they sought out off the shelf components that would work for a vessel.... so perhaps the device was a common spray head that was then modified for the new more deadly purpose..... none of the items shown have any high degree of tecnology behind them .......

[cannonmn]

Thanks for all the help.  I gave them my final conclusion and acknowledged the help of folks on this forum.  The conclusion:
"The object in question appears to be a 20th C. replica of one type of Orsini anarchist bomb."
 
 
 
 

[Cannoneer]

Well done job of research, Starr.