Hello Steve,
Very interesting item! I'm a novice in this area, but I had to at least comment on this interesting item (thanks for posting it). During the American Civil War, there were a variety of exploding shot used on the battlefields, including Dahlgren shells, Coehorn round shot, etc, even barshot used against troops, but I've never seen this type of shell before. It is possible that it is something experimental, as there were apparently many of this going on during this time. It definitely seems contemporary with mid- to last quarter- 19th century (as far as I'm aware, the last of the round shot type shells were becoming obsolete compared with the more bullet/lozenge shape shells, so CW feels right), but then again, it might not end up being a shell at all. Too often, I've seen cannon balls and such turn out to be industrial items. I'll leave this one up to the more knowledible members of the forum-
