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The Double D
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Some where I read a discussion by one of our illustrious Zulu War authors about some cut marks found on some copper bands on the ammunition boxes at Isandlwana. The discussion centered around if these cut marks were made by bayonet or assegai. The cut marks were being used to give credence the "hard to open" ammunition box theory
I don't recall if a resolution was made to the discussion. And I have never seen a photo's of these cut bands. Today I got to see several of the bands bearing cut marks. I thought I would share the pictures with you as I am sure some may have never seen these cut bands. This is a copper band. 
Here is the same band from another angle 
Here is a close up of the cut. Notice the burr of metal kicked up on the lower side of the two cuts. 
From this angle you can see no burr on the right side of the cut, burr on the left. 
What ever made cut had a straight wedge shape edge. The curious part is that the cut mark extends clear across the band but only penetrates on the far side. On the bottom side of the band is tool mark but not what I would call a cut, directly below the upper cut on the band Now I am no forensic scientist. But my 30 some odd years in law enforcement has provided me with some training in tool mark identification. Not so much to make tool and tool mark comparisons but to recognize what tool might make what mark so sample tools could collected at crime scenes to be analyzed by scientists. It appeared to me that what ever tool made this mark was two bladed with wedge shape sharp blade on one side and less sharp or narrow flat blade on the other. The was used at a slight angle to make a clean cut on one side and burr on the other. The tool was levered into the band to cut it on one side and not the other or all the way through. While looking at some other Isandlwana artifacts, I saw this: 
A soldier’s tin opener. I tried it in the cut. 
I actually have it on the wrong side in this photo. It fit the configuration of the cut and would have made cut similar to the cut the in the band. The only problem and it's obvious in the photo, is that the blade is too short. So the question is since this small tin opener is an individual soldiers tin opener, would the cook's have had a slightly larger version? Is there another tool similiar, like a harness cutter or something else that could have made these cuts? |
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_________________ DD
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Mel
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DD
Thanks very much for taking the trouble to show these photos. The cuts seem to me to have been made with some kind of chisel. The deeper/wider part of the cut is a result of a repeated blow with the chisel held not at 90 degrees vertical but at an offset angle from the vertical. |
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_________________ Mel
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The Double D
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A very small narrow thin chisel if so. I am skeptical.
This is not an impact cut this is a pressure cut and appears rotational. The tool mark is continious and widens as the cutting instrument passed through the metal. The cut does not appear to have been made with an item as sharp as a knife blade or chisel, Besides how do you explain the supporting tool mark on the under side of the band? A chisel wouldn't make such a mark. I'm not saying the tin opener made the mark, especially a soldiers tin opener, but something similiar, perhaps. We may never know and speculating is interesting. |
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_________________ DD
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Mike Snook
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DD
What as a matter of interest is the provenance of these items? At the risk of being repetitive, you don't need to cut or do anything else to the bands to open the box and get at the ammunition. Access is through a wooden sliding lid between the bands , which are there only to hold the box together. The sliding access panel is retained in place by a single two-inch screw. I should add that in my view, and I am open to being corrected, it would be quite impossible to get a tin opener like that under the band to make a cut anyway. It is my understanding that the bands are screwed down hard, flush to the hardwood panels. Regards Mike |
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The Double D
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Mike,
I don't know anything about the box or how it opens nor am I making any statements about that. I am only commenting on how the cuts appeared to have been made on these particular bands that I saw that were represented as coming from the battlefield. I have no way of knowing that they really did come from the battlefield or that the cuts were made during the battle. ( I have no reason to doubt the bands did not come from Isandlwana and every reason to believe it.) I agree with you that the personal tin opener is not big enough to have made the marks. Read my post very carefully, but don't read to much into it. I simply state the cut marks appeared to me to have been made with a tool that was two bladed with wedge shape sharp blade on one side and less sharp or narrow flat blade on the other. That observation applies only to the two bands I examined, no others. For that matter the cuts could have been made anytime within the last almost 130 years. For all I or anyone else knows the cuts could have been made by a scavenger collecting metal in later times and have nothing whatsoever to do with the battle. DD |
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_________________ DD
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Mike Snook
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DD
OK. Roger out. It's just that the boxes aren't opened that way - an important point in assessing what it is you are actually looking at. I was fascinated by your address. I presume you started your travels in Montana? Or have you yet to get there? I've been there a few times - it's a beautiful part of the world, and one of the few places, along with South Africa, where one can get a proper beef-steak these days!! Regards Mike |
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Michael Boyle
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Right then, he's my half gluteous thoughts. We've always assumed that any soldier would know how to open an ammo crate but as ammunition box opening was normally the job of quarter-master troops and the expeditious opening of same by other than themselve's hadn't come up previous to Isandlwana (certainly not in the 24th's recent combat experience) perhaps there were those that had no idea how to open them. I'm not sure if imperial troops were drilled on it and I doubt if colonial troops were. If one were presented with a banded box it could seem natural that the bands should be removed in order to open it. (In my own anachronistic experience we just worked out cutting the bands and jimmying them open, a totally different but never the less intuitive system.)
I'd always assumed that the cut bands were the result of Zulu iklwas but given DD's photo's (well done close-ups I must say) as well as his informed deduction I'm tending to think snips. I can't think why there would be tin snips at hand but there were certainly leather snips used by the saddlers' and bone snips used by the cooks and it seems the camp troops were belatedly pressed into service for ammo resupply. Although tin snips would have done the job, leather or bone snips would perhaps be less efficient resulting in the cuts shown. (Ever used a razor after someone else shaved their legs with it? Different sharpening angles for different purposes.) Would this band be the same one that Morris swore by or a just another example? MAB |
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Michael Boyle
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By the way Mike, I concur completely, the "Big Sky" is a wonder to behold and one can't expect a decent steak east of Omaha or west of Denver!
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Mike Snook
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Michael,
Well we can agree on beef at least. But hey, it's one hell of a mental leap to take a look at some copper bands, which as the Double D points out may or may not have come from Isandlwana, and may or may not have been cut in 1879 or at any point thereafter, and then start theorizing in support of an inherent probability about the battle - that the troops didn't know how to open an ammo box. There would have to be something wrong upstairs with anybody who looked at a box with a sliding panel lid and decided - 'I 'll ignore that easy access lid with its itty-bitty screw and break my b***s to cut off these two tightly screwed down copper bands instead!! ' I have to disagree with the line of thought entirely I'm afraid. It is is not possible to 'snip' something that is screwed flush to a rigid hardwood surface. Above all else - why would one even try? Remember the bent screws that have been picked up - that's how one got into an ammo box in a hurry. Regards as ever Mike |
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The Double D
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I for one don't think those bands were cut as part of trying get the boxes open during the battle.
To many people are looking at the bands as an "explanation". First you should look at the cuts and try to and explain what caused them. Then see if that fits your theory. I believe that the cuts made in these band were made years later probabably by scavengers well after the straps were removed from the boxes. Look at the verdigris in the screw holes and then look at the cut. Also I had tunnel vision so bad looking at the cuts that I didn't even pay attention to the broke ends. I will look them over again in two weeks. Bent screw? Could the screw for the sliding lid be the same as the screws to hold the band? I need to go to Warriors Gate! If some scavenger was out collecting copper scraps and was prying copper bands off old broken up ammo boxes, would a screw get bent? About Montana, I call Montana home, and am in Durban for 2 to 5 years on a work contract. At the end of the contract I will go back to Montana. The beef grown in Montana is shipped to the big city. The beef you ate in Montana probably came from Alberta! For me beef is for city folks and seldom ate it in Montana. With all the deer and elk around, why pay all that money when you could have venison? I will grant you South Africa does have some good beef. |
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_________________ DD
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Michael Boyle
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As you say Mike we don't know where they came from, someone had a go at them though. Just having some fun with an interesting mental excersise. Actually the verdigris in the cuts seems to match that on the surface which could lead one to think that the cuts were old. Neither here nor there though. I do however remain puzzled as to why Morris considered his bands to be conclusive evidence, as shown by his preface to the second edition of TWOTS. Didn't seem to me to be much to go on.
DD, you're right about venison, my friends from Idaho share your taste and rarely eat beef. Venison jerky and sausage are my favourites but for a good steak I'll take beef every time. (Depends on what one is raised on I suppose.) The same goes for buffalo, that seems to be either an acquired taste or a challenge to cook properly. MAB |
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Dawn
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Never mind the steaks, boys, its the bbq ribs that I long for. Here I am in a country full of beef and lamb and you can't get a decent steak.
To my mind I don't see why Michael can't go along with his original thought about spears having made the cuts. If you're Zulu and never seen an ammunition box before, but you know there's something valuable inside, then you get it open any way you can. Undoing screws wouldn't even have occured to them. From the description of the possible tool that could have cut them: "sharp wedge shape on one side and less sharp...on the other" seems to indicate to me an axe. But then, what does a woman know about tools? One wonders how they got seperated from the boxes anyway, if that's where they came from. And we haven't even got confirmation that they are from ammunition boxes, never mind from Isandlwana. I for one would like to hear how Double D came by the bands and what was told to him of their history. Dawn |
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The Double D
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First an assegai would not have the inertia to make such a cut, nor are any assagais I have seen this sharp. Most likely if an assagai was used, it would have been used in a prying motion and the marks would be on the bottom of the band only. Even then the blade would have bent or the haft broke first. An axe would have made a larger wider cut.
These came from the battle field at Isandlwana and are ammuntion box bands. These were collected during a time when people wandered the battlefield and picked stuff up and took it home with them. The gentlemen is well known among the local historians and has impeccable credentials. For obvious reasons he will remain unnamed. |
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_________________ DD
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Julian whybra
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That's just not good enough historically speaking Double D. It's second hand information from an anonymous contributor on a website provided by another anonymous person with allegedly impeccable credentials...but no so impeccable as to be named or to have handed them in to an appropriate authority. I'm not being discourteous but it forms no basis on which to begin any serious discussion.
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The Double D
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Who's talking history, I'm talking forensics! Historically there is every reason to discredit the bands I pictured. I don't claim them as bonafied. Nothing about there collection is documented. I will protect the owner of them, from unwanted harassment and I have no reason to doubt his credibility. Do you deny that bands exist that are documented to have come for the battlefield that have cut marks? If you wish to attack my premise then take some of the verifiable origin bands with cut marks to a forensic scientist-tool mark examiner and have him discredit them or even explain the cuts. Attack the evidence not the person. Historically speaking is based upon the theory of the presenting historian and is just that theory. |
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_________________ DD
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 | Cut Bands | |
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