Brown Bess accuracy experiment, phase 1
If you go back a few posts, you'll read about my annoyance that people still quote the BS story that you can't shoot accurately with a smoothbore musket. This has led to some interesting discussions.
First it was pointed out that there is a big difference in accuracy between using a patched, well fitting round ball and the so-called "undersized" ball that was used in the regular army in the 18th c. Yeah, I allowed for this one.
I should have only done so provisionally. Last Friday a new shooter from a Minuteman company in Massachusetts came by. He had fired a rifle in the army nearly a quarter century ago, but never was not a regular shooter and had never fired his musket live.
We rolled up some cartridges that mimicked the British issue cartridge as close as we could ascertain them to be. If you were to measure original round balls as issued or as found archaeologically, you would see that the much fabled "undersized ball" is .690 in diameter. Today, casual shooters use a .715 and some folks who like to load tight (I.E. drive the ball down with a mallet) use a .735 ball. I have a few bags of .690 balls, so that's what we used.
For paper, we used newsprint. It is a stack of them I found in the gun room from years ago and it has gotten old, yellow and brittle. The thickness and texture are fairly close to some original newsprint that I have here, which is thinner that the paper used in surviving 17th and 18th century books.
We rolled the paper around a former with the ball at the end and tied it off with a string. The empty tubes (with ball inside) were stood up in a cartridge block to keep them organized and upright, then they were individually filled with a powder measure, and rolled shut on top to close them.
The powder charge we used was 90 grains of FFg. Yeah yeah yeah, I know Sketchbook '76 says that cartridges used 120 grains, but you need to consider the quality of the powder then vs today. Read some of the data from the Springfield Armory where they had to use massive proof loads because the powder was so weak. 150 grains is a proof load today, so why would the service load be nearly at that level?
There were a dozen cartridges prepared. I set out a human silhuette target at 25 yards. The shooter loaded from the cartridge box, and was given a rag to wipe the flint when it got dirty. First he primed, which used up a few of the 90 grains, and the rest was poured down the barrel. Then the ball, cartridge and all, was stuffed down the bore. The first shot was dead center on the target.
The rest of the shots were fired without putting the gun down to rest. All were on target, with the majority of them in a group in the middle that could be covered with a dinner plate. (these would have hit vital organs and stopped the man in his tracks)
The shooting session wasn't planned to prove anything, it was meant to be instructional. When we undertake the experiment for real, it will be under much more controlled circumstances with more than one shooter. What this proved, however, was that the oft-repeated story about how "the undersized ball would ricochet around the barrel on the way out and you would have no idea where it was going after it left the barrel" is a crock. It's just one of those reenactor factoids that is made true by the retelling. Often it is followed by the statement that "you'd fire at a guy in the line opposite you, and someone 5 or 6 men down in the line would be hit". Nope, sorry. OK, I'll admit, you couldn't take the nuts off of a fly at 100 yards, but you certainly would hit the man you aimed at in the line.
Maybe if there is a few minutes that Wendy doesn't keep her hopping, I'll have Becky roll up the rest of the .69 balls into cartridges and load them with powder. It is supposed to rain all this week, so we probably won't get into the experiment in the next few days, but I'll write up all of the factors and goals for it and maybe recruit a few more inexperienced shooters for whatever day we pick to do it.
First it was pointed out that there is a big difference in accuracy between using a patched, well fitting round ball and the so-called "undersized" ball that was used in the regular army in the 18th c. Yeah, I allowed for this one.
I should have only done so provisionally. Last Friday a new shooter from a Minuteman company in Massachusetts came by. He had fired a rifle in the army nearly a quarter century ago, but never was not a regular shooter and had never fired his musket live.
We rolled up some cartridges that mimicked the British issue cartridge as close as we could ascertain them to be. If you were to measure original round balls as issued or as found archaeologically, you would see that the much fabled "undersized ball" is .690 in diameter. Today, casual shooters use a .715 and some folks who like to load tight (I.E. drive the ball down with a mallet) use a .735 ball. I have a few bags of .690 balls, so that's what we used.
For paper, we used newsprint. It is a stack of them I found in the gun room from years ago and it has gotten old, yellow and brittle. The thickness and texture are fairly close to some original newsprint that I have here, which is thinner that the paper used in surviving 17th and 18th century books.
We rolled the paper around a former with the ball at the end and tied it off with a string. The empty tubes (with ball inside) were stood up in a cartridge block to keep them organized and upright, then they were individually filled with a powder measure, and rolled shut on top to close them.
The powder charge we used was 90 grains of FFg. Yeah yeah yeah, I know Sketchbook '76 says that cartridges used 120 grains, but you need to consider the quality of the powder then vs today. Read some of the data from the Springfield Armory where they had to use massive proof loads because the powder was so weak. 150 grains is a proof load today, so why would the service load be nearly at that level?
There were a dozen cartridges prepared. I set out a human silhuette target at 25 yards. The shooter loaded from the cartridge box, and was given a rag to wipe the flint when it got dirty. First he primed, which used up a few of the 90 grains, and the rest was poured down the barrel. Then the ball, cartridge and all, was stuffed down the bore. The first shot was dead center on the target.
The rest of the shots were fired without putting the gun down to rest. All were on target, with the majority of them in a group in the middle that could be covered with a dinner plate. (these would have hit vital organs and stopped the man in his tracks)
The shooting session wasn't planned to prove anything, it was meant to be instructional. When we undertake the experiment for real, it will be under much more controlled circumstances with more than one shooter. What this proved, however, was that the oft-repeated story about how "the undersized ball would ricochet around the barrel on the way out and you would have no idea where it was going after it left the barrel" is a crock. It's just one of those reenactor factoids that is made true by the retelling. Often it is followed by the statement that "you'd fire at a guy in the line opposite you, and someone 5 or 6 men down in the line would be hit". Nope, sorry. OK, I'll admit, you couldn't take the nuts off of a fly at 100 yards, but you certainly would hit the man you aimed at in the line.
Maybe if there is a few minutes that Wendy doesn't keep her hopping, I'll have Becky roll up the rest of the .69 balls into cartridges and load them with powder. It is supposed to rain all this week, so we probably won't get into the experiment in the next few days, but I'll write up all of the factors and goals for it and maybe recruit a few more inexperienced shooters for whatever day we pick to do it.
posted by MVTCoPete | 6:03 PM
1 Comments:
Pete, I was thinking that the inaccuracy of the Bess was based more on the barrel being hand forged in the 18th century around a case hardened rod. Am I wrong? Did they have lathes and drills capable of more tighter tolerances?
Richard
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