The Annoyed Man wrote: ↑Wed Nov 13, 2019 10:15 pm
Crash wrote: ↑Wed Nov 13, 2019 7:52 pm
The Annoyed Man wrote: ↑Wed Nov 13, 2019 6:54 pm
Round balls? Why not just use Minié balls? Civil War confederate guerrilla sniper Jack Hinson made hits on union soldiers up to 1000 yards out, using a muzzle loading rifle custom built for that kind of shooting, loaded with Minié balls. Admittedly, he typically fired down onto troop transports from high up on bluffs lining the river, which would have had the effect of reducing his bullet drop over the range; but those would be hard shots even with a modern centerfire today. It seems to me that shooting that kind of bullet would at least increase your hit probability, and maybe even extend your range a little bit.
The Annoyed Man,
You're right, of course, but I just like the idea of shooting a patched round ball.
Crash
Fair enough. I wondered if it was an enthusiast thing or not when I was typing the above. I guess if you’re trying to be as original as possible, round ball would be called for. It occurs to me that back in the 18th to mid 19th century, an awful lot of hunting with a muzzle loader was probably done in thick woods where the shooting distances would have been short enough that it might not have mattered much for hunting purposes.
When I was I High School I used to do Civil War re-enactments with my HS history teacher (USMC Vietnam Vet) and our local (Charlotte, NC) historical society. I had a replica Civil War era .54 cal rifled Enfield, which was historically correct for Federal troops of that era (yeah we were Union....in NC
...funny thing is the historical society guys who re-enacted as Confederate really welcomed us. See in NC in 1979 they had a really hard time finding someone to be Union
). Anyway, I digress. We used to roll our own “cartridges” out of thick brown mailing paper with black powder inside. This was as “period” correct as you could get. So we wrapped the black powder charge FFF grain if I remember correctly which you could buy buy the pound if you were 16 or older. Of course for re-enactments you didn’t put the paper “wad” from the cartridge in...you just bit off the top and poured the loose powder down the barrel. And you weren’t allowed to have the ramrod on your rifle. Now later I decided to take said rifle out and shoot some round balls out of it. I took some of my “cartridges” from re-enactments which were about 1.5“ by .5” around...don’t know how many grains of FFF that was but it was what we were to,d was standard load for the Blues. Anyway shooting some metal canisters and wooden pallets, I compared to shooting same with my Mini-14 .223... The Enfield was really underpowered. It didn’t even penetrate the pallets at 50’. I can’t help thinking my powder charge was light or the ball ammo was too small. Plate mail and chain mail armor was made obsolete by smooth bore muskets by the 17th century...so I can’t help think was doing something wrong.
