Posted: 3/20/2011 6:46:18 PM EDT
..Loaded a flintlock with ball and patch...no powder... ...Too windy for flintlocks today anyhow...
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..Loaded a flintlock with ball and patch...no powder... ...Too windy for flintlocks today anyhow...Should have gotten a breech loading musket. Flintlock is a 'El-Cheapo' pirate looking pistol..works good if it ain't too windy..or when you load it with powder under the ball..  ...never tried it in the rain..
We were mainly shooting my Nepal cache Martini Henry rifles..and a 4 3/4" .45 Colt...been working up .577/.450 loads..so must shoot to see what's working...house smells like rotton eggs...brass is soaking....rifles still need a few patches run and wiped down better...ball is extracted (thank you Jesus!) flintlock is again servicable! |
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..Loaded a flintlock with ball and patch...no powder... ...Too windy for flintlocks today anyhow... , damn man, almost everybody I know that has ever done much shooting with a muzzleloader has at one time or another done the same thing.
with me it was a percussion, so I simply removed the nipple, dribbled in a bit of 3f, replaced the nipple, seated the patched ball a bit further down, capped it and luckly shot the ball out. figured it was worth the try, especially since I'd seen my pop pull one from his 40" 45cal barreled kentucky rifle and that looked to be a hell of a lot of work. I know a dude I used to hunt with quite a bit knocked a deer down and in his excitement watching it flop around loaded his rifle twice, luckly he noticed the "loaded" mark he put on the ramrod was a couple of inches above the muzzle when he seated the second load and didn't shoot it
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..Loaded a flintlock with ball and patch...no powder... ...Too windy for flintlocks today anyhow...Should have gotten a breech loading musket. Flintlock is a 'El-Cheapo' pirate looking pistol..works good if it ain't too windy..or when you load it with powder under the ball.. ...never tried it in the rain..
We were mainly shooting my Nepal cache Martini Henry rifles..and a 4 3/4" .45 Colt...been working up .577/.450 loads..so must shoot to see what's working...house smells like rotton eggs...brass is soaking....rifles still need a few patches run and wiped down better...ball is extracted (thank you Jesus!) flintlock is again servicable! must of been the day for the bigbores, I shot my 45/70, 4 5/8" 45c/acp cimmeron/uberti colt copy and my other hornet this afternoon, road my bike around for a bit this morning though. |
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Today I....started pulling bullets on a bunch of pistol ammo that wasn't hot enough to cycle the gun. Wife helped. We had a nice system going, til she wacked the puller against the ground a couple times, and the end of the puller broke off, flew toward her face, and left her looking very funny with half of a bullet puller in her hand. |
I have read that muskets gathered from the fields at gettysburg...three quarters of these were loaded..and a large number of these had from two to ten loads rammed in and not fired.
Probably pulled my stunt and stuffed a bullet and no powder...and the thing misfires..so you load it again...or maybe your musket misfires..and you chunk it and pick up another..but the next guy picks up your old fouled out musket..loads it..discovers it's shit..and chunks it for another..and on and on until it's got ten loads in it..eh whatever..  I got my big round ball out..fortunately I don't use too tight a patch with my flintlock
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Today I....started pulling bullets on a bunch of pistol ammo that wasn't hot enough to cycle the gun. Wife helped. We had a nice system going, til she wacked the puller against the ground a couple times, and the end of the puller broke off, flew toward her face, and left her looking very funny with half of a bullet puller in her hand. man that impact pullers are ok for pulling 5 or so bullets, anymore than that a collet type puller is better, hell I've even used a pair of vise grips before, put the round in a ss press with no dies installed, put the ram up, grabbed the bullet with the visegrips, then lowered the ram, the bullets had small pull marks but I didn't notice any difference in accuracy when I loaded back up and shot them. |
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Occasionally you can get the ball out with air pressure. A blow gun with a rubber tip against the hole and apply the pressure from the compressor. Make sure its pointed in a safe direction. Huh?...Didn't think about this...The air pressure thing probably would've worked on my mis-load (negligent lack of discharge  )...The patched ball I shoot out of this thing don't fit very tight..and the patch was well greased might fly right out.
Sort of like those Co2 percussian gun un-loaders. I used a home-made ball-screw that fits a steel M14 style cleaning rod...it's good for ball stabbing and screwing..one section of rod working to undo the ball in my flint pistol. It's got a pretty big bore..so you can half-ass see what your doing.
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I have read that muskets gathered from the fields at gettysburg...three quarters of these were loaded..and a large number of these had from two to ten loads rammed in and not fired.
Probably pulled my stunt and stuffed a bullet and no powder...and the thing misfires..so you load it again...or maybe your musket misfires..and you chunk it and pick up another..but the next guy picks up your old fouled out musket..loads it..discovers it's shit..and chunks it for another..and on and on until it's got ten loads in it..eh whatever.. I got my big round ball out..fortunately I don't use too tight a patch with my flintlockyou ever see the flick "gettysburg"? while the north's on little roundtop waiting for the southerns to charge up the hill, the irish sgt tells the col champlain (sp) "the trick is sir, to get the boyyos to shoot when the rebs are charging, lots of times they are scared and excited so they keep loading, loading and loading.....sometimes after a battle we'd find 12-15 balls loaded top another and the rifle never fired a shot" since the "ammo" mostly used by both north/south in their mustkets was a paper quickload "cartridge" type deal (simular to todays quick load tubes) where the powder/miniball was held in a paper bag and they'd bite the bottom off the paper, put the powder/ball part on the bore and ram it on down, cap and shoot it. read a American Rifleman article about there were "rifled" rifles used (a few southern units using the british witworth "rifled" rifle, one dude used one to shoot a northern general off his horse at 700yards), but mostly both sides used smoothbore muskets because during battle they didn't foul nearly a fast as the rifled barrels did. read in a different article that depending on maker/quality a rifled barrel back then would have to have the fouling swabbed out between 3 to 5 shots or it was damn difficult to ram a ball down the barrel, the muskets on the other hand could tolerate 15 or more shots between swabbings, the downside to using the muskets was the accuracy or lack thereof past 75 yards or so meant close range fighting. course it said the southerns had the advantage because most of them actually practiced with their rifles to find out how they shot/grouped before taking them into battle. a few years back the American Rifleman did an article on the revolutionary war also, it had quite a bit of info on muskets used also, it said that the Americans scored more hits than the british due to the volunters/regulars practicing with their rifles, if iirc the Americans hit ratio was 1:6 and the british was something like 1:15. |