hand mortar

DeWitt Bailey discusses the Musket-Mortars and their ammo in his book, "Small Arms of the British Forces in America 1664-1815" (pgs 209-210). I tend to think the specs would be much the same for the hand mortars' grenades:

Shells:
Exterior Diameter: 2.42 inches.
Interior Diameter: 1.701 inches, 1/64the of the shell: 0.037 inches.
Thickness of iron at top: 0.302 inches, 0.415 inches at the bottom.
Dimensions of the Fuze Hole at top: 0.500 inches, 0.463 at bottom.
Weight of Iron in Shell: 1 lb., .03 ozs.

"The quantity of powder to fill shells is found thus: the Interior diameter being given, first find the number of cubicle Inches in the cavity by cubing the interior diameter [1.701] and multiplying it by 11 and dividing the product by 21 which will be the cubical inches in the cavity. Then divide them by the number of cubical inches in a pound of ordnance powder and the quotient will be the pounds of powder to fill the shell."

Great. Would somebody PLEASE get us the number of cubicle Inches in a pound of ordnance powder!?

Can't wait for a report on shoulder firing with a full ord. load and correctly weighted projectile

So, if you put a new blackpowder gun in a lead-sled and fire it with a string as long in feet as the caliber (i.e. .50 caliber, 50 feet), how long would it have to be to proof the lifting charge and a real grenadoe in a hand mortar?

:shocked2:

275 feet in this case!? Almost a football field away sounds about right to me!

Ok just found this imformation ,the brass hand mortar was placed onto a short pike type of suport with a steel base to sit on the ground and the other end made to suport the hand rail stock , it was the fired up into the air with a high arc .

Somewhere I've mentioned my short halberd. These were standard equipment for these Grenadiers. The second ring on the tube of the hand mortar is there to provide the spot between it and the muzzle swell where the gun is nestled onto the top of the halberd being used as a type of shooting fork as I understand it. It would help consistency. And been one helluva weapon...

The rule of thumb for early matchlock musketeers was for their rest to be at armpit level. You can presume the haft of the halberd would have been about shoulder height IMO.

The imformation that I got was that the buttplate was placed into the top of the firing mount, the buttplate does not touch the shooters shoulder at all.

That would be nice but where have we, can we, see that? The stocks look remarkably ergonomically human in shape and I've read differently (not an expert by any stretch tho).

Your description sounds more like carrying around a modern mortar tube and mount as opposed to a grenade launcher and I believe they had both... Coehorns for lifting grenadoes hundreds of yards and hand mortars for sending them scores!

1601phill said:

:shake: Oh I say can you see
A flare was just a low power fire work , rather then a rocket (with it's red glare ) they go way back , even used by English and French in the F&I War in North America .NB they were not as bright as say some thing more modern but they did allow the user to get a grasp on what was happening at night .

Click to expand...

"OH say can you see by the Rockets red glare"

Refered to Concreve rocket system that were used as artillery not flares these were ment to harass and injure not light up the sky so you could see what your enemy was doing in a field.....

What I was refering to was a type of flare used in the 1850's and 60's fired from a pistol:
http://armscollectors.com/mgs/flare_pistols.htm

Fella makes his own from scratch and tests it here over a few minutes. Not exactly historically correct, but...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6N2IJccZy4