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Patch Sewn on Ball?

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Hello everyobe. I have been thinking about getting an 1841 Mississippi rifle repro in .54 caliber. From my research, it seems these were loaded with a ball where the lubricated patch was attached to it by means of sewing.

This is quite curious to me. I've never heard of this before. Has anyone e ever tried to attach the patch to the ball in this way or a different way? It seems to have been done to make loading faster since both are connected, but I have no idea what it would do for accuracy.any thought on this?

Thanks!
 
'morning,

I don't still have the link, but I saw photos of some original Baker Rifle belted balls some years ago. They had leather patches sewn onto/around them them.

All I could think of at the time was, "and I thought making cartridges for my Sharps was tedious..."

Mike
 
I thought that if one used a belted ball one didn't use a patch?

I have seen folks attempting to recreate Hessian Jaeger rifle loads, since the Jaegers carried a cartridge box with preloaded cartridges, but their rifles would not have had such accuracy if they used bare ball. Their exact method of preparing their cartridges was not known at the time, so folks precut square patches to the dimensions of the outside flats of the rifle barrel. Then they "tacked" with needle and thread the four corners of the lubed patch, together, over the ball sprue. This was then loaded into the rifle, and pre-tacked rifle ball did load quicker than finding a patch to combine with the ball or cutting a patch at the muzzle. Accuracy wasn't affected..., it seems the using of light thread with a few stitches, the thread then ruptured on firing, or just after exiting the muzzle, and the patch fell away.

The fastest method, was for the rifleman to have pre-rolled cartridges of only powder, and a pocket full of ball, pre-patched. Dumping the cartridge by inserting the open paper tube down the barrel, and ramming it down with the patched ball was faster than dumping the powder, tossing the spent paper, and then going for the ball.

LD
 
“Practical Instructions for Military Officers, for the District of Massachusetts”, Epaphras Hoyt, published 1811
https://books.google.com/books?id=0NcvAAAAYAAJ&q=wooden+mallet#v=snippet&q=wooden mallet&f=false

"A patch of thin linen cloth or soft milled leather, saturated with grease, must be slightly stitched round the balls, with small thread which will separate when discharged from the piece. Care must be taken that the patch and ball are of a suitable size to fill the caliber and channels of the barrel : if too large it will be difficult to force them down ; if too small the direction of the shot will be much less certain : When duly prepared the ball must be placed in the cartridge with the proper quantity of powder for the charge and priming, and the end of it so folded that the powder may be secure. In loading, the powder must be carefully emptied into the barrel. the ball separated from the paper, by the teeth, and driven down close upon the powder, but not so as to bruise the grains."

Spence
 
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A friend of mine that reenacts the Jaegers has done some fooling around with sewn on patch balls. In his opinion, the Jaegers probably pushed the patch and the ball into a hole in a wooden block to hold it in place while sewing the patch.

He then is of the opinion that they left the ball in the wooden block for shooting. No documentation so far unfortunately.

I wonder what the German name for a loading block is? Is a loading block by another name still a loading block?
 
I've not heard of sewing patches to the balls, particularly in the U.S. Do know that the 95th Rifle Regiment used balls for their Baker Rifles that were pre-cut into a cross configuration and some sort of adhesive used to attach them to the rifle balls. There's a neat photo provided by Richard Rutherford-Moore (a noted author and military historian who played Rifleman Moore in the 'Sharpe' series) for Phillip Elliot-Wright's fascinating book from the Military Illustrated series "Rifleman:Elite Soldiers of the Wars Against Napoleon". In it Richard Moore illustrates his own collection of period and meticulously recreated tools and accessories for the Baker Rifle carried by the 95th during the early 19th century. Among the items are original and hand-made copies of pre-lubed, pigskin covered balls. I just can't get the photo to copy for some reason., but Moore's own comments for this pic he provided for his friend Phillip reads:

"The patched and lubricated balls are reproductions of actual patched rifle balls recently found 'in store' (the one in the centre is an original from the period and was mostly patched in pigskin, apparently smeared with a mixture of lard and tallow). What the original patches were stuck onto the bullets with defies laboratory identification-but it was later found to be very attractive to mice!"

Now we know! :wink: :rotf:
 
it was later found to be very attractive to mice

Well, I suppose cheese might work. :hmm:

That is, if it wasn't bierkäse or limburger.

Those both are so strong they would never let go of the ball.

:rotf:
 
:shocked2: Ay Caramba!

Though it he's right about the lard and tallow I guess that would be enough in itself! Maybe it was rifleman toe-jam after treading about Spain in summer! :doh:
 
As for accuracy if the patch did not immediately seperate from the ball accuracy would not be good. I use a mixture of lard and beeswax which works well on most occasions. Two years ago I found a loading block in the bottom of my shooting box that had been there for at least three years. I thought I would use it to for practice in my deer rifle. The first shot was off paper at twenty five yards, the second barely hit the paper, but had part of the patch stuck in the backing, I then pushed out the rest and found the patches were "glued" to the balls. the lube had dried and actually held the patches on to the balls. :idunno: :idunno:
 
Man ,with such a parachute on the ball,it's amazing they shot that well.A while back I remember someone on this forum talking about a patch being stuck in a target. I can see now how that is entirely possible. My wife accuses me of never throwing anything away, I should make an exception with prepatched balls in a loading block.
 
tried this a year or two ago with dry-lube patches- Dutch Schoultz`s receipe on the patch. half the patches came off, the others were found embedded in the surface of my bullet trap or still on the ball in the trap. I may have sewn them on too well, but none of them were immensely accurate. accurate enough to have severely wounded or still killed what you would have been shooting at in battle and did make the loading process quite fast, but there is no sniping with them. opened up a normal 2 inch group of 5 balls to between 10 and 12 inches at 75 yds
 
I have heard of sewing patches on the round ball. I can't think of anything sillier.
Unless it works. I doubt that it would/

If the patch material is even dimly right it will stay on the ball until it'd no longer needed. As the ball leaves the muzzle.
If it stayed on ball the aerodynamic effect would probably be disastrous.

Unlees the goal is to install a bandage automatically as you create the wound.

Dutch
 
The GREATER PART OF THE SEARCH for accuracy has circled around the search for the perfect or as near to perfect seal around the ball or projectile.

First there was the simple patch where ideally there isa"belt" of the patch material around the ball keep all the hellfire behind the projectile./Thesomeone recognizing this need came up with the belted ball using no patch but a cast in belt added to the ball that being soft lead would be cut away by the rifling as the ball was forced on the the barrel thus making that necessary seal/
Then the biggest advance with the Minie ball that had a soft lead skirt in the rear of the projectile that was spread into the rifling by the explosion of of the powder / And finally the breech loading projectile that is bit larger than the rifling that is forced into the rifling by the explosion which causes that near perfect seal.

All along over the years there has been this effort to get to that perfection.
At our level we are back with the cloth, or sometimes leather patch to fiddle with til we have our perfect seal and that is when we begin to amaze ourselves. It\s really very simple but seems difficult to explain.

Most of us figured this out back in high school when we were firing spit wad at Berth Lou over in the third row second seat..

Dutch Schoultz
 
We look at patches from a modern perspective = accuracy.

But in the early 19th century, the military was more concerned with speed, reliability and simplicity than they were with accuracy.

Sewn on patches need to be considered in the proper context when evaluating their efficacy.

And don't forget that they very quickly faded into obscurity....
 
Spit wad shooting was an art though one of the NASA guys perfected the art of using map tacks with paper skirt (Miniesque)...but I digress! :wink:

Bunch of us tried to see how thick a patch it took to seal a bore and truth be told we never succeeded. No matter how thick a patch and how hard you had to hammer it down we always saw smoke before the ball on one of NASA's ultra high-speed cameras. Yes, we provided the film and we used a lot but when you're out to prove a point silly comes ahead of good sense. The point to all this is I truly believe it's impossible to achieve a perfect seal but we're just trying to keep as much hellfire behind rather than in front of the ball! :thumbsup:
 
csitas said:
Man ,with such a parachute on the ball,it's amazing they shot that well.A while back I remember someone on this forum talking about a patch being stuck in a target. I can see now how that is entirely possible. My wife accuses me of never throwing anything away, I should make an exception with prepatched balls in a loading block.


Mine thinks me a pack rat.
But I still bundle her up from place to place.
:applause:
 
The British Brunswick and Russian Luttich belted military balls used sewn patches. When the Russians changed to a conoidal pointed winged bullet it was still patched and sewn and was accurate (for the period) at long range in the Crimea in the hands of Finnish riflemen.

I would guess that the trick is to have the thread light enough to break in use. They were used by several European armies in the mid 19th century and the Swiss continued with cloth patches on the conical bullets in their .41 muzzle loading rifles which were probably the most accurate muzzle loading service rifles ever. These were retained by a thread tied around a groove though.

In the Macerone sewn ball the square patch is sewn such that the corners meet and the flaps between open up like parachutes as soon as the ball exits the barrel.

I suspect that we too readily discount the forces of the air as the bullet flies out of the barrel with the dense mass of the ball pushing the other way.

FWIW I understood that the pigskin glued cloverleaf wrappings on the Percy Tenantry balls were secured with shellac? These ones were not used in actual Baker rifles but on private purchase similar ones of a lesser bore but still in the same period in the 'Percy Tenantry Volunteers' which were raised (i.e. recruited and equipped) by the Duke of Northumberland, Lieutenant General Hugh Percy in 1798 .

Almost a private army were it not subject to the Lord Lieutenant of the County. 12 Companies of Infantry, 5 Troops of Cavalry and an artillery company.

The Percys descended from the French Guilllaume de Percy from Percy-en -Auge in Normandy who came to England in 1067 through Guillaume Le Batard (William the Bastard better known as William the Conqueror or William 1st) but the male line from Joscelyn of Louvian in Brabant (Belgium) and rose to the Earldom of Northumberland in 1377 all but ruling the north of England and later generations having the habit of joining assorted rebellions against the Crown but maintained their positions (albeit sometimes from the Tower of London). The Sixth Earl had his girlfriend Anne Boleyn stolen from him by Henry VIII. The current Duke resides at Alnwick Castle which was used in Harry Potter films. He also has Syon House and grounds by the Thames on the outskirts of London. Open to the public but still owned and lived in by the Duke.
 
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