tails on balls

I have never tried this, but I have heard that some smoothie shooters put "tails" on their balls for accuracy. This is done by wrapping the ball with patching and leaving a string trailing from where it is tied in back. Or, others dig into the ball and fasten a string to trail.
Supposedly, this forces the ball to travel in a straight line (can it do anything else?) and is more accurate. I dunno :idunno: have just heerd. Enneybody here with experience doing this?

Thats a brandnew one on me. I think I will let all the other folks do the tryin on this one. :idunno:

Have not tried or seen it tried, but if it gives an edge I'd be surprised. I have seen "pre wrapped" patched balls for smoothbores carried in a shooter's bag. Didn't notice they had a tail left dragging. My money would be that the weight of the ball trumps whatever air resistance a bit of string might provide and if it was prone to "knuckle" downrange from an odd spin the string wouldn't prevent it. The patch sticking with it would likely cause more problems than it solves.

One of those experiments crying to be done.

I have tried wrapping a ball in cloth, tying it off and cutting the cloth so that a skirt flared out behind like a badminton birdie. I loaded them inside a plastic shotcup and fired from a breechloader. Looked like a great idea but didn't shoot all that great. :haha: Targets indicated it did keep the ball going nose first but it didn't steer them in a straight line.

I would think, given the trauma dynamics of the firing & ballistic process, that unless the ball had retractable fins or a Drogue Chute that results of a "Kite Tail" would be insignificant at best, and detrimental at worse. But that's just IMHO - am willing to see what others have to say.

I have found on a couple of occasions when shooting paper musket cartridges that sometimes the catridge has stayed intact all the way to the target. Couldn't tell which ball in the group it was, but noticed nothing spectacular one way or the other - but must have been quite a ride...

E

I would have to wager that this practice would not show any benifit if comprehensive testing was done, if it was a good deal I think here would be a lot of it around, the tadploe shaped shot some wrongly call "Swan" shot does not pattern as well as round shot from all the reports I have seen, so scaling this up should result in similar results

Never heard of the practice but it sounds suspiciously like something rooted solidly in the "myth" category.

I kinda wonder if the perpetrator of the story had a misspent youth like my own.

We learned that a piece of aluminum foil folded over a BB and twisted into a tail, then single loaded down the bore, greatly extended the accurate range in our old BB guns. Hey, my first smoothbore muzzleloader, come to think of it! :grin:

Same when launching any round projectiles out of anything from blow pipes to soda straws. Lotta fun was had with wrapped BBs launched from afar with soda straws in the school cafeteria! :rotf:

Ah, the memories of misspent youth. Wrap a paper match in aluminum foil (gum wrapper) and heat the head with another match. I can just imagine making the national news for launching them in a school assembly now. :haha:

Much of what I know about smoothbore shooting I learned with a sightless Daisy "Golden Eagle" BB gun. Didn't know of the tinfoil trick for BBs though. I do know you can make a hell of a BB gun dart with a pin and half a Q-tip. That was back when they had paper stems, though.

I have wondered about that. The "Hevi-shot used in some modern shotgun loads is supposed to have a little tab on one side. This is supposed to make the shot fly straighter and hit harder at 50 yards. Yotes are being taken out to 60 yards- or that's what I think I recall reading. In any event I've thought if it would make a difference with a PRB however the shotgun pellets are flying straight whereas the PRB is spinning (unless you have a musket). Where are the Bevel Brothers when you need them???

Seems I read of wrapping a smoothbore ball with aluminum foil but this was probably to load quicker than accuracy. No patch so to speak just shove a tight aluminum wrapped ball down on the powder..Maybe it was a 42 Springfield NSSA shooter.................

Bob

Mmmm ... a 3/4-ounce + RB at a velocity of 880 ft./sec. or better ?

I can't see a cloth patch "tail" steering that puppy anywhere !
:wink:

Actually, quite a bit of work was done on the subject by Bill White of South Carolina - southeast of Rock Hill area as I recall. He had a method of putting a screw in the back end and the tail did give a trailing and stabilizing effect. Our friend Bill gave up his beloved smoothbore during hard times and I have not heard from him since he sent me a wing bone turkey call. (Very nice fellow)

Our brother Spencer was heavily involved in another on-line resource at the time and might better remember all of the details. I had cut and pasted notes, but lost everything with a hard drive crash.

But this is not the first time that this concept was tried and as I recall the results were impressive and facilitated the taking of several deer.

CS

Wish you had more info on this subject. I'm interested in knowing more.

If I recall correctly the Afghan/Pashtun hill tribes were known by the British to use this kind of patching in there matchlocks. They claimed it made them more accurate. This is probably just their opinion tho, as the Brits never picked up on the idea. This maybe because it did not really work, or because the early 303s they were using did not use patches. :grin:

There no doubt have been attempts at this idea , but I just can,t see the practice improving accy.?? If it had any potential why bother worrying about a few thousandths out -of-round or one or two grains weight difference ?? My take is the time and money to create each projectile and properly load it would be way beyond any accy. increase. :bull:
Sounds like somebody is PULLING our string. :nono: :haha:

PRB's of a standard kind have been in use for about 400 years, If anything worked better I am sure we would be using it. :wink:

Matchlock72 said:

PRB's of a standard kind have been in use for about 400 years, If anything worked better I am sure we would be using it. :wink:

Click to expand...

Harumph. If everyone thought that way we'd have never had Segway Scooters and $2 a pint bottled water.

Think of all the unemployed marketing executives if we only had what worked well and was necessary. :rotf:

" He had a method of putting a screw in the back end and the tail did give a trailing and stabilizing effect."

I would suggest caution so one does not use a "tail" that seperates the ball from the powder creating a dead space twixt the two

Tails are fine on kites, but not on prb. :nono:

And those Sedgeway scooters (like these "helicopters") are all illusions. First of all folks have been fooled for a long time with helicopters. They don't even have have wings :idunno: . No way something like that can actually fly :hmm: . And those scooters, what a scam. They can't stand upright, there's nothing in front or back to keep them from falling :shocked2: . David Copperfield does even more incredible illusions so copters & scooters are easy in comparison. :blah: