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Spence,
The object to the right of the ball and patching material is a powder flask.
I will attach a photo sometime for you of this type.

Tenngun,
Do you mean that rod at bottom of picture?
If so, I Would have said a boring tool for fine boring, But this picture isn't of gunmaking tools, so I presume , (the working end being offset), that it is a scourer for removing built-up fouling from the bore. This is just a guess.

Gus, I think you have it right.
 
K640_Puloverflasche Graz0002.JPG
Me again Spence,

Attached an image or three of flasks of the type in the illustration.
Germanic, from mid -late 1500's.
Body made of wood, and a cut off close to the body, plus a cap on the nozzle.
IMG_0282 (960x1280).jpg
K640_Puloverflasche Graz0001.JPG

Small bag on reverse side, maybe for tow for cleaning or loading.

Photos by Andrew, and Michael Tromner.
 
Spence,
The object to the right of the ball and patching material is a powder flask.
I will attach a photo sometime for you of this type.

Tenngun,
Do you mean that rod at bottom of picture?
If so, I Would have said a boring tool for fine boring, But this picture isn't of gunmaking tools, so I presume , (the working end being offset), that it is a scourer for removing built-up fouling from the bore. This is just a guess.

Gus, I think you have it right.
Hard to tell in the picture, but I would bet it’s a reamer or maybe some sort of chisel. With out scale these could be any size.
 
And so will I. My experience has been different than yours, apparently. Shooting ball with only wadding has proven to be only a little less accurate than patched ball out to moderate distances for me in my 20 gauge smoothbore. For instance, I killed a nice little buck at 40+ yards using ball wadded with shredded cedar bark, aimed at his heart and hit him....well, you can see.

Spence

View attachment 683
When did you do this? I have not used a smooth bore in a long time. I have found some of my wads & balls from years ago. Wads falling apart with a smell I can not describe, not bad but different from the deer tallow I had made up years ago that I still have. The balls are covered with the lead white powder. Think I will get the fowler down and try to shoot it again.

Did you hunt this year?
Chuck40219
 
This is a great conversation friends ^^ I love smoothbores.

Anyway, like Rat, it is my experience that pushing the ball down with the paper wrapping has never been an issue. But i think a lot stems from the actual size of the ball. Modern shooters seem to use a much tighter load, and after a few shots it gets harder to load. I do not know if this is an issue in the day.
Perhaps some of the more documented people can post some notes on actual measured ball sized verses bore size. But that would be another thread.

Even though the ball is wrapped in a paper, I have never though of this as a "patch" but i suppose that it is.

As a Native, i do not normally carry pre-made wadding. Again, i will suppose that really anything is and has been used at some time or another. What we tend to do is to find one or two examples and believe them to be universal. Sometimes this is true, others not so much. I am not sure if wad punches were very available to Natives, but I do not know. It would seem, odd to me for them to spend a whole bunch of time, cutting wads. But there again, I do not know. Me, i would not.

Commonly, i use tow as a wad, and the only prep i may do is to preform it into balls. This of course would be based on having access to flax. There are other materials that would have a similar consistency.
However, on more then one occasion i have used grass or leaves as wadding. I don't usually get a lot of fouling with tow, it seems to clean the barrel somewhat with each shot, but maybe its that my load is not as tight.
However, when using grass or leaves after a few shots, i can drop the ball and seat it without a wad or patch at all and it will stay seated.
I would think, time, place and circumstance may determine the particular materiel and procedure.

N'yaway SM
 
I bite the paper, pour the powder, seat the ball and tear off the excess paper where the powder was.

English style cartridges. If you try pushing in the empty paper tube first after "handling your cartridge" and pouring the load it can bunch up and be impossible to ram down.

nSi3qxF.jpg
Do you use an over powder wad of any sort? Or just seat the waxed patched ball over the powder?
 
PS: I believe leather patches were also used by some shooters on the Frontier, under various circumstances, as leather was readily available.

Richard/Grumpa
A lot of these posts are made by
ASSumptions.which means guessing or making it up.
The muzzle loading cap lock rifle by Ned Roberts has accurate information on loading. The ignition system has nothing to do with it
 
Roberts book is great, and I recommend it. It is not an historic book however. Roberts writes on his own experiences as a youth in late nineteenth century then as an adult with a passion for his gun. Written after ML rifles fell out of style. His book is about getting the best from your gun. Not about using it historicly.
He uses a short starter, they may not have been invented before the 1840s and not in common use till the ‘70s. If they are older then the 1840s( and I THINK they were) they were not wide spread.
Roberts writes at a time whenballistic rules of thumb, common sense and superstations had been replaced by hard science. Roberts writes comparing his gun to more common guns of his time like the .22, 30-30, 30-06. Not of a time when ML was the only game in town and ballistics was an art.
 
With reference to the horse pistol ball security I would point, as a side note, to the period issue of ammunition to cavalry, naval, and other pistol users by the British government. It came in the form of the usual paper cartridge of the same type, though smaller, as the musket cartridge. The ball, enclosed in choked paper and with the empty powder end, being rammed down upon the powder so that the paper formed a wad securing the ball which was itself secure within the choked end of the paper cartridge. They were happy that this could be carried loaded in the horse pistol in the horse mounted holsters. Similarly their carbines were carried muzzle down from shoulder belts and used the same ammunition system without trouble. Of course this does not mean that a chap wandering around in America with a pistol used this system but it does show that a patched ball is not a necessity for the task. Unless the pedantic want to regard the paper cartridge as a (paper) patched ball but it does not function in the same way. The crumpled rear wad secured the package in the barrel not a tight fit of ball/patch to the barrel walls.
 
Very good...but although the paper of the cartridge might no qualify as a "patch", I don't see how it qualifies as wadding. ?? When I use paper cartridges in my Brown Bess, it's the paper, around the ball, that provides a snug fit between ball and barrel, not the "tail" or excess material of the cartridge. ?? I'm still not seeing how "the crumpled rear wad" could possibly hold the ball in the barrel, with the pistol carried muzzle down, on the withers of a horse. ?? I can see the paper, acting like a patch, or a tight fit of ball/patch to the barrel walls, holding it in place. We really need a horse, some pommel holsters, a couple of horse pistols, and get to experimenting!!! :)
 
Depends on whether you load it empty tube up (and tear off the excess) or empty tube down (to form a wad) after pouring in the powder.

I like mine to fit tight in the bore and I use an onion-skin typewriter paper that tears easy.
 
Rat,
British loading;
Tail torn off and powder down barrel, then the ball with empty cartridge paper still attached goes down, empty end first.
When rammed, it forms a wad between powder and ball, and as ball is still attached, said ball can't fall out.
Please pardon brief, I should be somewhere else!
 
Very good...but although the paper of the cartridge might no qualify as a "patch", I don't see how it qualifies as wadding. ?? When I use paper cartridges in my Brown Bess, it's the paper, around the ball, that provides a snug fit between ball and barrel, not the "tail" or excess material of the cartridge. ?? I'm still not seeing how "the crumpled rear wad" could possibly hold the ball in the barrel, with the pistol carried muzzle down, on the withers of a horse. ?? I can see the paper, acting like a patch, or a tight fit of ball/patch to the barrel walls, holding it in place. We really need a horse, some pommel holsters, a couple of horse pistols, and get to experimenting!!! :)
Whatever the semantics it worked for generations who did the experimenting for us.

However, the thrust of the thread issue is about cloth patched balls. Personally I think that the usual American pistol user of the day used wadding to secure the ball but that is no more than my opinion.
 
Hatito Pukka,
I have crammed just about everything that i thought would wad a charge down the barrel. The OM beard you speak of does work. Where I am its not as common however. As wadding, nothing seems to be any better or worse then anything else. If it holds the load tight, its good.
One thing to consider though when using "point gathered" wadding is moisture. its a good idea to pull it if you are not going to shoot so you do not get rust.
It works great for cleaning BtW. and after coated with fouling makes awesome tinder.
 
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