Wads For a Smoothbore Pistol

[user 57523]

Slightly new to BP, and I have a smoothbore flintlock pistol. How much smaller than bore should the ball be, and what type of wads will I need for loading?

 

[William Hagewood]

There are several different options and there are folks on this forum much more experienced than me, but I use a .610 round ball for .62 smoothbore pistol. I use a wool felt greased wad over the powder, ball and a wad of tow on top of the ball. A blast to shoot and accurate out to 15 yds

 

[Walkabout]

I think ball size depends on the gun. I shoot .520 round balls out of my .54 smoothy pistol and I usually use felt wads from TOW, though I've also tried lubed patches. FWIW

 

[Darkgael]

Slightly new to BP, and I have a smoothbore flintlock pistol. How much smaller than bore should the ball be, and what type of wads will I need for loading?

Experiment. You may not need much. You will need a nitro card over your powder charge. Thick or thin? You may want to patch the round ball. The resulting fit should be tight…..you may have to tap it in with a hammer until it is past the muzzle. Using patch material like pillow ticking, your ball will be around 0.010” smaller than the bore. .610” will work.
Try shooting bare ball. Just powder, an OP card, drop in the ball, thin card to hold the ball in. My Smoothbore fowler shoots nicely at 50 yards with that setup.

 

[PathfinderNC]

Slightly new to BP, and I have a smoothbore flintlock pistol. How much smaller than bore should the ball be, and what type of wads will I need for loading?

Glad to see another smoothbore pistol shooter here!
I have two and enjoy both, one is a long barrel (15.5”) .62 caliber French Dragoon and the other a shorter .50 caliber “Sparrow” flintlock.
I load the Dragoon in a couple different manners depending on my shooting intentions. For round ball, I use .595 with a cloth patch and no over powder card, (just the same way as loading my Fusil) For shot, I use either cornmeal or felt wads over the powder load. The felt wads I bought on line for this caliber, but forget where I got them. Then crumpled up paper over the ball to keep it down.
My favorite method for shot is to charge powder, add equal measure corn meal, ram a plastic shot cup atop and dump a measured load of #5 cold shot with wadding over it. Makes an awesome squirrel load!
For my .50 caliber I use a patched .490 roundball, again, no over powder card, just as if I were loading a long gun.
Another option I have done is to just load the powder, ram a bit of paper atop it and drop the ball loose, with whatever works as wadding to keep it in.
One thing to note is that you need to take care of any burning wadding material that your piece will discharge. I have stamped out more than a few smoldering bits.
Happy shooting!

 

[Rob M.]

Yeah , buy a couple under sizes ... See what you like . Mike your Inside diameter of your barrel . All depends on how you want to load, patched ball or naked . Pistol ranges are usually short so naked probably what you want but you never know . For my 20 ga. I like .595 for patched and .600 for naked ....the bore is.615 . Good luck ...