To Bounce or not to Bounce

After watching Mr. Fudd bouncing his rod but never hitting that wabbit, and even at point blanck range, I never thought it would help me much either....but it looks cool, got him a part in the movies too!

I have had some very good targets over the years w/o "thumping" or otherwise damaging the patched RB. One thing I noticed years ago was that if I used a flat-ended ramrod rather than a cupped end that fit the ball, the flattened (?) balls shot just fine out to 50yds or so . At least I could not tell any difference. I never did get very good groups at 100yds. (6-8" at 100yds from a rest). When I switched to a cupped end...just pushing the ball down hard....groups tightened up at 100yds immediately. Having seen several dry balls extracted or blown out with compressed air, and flattened/smashed faces due to loading, I am convinced that it is easy to damage a pure lead ball to where it does not fly consistently at distance. I push..and use a curved end on my ramrod.

If the end of the ramrod was concave to match the curve of the ball I doubt any ball deformation would occur with a simple rod bounce or two. Even if the ramrod was flat ended all the rod bounce would do would be to compress the powder column ever so slightly.

Ask Jake from Everything Black Powder why he bounced the ramrod and his answer was for even compaction.