bullet size

[strongarm]

What is the size ball or bullet diameter for the caliber you shoot?

Some say you should use the largest projectile for the calibers, other say just the heaviest.

Are they the same or are they different?

What do you use?

 

[musketman]

Thanks for asking:
For my Brown Bess I only have two choises...

.715 diameter round ball
.735 diameter round ball

I use both (not at once), depending on my patch thickness at the time...

If all I can get are .020-.025 thick pillow ticking, then I use the .715 round balls.
But I like the .735 round ball with a .015 thick pillow tick patch, this loads easy for me...

In my .58 caliber Zouave I run the old style mini-ball...

 

[tg]

I can't comment on bullets as I do not use them, but I would suggest that most often you put aside what "some" say and find what works best in your gun, in rifles folks use any where from bore size ball to .020 under bore size patched to the desired degree of tightness which is dictated by individual preference and or accuracy level needed.

 

[strongarm]

Maybe I should have rephrased this question. Lyman for example recommends( a long with many other manufacturers) a .015 patch and .530 ball for their .54 GPRs

For accuracy, however, Lyman's Black Powder Guide recommends the biggest diameter ball available for a particular caliber.

These statements almost contradict each other.
I've have always assumed you start with a small ball with a large patch and work up in ball size as the barrel wears.

Now I am not so sure that this is the case.

 

[tg]

I suspect that most manufactures will recomend a raher lose combo that will help prevent the novice from not setting the ball oal the wat down on the powder. I found the best accuracy with my LGP .54 with a ,535 ball 70gr 3f and .017 patch and it was a bit snug also not all barrels are the same some makers have deeper rifleing or different nominal bores sizes which will impact the choice of patch and ball, it is pretty much a game of trial and error generaly a gun with deeper rifleing will like a thicker patch which will fill the groves,many who shoot GM barrel use a bore size ball with .015-.017 patch some Colerain guns will take the same, I have a Douglas .45 barrel that uses a .451 with .015 patch, many years ago I had an import .45 that was a tight fit with a .440 and .015.

 

[Randy]

I always thought tighter fit was better; otherwise those guys with the big heavy target rifles wouldn't be driving home their projectiles with a steel rod and mallet. Why go to all that trouble if not in the name of improved accuracy?
The other day a friend was shooting his 36 cal round ball rifle next to me and I noticed he used no patch. I questioned his technique and he responded saying, "She don't shoot straight if I use a patch" . I asked how he hit on that notion, and he said, "I ran out of patches one day and wasn't done shootin, and was surprised how much smaller my groups were without a patch." I wondered what kept the ball from rolling out (A .350 ball in a 36 cal bore) and naturally he informed me that after the first shot the fowling takes care of that. His first shot is powder and no ball. ( I occasionally try it the other way 'round with nno luck at all.)
I know many old muskets shooting a hollow based bullet with a thin walled skirt, performed best this way, and Sam Fadala has explained why. But I don't understand why a small cal. round ball would work this way. Has anyone else experienced this? Is this peculiar to the small cal. rifles?

 

[musketman]

This seems odd, the ball would not touch the riflings and become staple unless there was a patch or the ball was larger than .360 in diameter...
If the bore was .360 then a .362 diameter round ball would engage the riflings and be somewhat stable in flight.

How far away was the targets that he was shooting?
25 yards?
50 yards?
100 yards?

It sounds like when the barrel was dirty, it became a "smoothbore" and the foulings would then act as his patch, so to speak, but a dirty barrel will not spin the ball for stable flight.

So this lead me to think that the shooting distance was short, around 25 yards or so, no time for the bullet to stray far from the line of sight...

Maybe this is one of those, "ONE IN A MILLION" guns that defies the laws of physics, it throws out the paradox of the patched round ball for a more mystical reason...

There's one other thought I had on this...

What if your friend was pulling your leg?

 

[2172]

about once every three months, I'll manage to load a ball without a patch...I'll have the ball sitting on the patch, on the muzzle, but it won't be centered and it'll slip off the patch and in.
Out to 50 yards, I've had no accuracy problems...in fact, it almost seems like a better shot than usual..I attribute that to a feeling that it is a "throwaway" shot and am more relaxed...and, no, I haven't tried doing it on purpose...Hank