Fouling

[CharlesZ]

I shot my Mississippi Rifle today and noticed after 10-15 shots I had to swab the bore. If I didn't, I could not seat the minie all the way.Two questions:
1. What did the soldier do in the heat of battle? Did he swab? Does 10 shots sound historically accurate?
2. If the minie is not seated all the way down the barrel but hangs up maybe 1-3 inches short, what would be the results? I'm sure accuracy would suffer but what else?
My experience has me believing the soldiers of the time did not swab and shot 20-40 rounds ramming the ball home as far as it would go and letting fly.

 

[Pete Gaimari]

Not sure what soldiers did, but it's important to seat the ball the way down. Mark your ram rod to be sure.

It could blow up, or at the least expand the barrel if you leave a gap.

 

[Wullie]

Capper's advice is sound. Mark your ramrod and seat the bullet all the way down on the powder.

The "minie" ball was undersized for the caliber of the gun.
Minie Ball

This pretty much precluded having to swab the bore when things got busy.

 

[rafterob]

Well, if a soldier was advancing accross a field towards an enemy 10 to 15 shots would probably be a stretch. if in a defensive position probably more realistic. If you couldn't stuff a ball down anymore I guess you ran a wet patch as fast as you could.

 

[DanChamberlain]

Take the battle of Little Round Top as an example. The soldiers started out with probably a 40 round load. There were approximately three waves they needed to defend against. By the end, they were nearly all out of ammo including that which they took from the fallen and distributed. But, there were moments of respite in between the waves of advancing soldiers. Methinks this was pretty common. During those moments of respite, I'm sure "professionals" or "veterans" were swabbing their bores and preparing for the next wave.

Dan

 

[Bill Hall]

I've never learned about actual battlefield cleaning methods (i.e. swabbing), but I know fouling was somewhat of an issue. I've seen some minnies recovered from old battlefields that had pretty deep ramrod indentions on the front, from pounding the ball down, obviously due to a fouled barrel. Also, the army experimented with a "cleaning round" during the Civil War. It consisted of a normal shaped minnie, with a zinc ring about midway up the bullet. The ring was supposed to scrape away some of the fouling as it was shot, but I understand they didn't work all that well. The only photo I've seen of one of these was of an example found on a battlefield, so I guess they at least had limited use during the war. Bill

 

[CharlesZ]

The veterans cleaning their rifles during a lull in combat sounds like something that would probably have been common place. The only thing is, I have never read this in any account. Has anyone? Could you reference this for me? Thanks.

 

[59sharps]

minne should be .001 -.002 under bore dia. Never had trouble shooting 20 - 30 rounds w/ out brushing out the barrel. Proper lube mix will keep the barrel from fouling to the point that you can not load it. My groups start to open up after 25 roundsw/o brushing. I normally run a brush after every event which can be up to 16 rounds some times. I do not use a wet patch until I am done for the day. I use a bottom scraper after every 2 events.
unloaded my ram rod comes to the end of the barrel. So when loaded I know how much should be sticking out.

 

[hanshi]

I also have a Mississippi rifle and they are great. Mine's in the original .54. I shoot only prb in mine and fouling is not even an issue. I suspect some of that fouling may be lead.

 

[DanChamberlain]

I don't equate running a couple spit patches down bore as "cleaning" a rifle. Perhaps it wasn't done. On the other hand, perhaps a lot of what "was" done was never documented.

However, I was able to find this:

[Twelfth Army Corps, Second Division, 1st Brigade, Brig. Gen. John W. Geary commanding. 7th Ohio, Colonel William R. Creighton, commanding. (282 aggragate total/18 casualties)]

Gettysburg: A Testing of Courage by Noah Andre Trudeau

Page 444, 1st paragraph...

By now (8-8:30pm, July 3rd) the Federals defending Culp's Hill were operating in shifts. A soldier in the 7th Ohio later described the businesslike routine: "We lay behind our solid breastworks, obeying the command to reserve our fire until the first [enemy] line of battle was well up the slope and in easy range, when the command, 'Front rank - Ready - Aim low - Fire!' was given and executed, and immediately the rear rank the same, and kept up as long as the [enemy's] line remained unbroken." When the men had shot off the sixty or so rounds they carried, a reserve regiment would be drawn up under cover behind them, and at the word of command the reinforcements would rush forward to replace the first batch of troops, who would filter back a short distance one by one. There they would reform, clean their guns, replenish their cartridge boxes, and rest until it was their turn again. "This is the first time our Regiment ever fought behind breastworks or fortifications, and all agree that it is a pretty good way to fight," wrote an Ohio officer.
Dan

 

[ebiggs1]

There is a difference between fouling in a smoothbore and a rifle. Which is the thread asking about?

 

[CharlesZ]

Good stuff, thanks!
The firearm in question is rifled.

 

[ebiggs1]

Remember riflemen were not employed the same way smoothbore equipped soldiers were.

 

[Tumblernotch]

I shot my Mississippi Rifle today and noticed after 10-15 shots I had to swab the bore. If I didn't, I could not seat the minie all the way.Two questions:
1. What did the soldier do in the heat of battle? Did he swab? Does 10 shots sound historically accurate?
2. If the minie is not seated all the way down the barrel but hangs up maybe 1-3 inches short, what would be the results? I'm sure accuracy would suffer but what else?
My experience has me believing the soldiers of the time did not swab and shot 20-40 rounds ramming the ball home as far as it would go and letting fly.

Except in protracted exchanges of fire, most CW soldiers probably didn't fire more than that in a battle. Notable exceptions would be Sharpsburg (Cornfield, Sunken Road) and the Mule Shoe at Spotsylvania (lasted 20 hours without stop). There are others but these are well known. When a man's rifle got fouled too heavily to load, he often threw it away and picked up another. I've seen several accounts of this. When possible,he would fall back a little piece and try to wipe it out. I've seen one account where the soldier wrote that he couldn't remove the ramrod after getting the load stuck and he just aimed and shot bullet and ramrod toward the enemy. Although not much is said about it, I believe that when troops were withdrawn to replenish ammunition (several accounts cover that), they were given a short opportunity to wipe their bores if there was time. A Williams cleaner bullet was included in every package of ten cartridges issued to Union troops (and no doubt many found their way into Confederate hands). It did a lot to scrape out fouling and that would have reduced much of the fouling problems.

The Minie used in the CW was sized .005" smaller than bore size. Properly lubed, you can empty a 40 round cartridge box with cleaning unless by accident you forget to load the bullet and just shoot a blank. One blank round will foul a barrel more than 30 live ones. This can easily happen in the heat of battle. Also, if the skirt of the bullet is easily deformed and can cause hard loading. The presribed method of breaking the cartridge when loading has a step in it where great care must be taken or that will happen.

As for seating the bullet. I recommend you do it. Most of the time in a rifle-musket, you may get by with it if it's within 1 to 3 inches from the breech. But if it's fouled that tight, there's no place for the pressure to go except through the nipple or the side of the barrel. If your musket is getting a little tight to load, go ahead and wipe her out. Better to do that than have a nipple or hammer in your brain or you standing there wondering where most of your hand is, not to mention ruining a perfectly good Harpers Ferry Rifle. As long as you're not in a real firefight, I don't think anybody will say anything.

 

[Tumblernotch]

Remember riflemen were not employed the same way smoothbore equipped soldiers were.

In the CW, line troops were armed with rifle-muskets and used the same linear tactics as smoothbore armed troops. The only variation to this would be when not enough rifles were available to arm and entire regiment. In this case, the two flank companies were armed with rifles and the other eight with smoothbores. This mostly happened early in the War. The only other scenario would be the use of sharpshooters. In the federal service these were organized in regiments and usually fought in company sized formations. On the Confederate side, although some companies were formed, they operated in small groups, either singly or as two man teams, sometimes expanded to several but less than a dozen men. These small units operated over a large area, usually covering a divisional front, often acting as sort of a "fire brigade" in hotspots, especially when suppression of artillery was desired.

 

[CaptainKirk]

I rather think the thin skirt of the Minie served to scrape the fouling as it was rammed home, to some degree. If, as a previous poster mentioned, each man was given forty rounds, he probably could get by without cleaning until; 1) a lull in the action, or; 2) he ran out of ammo.
Just my 2 cents.

 

[CoyoteJoe]

Bore fouling of the rifled musket was a well known problem in the day. The accuracy of modern day competition shooters firing perfectly cast and lubed minies sized exactly for the bore of the musket simply was not obtained with the undersize minies issued to troops in combat. The undersize minies were not only much less accurate for the first shot but fouled the bore worse so that after just a few shots the rifled musket was no better than a smoothbore. In fact, quite a few Civil War commanders preferred the smoothbore musket, especially when loaded with "buck and ball". Rapidity of fire was still valued above accuracy and that is easy to understand when you consider that even with modern rifles very few shots fired in combat actually hit anyone. Spray and pray is not a new invention.

 

[CharlesZ]

What is a 'Williams Cleaner Bullet?'
10 rds, a wet patch, 1 or 2 dry ones and I'm good to go. Maybe another 10, 8 rds.
If the hammer is blown back to a half-cock position after the shot, what would that indicate?

 

[Tumblernotch]

What is a 'Williams Cleaner Bullet?'
10 rds, a wet patch, 1 or 2 dry ones and I'm good to go. Maybe another 10, 8 rds.
If the hammer is blown back to a half-cock position after the shot, what would that indicate?

The Williams bullet was similiar to the standard Minie except that instead of a large cavity in the base it had a cylindrical hole in the base to receive an iron or alloy plunger shaped a lot like a gasoline engine valve. The big end of this piece was almost the same diameter of the bullet, but not quite, and there was a small space between it and the bottom of the bullet. A semi-cone shaped piece of zinc with a hole in the middle was placed between the bullet and the plunger base, the shank of the base going through the hole. When the musket was fired, the gases which normally expanded the Minie pushed the plunger farther into the body of the bullet. The base mashed the zinc washer against the bullet, flattening it out and forcing it against the bore. This scraped the fouling and at the same time formed a gas check of sorts. So, while you were cleaning your musket, you could let fly at an enemy soldier, thus you could kill two birds with one stone. It was a pretty effective short term cleaning tool though it didn't take the place of regular cleaning. This was the Type 2 bullet. The Type 1 had the zinc washer attached to a rivet and acted as the base itself. Tests ran on these bullets found them to be effective and at least as accurate as regular Minies. It is recorded that many soldiers were not convinced of this and didn't use all that were issued according to the number of unused ones found on battlefields.

As for your question about hammer blowback, I'd say that you are dealing with either very high pressures (which you will get if you have a very tight bullet, especially if it's not seated on the powder), or a worn out nipple. A weak mainspring in conjunction with either of these will contribute to this occuring too. Or a combination of any of these three factors. Be careful and be sure to check for these. That is not a good situation. Hope this helped you.

 

[Pete Gaimari]

Just a general question that's asked of the whole thread.

We worry about an ember setting off the charge as we reload.

How do they get away with reloading so fast, and not running into an ember?