How do you load your smoothbores?

[Many Klatch]

I have tried two methods that haven't been mentioned yet.

Patching with "horseweed". I was on a trail walk and we had a couple of thrown birds to shoot at. I had forgotten my pre-cut wads. So I poured in the powder and grabbed a couple green leaves from a plant nearby. Poured in the shot and stuffed some more weeds in for an overpowder wad. The stuff performed well enough. I got two shots off and I broke one bird. The problem came when I tried to clean my gun. The barrel was really gunked up with dried green and black S*^(. So, green leaves are doable, but dried leaves would have been better.

Many years ago I was at a gun shop that was selling off a lot of odd stuff that had been cluttering their shelves. I scored a bag of 20 gauge cork wads. They are about as thick as an overpowder wad. They work well. Cork would have been available anytime a bottle was emptied so I am fairly sure it was used. It apparently hasn't been written about but I can imagine the lower classes carving corks to size and thickness for shooting shot. Maybe a poacher thing.

Many Klatch

 

[George]

Cork would have been available anytime a bottle was emptied so I am fairly sure it was used. It apparently hasn't been written about but I can imagine the lower classes carving corks to size and thickness for shooting shot. Maybe a poacher thing.

Not just lower classes and poachers. Cleator wrote about them in An Essay on Shooting, 1789:

"A cork wadding has been extolled for the virtue of increasing the range and closeness of the shot of pieces; we have not made the experiment, but it seems probable, that a wadding of cork, adapted to the caliber of the piece, may produce a greater effect, than a wadding of paper, in these respects, that by stopping the barrel more hermetically, it prevents the elastic fluid, produced by the explosion of the powder, from escaping in any way, between the partition of wadding and the charge, preserves all its force to the mouth of the gun, and thereby renders the effect of the powder greater."

Spence

 

[roundball]

Cleator wrote about them in An Essay on Shooting, 1789:

"A cork wadding has been extolled for the virtue of increasing the range and closeness of the shot of pieces; we have not made the experiment, but it seems probable, that a wadding of cork, adapted to the caliber of the piece, may produce a greater effect, than a wadding of paper, in these respects, that by stopping the barrel more hermetically, it prevents the elastic fluid, produced by the explosion of the powder, from escaping in any way, between the partition of wadding and the charge, preserves all its force to the mouth of the gun, and thereby renders the effect of the powder greater."

I love the way they wrote back then...

"...the elastic fluid, produced by the explosion of the powder..."

:thumbsup:

 

[Grandpa Ron]

Personally I have never found an historic reference to a patch ball in a smoothbore. However, my interest lies in trade guns.

Obviously a person who had his rifle “smoothed out” would know about patched balls.

As for trade guns, the norm was powder, wadding, ball and or shot, wadding. Why this combination?

Hamilton’s book points out that there were standard ball sizes for any given gauge barrel. These standard sizes allowed for “windage”, the ball to bore size difference.

If you do the math, a ball to fit your trade gun could be about .016” to and much as .064” under bore size and still considered proper. The wadding sealed the bore.

As for proper wadding I have read about tow, felt, grass, wool strips and beaver or buffalo hair being used. I am sure ther were many others.

One thing to remember is that the traditional methods are not always the most accurate by today’s standards. The modern tight fitting patched ball that shoots a marvelous target group from a mirror smooth barrel was not the choice of those who needed easy loading in a fouling pitted barrel.

They may not have driven tacks but they did feed the family.