tenngun said:
I think they are hc, but that's s long useless argument, to avoid crap I don't carry one to an event. The last time I used one was s five shot competition , it was loaded with 5 ball and made sure I didn't shoot to few or many shots. In the field and not having Pontiac after us a quick second shot ain't needed. You can save a few seconds but while hunting not enough to make worth the extra in your bag. I like to load from the same equipment I take to an event, I hunt in historic clothing.
When I made them they were just a plain hole in a board just a little thicker then the ball.
PLEASE do not take the following as personal criticism, as it is not intended as such. However, I think your experience of a loading block not generally being needed is very much in keeping with historic experience.
18th century Technology was certainly up to the task of making loading blocks, even as it was not nearly as easy for them to make the blocks as it is for us today. When gunsmiths could drill and ream a long barrel with a variation in the entire length of nor more than .003" in diameter and often just .001 to no more than .002", making a pretty precise hole/s in a small block of wood would not have been a big problem at all. Just as the rifle gunsmith made and provided the mold with the rifle, a loading block would have been a "natural" thing for him to provide,
had the customers wanted them. It would have been a more laborious task for rifle owners to make their own loading blocks at home (and probably with a much higher error rate) than we can today, but they could have made them,
had they wanted to do it. So it was not that technology held them back in this regard.
Another thing we "Moderns" do not often think about is how almost amazingly precise is the thickness of cloth material we use for patch material. Good GRIEF, in many cases we take micrometers into fabric stores and check cloth thickness, preciseness, texture, weave, etc.. Homemade linen fabric would have been no where near as precise then as now and almost certainly not from batch to batch. While it is true there were many professional weavers in the Colonies (even close to the frontier in some places) and they did make a rather wide variety of types of cloth, there would not have been the preciseness of cloth we are so used to today. That actually made it more difficult to make a loading block that would work as far as being tight enough, but not too tight. Further, once a person had to change patch material cloth after running out of one piece of cloth, it is possible if not likely or even probable, that a new loading block would have had to be made.
Though I fully admit this is informed speculation on my part, I just don't believe the average rifleman used a patch and ball combination in the 18th or early 19th century that was as tight as many of us use today. So they did not need a short starter. Leaving out the need to pull out, use and return the short starter meant they did not need a loading block to fire as quickly.
Though target shooting was popular in the 18th century, it was almost always "One Shot Matches" where they had plenty of time to reload between shots. So no need of a loading block for rifle matches then.
The one thing that I can see a loading block would be very useful for is in the case of hunting in extreme cold. However, I can not forget the first time I shot a muzzle loading rifle and it was right at or below 10 degrees Fahrenheit and I don't recall the wind chill factor. I had no problem pulling out a ball and patch and loading my rifle that day and I was shooting for a group. (The coldest environment I ever hunted in was Minus 12 degrees and a wind chill factor of Minus 28 degrees. Some of you in the west and further up north may have hunted in these conditions or even much worse.) However, people back then were more inured to cold weather as they lived outdoors much more often than we do in the winter. So they were not bothered as much by extreme cold as we are or at least they were more used to dealing with extreme cold outdoors.
There is to me a surprising amount of writing in the 18th century on things one heck of a lot more mundane than loading and shooting a rifle. So I don't accept the notion that loading blocks were anywhere close to being common or it would have shown up in writing or in drawings or paintings.
I will paraphrase something I found Claude had written in another thread that we don't often think about. In effect he stated 18th century people were not as "gadget conscious" or "gadget desirable" as we are today. There is a whole lot of truth in that and something we don't consider as often as we might.
Finally, I personally believe that loading blocks were at best VERY few and far between or more likely a small amount of "Historic One Of's." This because IF people back then really needed or wanted them, they would have been made and would have shown up in the historic record - and they have not.
Now, PLEASE don't anyone think I am trying to tell people not to use them today for most of their black powder sport shooting. However, I do agree that when one is attempting to be HC/PC or at such a shoot with HC/PC rules, then I will leave the loading block in my other gear or at home.
Gus
