Rat, I see your point, however the second paragraph of your reply actually verifies what some of us are saying about the 60 grain charge. You say that it was adopted after much testing, taking into consideration recoil, accuracy and economy of lead and powder. You are certainly right about that. I have in my possession many reports written by the Ordnance officers who conducted those tests as well as reports by the Secretary of War. And you are right about hunting not being taken in consideration, unless you include the hunting of the most dangerous game, which is man. These weapons were designed for one thing only. The killing of armed human beings, moving about in the approved linear tactics used by the armies in those days. They did their job so well in the Civil War and in the Crimean War that the military leaders of the world had to throw all that they had previously learned out the window and write new books on infantry tactics. Yes, I believe that the 60 gr. (and 70 gr. in some cases) powder charge behind a 500-550 gr. soft lead expanding ball is the epitome of the muzzleloading rifle musket and cannot be greatly improved on safely. It is slow, a subsonic load actually, but look at the devastation it caused even at ranges of 300 yds. I must say that a deer or elk could see the muzzle flash and move enough to actually dodge a Minie at 2 or 300 yds. But that takes me back to what I said earlier. These guns were not designed for hunting, although many of us have used them quite successfully. I do agree with you that they are strong enough to take heavier loads. Soon after the Model 1855 rifle muskets were introduced, tests were conducted on randomly selected arms taken from store by loading them with as many as five (5) complete cartridges. Here is a quote from one of the reports: "With the rifle musket, four charges would get blown out of the barrel, but when five were loaded, the bottom ball melted partially, the second charge fired, and the entire force of the powder escaped through the vent with a prolonged sound resembling steam at high pressure. Although all the barrels were rifled and were mortised and tapped for the sight base, they passed through the firings uninjured." There is no doubt that a new musket or rifle was designed to handle overloads. However, there may be Forum readers who wish to overload an old original musket that may have cross cracks or other defects caused by age, or a reproduction piece that may not have been properly proved. If you or anyone else can get good results with an 80 or 100 gr. charge, more power to you and congratulations. While we know that the musket can handle a heavier charge than the 60 gr. service charge, I have to say that the two were made for each other. After much testing as you say, the Ordnance Dept. mated the two together into a "weapons system". The rifle musket was a mixture of the smoothbore musket and the 1841 rifle which used a patched round ball at the time. Wanting the accuracy of the rifle with the ease of loading the smoothbore, James Burton improved on Capt. Minie's design and came up with a bullet that had both qualities. Benjamin Huger and J.G. Benton of our Ordnance Dept. ran many tests using variations of our rifled weapons as well as some of those used in Europe and arrived at the optimum powder charge as well as bullet shape and weight. Yes, they used the existing barrel design as far as strength goes, but the caliber, rate of twist, number of grooves and depth were calculated to work with a load that minimized recoil, made most efficient use of powder and lead and gave the best accuracy. We can tweak these loads over and under the rated service charge to suit our shooting abilities and preferences, and our individual weapons, but I don't believe that we can improve much on the basic system. Nor do I want to.
