I bought this knowing it was big and very unusual. I bought it from pictures - having it in hand is....well.....out of hand! This brass bullet mold weighs about 15lbs. I put a Cast Brown Bess round in the large cavity and it fits like a glove. I LOVE IT - never seen anything like it. Others have have said Mid to late 18th century British and probably used for fortifications. Not sure why British Regular Army would have shot, or really would mold their own bullets, but this thing is impressive to say the least.
***Anyone seen anything like this?
Brits did not use .75 caliber lead balls. Their barrel caliber was .75 and they fired .69 caliber balls out of them. The reason they used such undersized balls was so they could keep shooting at a rate of 3 shots per minute without having to run a wet patch down the barrel to remove the fowling. If they actually used a .75 caliber ball, they would get one shot and then would not be able to seat the ball because of the black powder fouling. Remember these British muskets were fired in volleys and accuracy was not needed. What was needed was to get a lot of lead in the air. Sort of like firing a giant shotgun. When you get within range, something is going to get hit.
The powder and .69 caliber lead ball was all put into a paper tube cartridge with the ball in the bottom, usually some string tied right above it and then the powder charge poured on top of that. the would then fold the top of the tube over and put it in their cartridge box.
When they loaded their musket they would grab a cartridge out of their box, bite off the folded down top. Next step was to charge the pan. Then they would pour all the rest of the powder down the barrel and ram the ball (still in the paper) down on top of it. The paper keeps that undersized ball from rolling out the end of the barrel if the barrel gets pointed down. On the command "Make ready" they bring the gun up in front of their face and pull the **** back into the full **** position. On the command "Present" they would basically aim the muskets towards the opposing line; and on the command "Fire" they would all fire at once, which is known as a volley. The more together they are on the volley the more likely they are to hit something because there's almost a solid mass of lead arriving at the other line all at the same time.
Obviously when your are not in danger of getting shot by an enemy, charging the pan before charging the barrel and ramming home the ball is not the safest thing to do. You wouldn't do that if you were hunting or target shooting. The last thing you would do before you aim and fire is charge the pan. However when you have an opposing enemy firing 3-shots per minute at you, charging the pan first is the fastest way to load, and considerably less risky than standing still in front of someone trying to shoot you.
Most people I know who shoot targets or hunt with a Bess (Land Pattern Musket) use a smaller ball (.73 to .74) and do patch it for a tight fit. They often have to swab the barrel in between shots although some patch lubes, such as Stumpy's Moose Snot, will allow them to continue to shoot quite a bit without swabbing. But they are not being fired at, so 3-shots per minute is not even desirable let alone required. As a result accuracy goes up considerably.
So that mold may very well be British, but it is not for a .75 caliber Brown Bess. That is a reasonable size though to use with a 10 gauge smoothbore. The 10-gauge is the same as .775 caliber. So your patched .75 lead ball would be a good choice for that. You could load a number of the .32 lead balls into it at a time if you like and fire them like buckshot out of a shotgun
During the Rev War both Colonial and British soldiers started using "Buck and Ball", which included the regular large lead ball with 2 or 3 buckshot above it. So it could be used like that out of a paper cartridge. It did make the volleys more deadly when the lines got within range of each other. Early in the war the Brits promised to execute any Colonial that they caught with buck and ball cartridges or loads. Shortly after that they started using them too. So I suppose you could play around with that a bit. If you do, you will want to put a wad or something similar in between the powder you load and the lead balls.
