Round ball surface finish.

[John May]

Hi
I have a question regarding the humble round ball. I was talking to a fellow shooter at a recent competition and he mentioned that he rolls his cast balls between 2 steel plates to try and eliminate as much of the sprue as possible. A flintlock shooter who overheard the conversation stated that he rolled his between 2 pieces of fine steel gauze. This roughened the surface somewhat but he was convinced it made a difference to the accuracy of his gun? He explained that it followed the same principle as a golf ball. My question is: Does anyone else do this and if so, do you notice any difference in accuracy in particular?

 

[smd4]

I thought the dimples in a golf ball were there to give the ball some lift - not to make if more accurate.

 

[necchi]

Both are pretty much myth and mis-belief of fact.
But;
Anything a shooter does in that kind of aspect that gives him confidence is real. A gun/rifle/pistol/revolver is a mechanical tool, and it does need to be tuned to it's best performance.
Yet, true accuracy is the shooter himself with that tool in hand. Champion shooters know it's physical and mental conditioning that gives them the edge.
Now that you have spoken with those Gentlemen, watch how they actually shoot and perform compared to others in the match. Those that place at the top of the ladder usually do so a lot.
Watch the winners game, he might not talk a lot but you can observe for free,, and sometimes it takes close observation.

 

[sidelock]

YES!!!! Good shooters have good control. You can pick up a lot by watching,,,, but you have to be super observant.

 

[AZbpBurner]

There are numerous rituals and procedures for twiddling roundballs to make them "more accurate". I once told a friend that he could get much better performance if he'd store his RB's in a jar of Holy Water. Next time we met, he showed me his jar of soaking RBs and a couple of 'before & after' targets as proof that it works.

Use whatever works for you, since, often if you believe that something will make your gear shoot more accurately, it will - never discount the power of the placebo effect.

 

[coloradoclyde]

It's all hocus pocus.... :haha:

I've made patching from tree bark and balls from hand made molds in the field using a stick to make the cherry....All managed to hit their mark....
The single most important factor is the person behind the gun......

 

[Snakebite]

I think I'm going to start polishing my balls to make a slick, friction free flight path. I'll have to chronograph them to see if I get that extra 2 to 3 fps advantage.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Actually, it may not be hokus pokus...at least not all the time.

I have read where smooth bore shooters distressed the outside of their round projectiles using a wood rasp. The balls, being very close to the bore diameter at the beginning, when they were distressed, the tips of the small projections raised, actually touched the sides of the bore, thus centered each ball in a uniform manner in the bore...yet not contributing much to friction. This allegedly gave better accuracy than the same projectiles when not distressed. However, if the ball was a lot smaller when distressed and still a bit loose in the bore, there was no advantage gained..., though some folks mistakenly thought the pattern on the surface gave an advantage due to action in flight instead of action within the bore.

However, I've not yet had a chance to test this out. When I first heard about "dimpling" or distressing a round ball, I wondered how a bullet that spins axial to it's flight path was helped "just like a golf ball" when the spin on the golf ball is different? Then when I read about how the ball was modified to touch the inside of the bore, I wondered how does one ensure that the distressing of the ball surface keeps the ball round enough to ensure it isn't so deformed to not fly well. The same I've wondered about "polishing" the ball between metal, or in other cases, glass.

Again though, I've only read or "heard"..., never seen any actual evidence...though I'd like to try.

LD

 

[Billnpatti]

Yes, there are many rituals to improve the accuracy of a round ball. Some are scientifically provable and some are just in the same category as those rituals of many athletes and fans. I put mine in a rock tumbler and tumble them to remove the spru marks. They come out looking like ball bearings and I don't have to pay attention to where the spru is when I load because there is none. I did a study of the effect of tiny dimples on round balls and found that the dimples that I worked with made no difference in the ball's performance. All rituals aside, I believe the way to make round balls more accurate is to weigh them and cull out the light ones because in order for a ball to be light, it has to have a cavity in it. How accurate do you have to be when weighing the balls? Ask different people who weigh their balls and you will get many different answers. Some will weigh their balls to within plus or minus 0.1 grain. Others may sort their balls within plus or minus 10 grains. Me? I weigh mine within plus or minus 0.5 grains when working up an accurate load or setting my sights. For every day shooting plus or minus 5 grains is good enough for me. Even that may be putting too fine of a point on it for the way I shoot. Who is right? I don't know but I am of the opinion that the average guy who weighs within plus or minus 5 grains will be unable to tell any difference from one ball to another. There are just too many other factors that go into maximum accuracy. Read Dutch Schoultz' seminal work on black powder accuracy and you will see where the type or brand of powder, the granulation, the consistency of amount of the charge, patch material thickness, patch lube, amount of patch lube and on and on all go into making your gun shoot as accurately as possible. If you have not had a chance to read his system on muzzleloading accuracy, you owe it to yourself to get a copy and read it and follow it. He will tell you what factors really make a difference. You may be amazed at how much accuracy you can get from your rifle. www.blackpowderrifleaccuracy.com

 

[Artificer]

When I competed with my (smooth bored) Brown Bess, all I ever did was load the ball sprue up with very tight pillow ticking and got extremely good accuracy with it.

However in the 90's, most U.S. International Muzzle Loading Team members who shot smooth bores, made a point to sand their balls with either 80 grit or even 60 grit sand paper for accuracy. I can't prove it was better, scientifically, but when they brought home the Gold and Silver Medals, who could argue with them?

Gus

 

[George]

Sounds reasonable to me. After all, baseball's World Series is won by the team who chews the most tobacco, isn't it? :wink:

Spence

 

[Artificer]

Spence,

While that was once true about the Team winning the World Series was the one that chewed the most tobacco, it hasn't been for a long time. I think it dates us to even remember it. :grin:

However, I did shoot better scores in Boot Camp after they allowed me to chew tobacco. I kept in the side of my mouth against the stock and it cushioned the recoil. So it can have some good effects for shooting.

Gus

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Giving a fresh can of snuff, aka "dip" to the Marines pulling your target butt on the Known Distance (KD) Course can sometimes have good effect upon your scores as well. :shocked2: :haha:

LD

 

[Snakebite]

In 1988 I was an NCO Training NCO in D/181 (The Marine Training Company) training Marines to be Tankers at Fort Knox, KY. We were one of four Armor training Battalions and 2 Cavalry Training Squadrons in the brigade. It was the first time for the "1st Armor Training Brigade Men of Steele Rifle Competition" I was one of two Soldiers on the team, the other 6 were Marines. I have to say I really learned to shoot an M16 from the Marines. Needless to say we took first place in the competition. BUT, our secret weapon was not tobacco, it was Fireball Jaw Breakers. I can still hear Staff Sergeant Cordero in his Parris Island DI voice "Alright, who has the GD jawbreakers?".

Sorry, I know it's ff but I just thought it was a good story.

 

[Billnpatti]

Yeah, Gus, it is hard to argue with success. But, I am still of the opinion that texturing the balls has no real effect on them. I ran a test using balls that I had inadvertently left in the tumbler over night. I was going to tumble them for the usual 45 minutes but was distracted and then had to run an errand. I forgot them until the next morning. When I opened the tumbler, all of the balls had little dimples all over them from bumping together all night. My first thought was to re-melt and re-cast them. Then, it occurred to me that I could run a test to see if the dimples made any difference in their performance. First I weighed the balls and found that the mean weight was very close to the untumbled balls. Next, I weighed out enough balls to run my test and weighed out a similar number of smooth balls that had been tumbled for the usual 45 minutes and were nice and smooth with no trace of a spru mark. Everything was carefully controlled so that the only variable was the balls, textured VS smooth. My test showed no difference in MV or accuracy between the balls with the little dimples all over them and the balls that were properly tumbled to remove the spru mark. As a result of my test, I am strongly of the opinion that these rituals of sanding balls, rolling them between files and other texturing methods are simply placebos and the real reason for the winning of the medals is that the man on the trigger was just good. His confidence may have been heightened due to his ritual texturing of his balls but I think that is all there is to this practice. Much like the superstitious athlete who believes he wins because he was wearing his lucky sox when in reality he was just good and the sox just gave him the confidence he needed to perform at his best. But, I could be wrong and I wish someone else would run the same or similar scientifically designed test to either confirm or disprove my current opinion and publish the results.

My idea of a good controlled experiment would have one person loading the rifle but not seeing the target and one person shooting the rifle not knowing whether the ball he was shooting was textured or smooth. Each loading would have exactly the same powder charge, patch and lube. The only variable would be the balls.

From a bench rest, three targets with five textured balls on each target and three targets with five smooth balls on each target. Once the test was complete, the loader could then see the targets and the shooter could be told which targets where shot with smooth balls and which with textured balls. This would remove any bias in the test. There might need to be a bit more tweeking of the test but this is basically how I would do it.

The way I would score the targets would be to use the mean diameter of each group rather than the traditional way of simply measuring the distance between the furthest bullet holes. This would give a more representative score by minimizing the effect of fliers.

 

[Billnpatti]

The target scoring method to which I was referring is called the Circular Error of Probability or Circular Error Probable (CEP). This method can be found online.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_error_probable

and

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a199190.pdf

 

[Artificer]

This is to especially Bill and Spence, but to others as well.

I mentioned in my earlier post that when I competed with my Brown Bess, I just loaded the sprue up for the best accuracy and never did any kind of sanding or rasping on the balls. I had such an accurate load for that gun, I don't believe any "working" of the balls could have made it shot better. So I understand how working the balls may have been or was just a placebo or confidence builder.

In my career of building special NM and other firearms for the Corps, we found things that were almost literally "set in stone" that also did not really improve anything after very precise testing and in a few cases, found they were a detriment to accuracy or reliability. There were also things we found that even Mechanical Engineers with a solid background in rifles could not explain WHY the things we did worked. They could make some guesses, but they admitted they could not full explain it.

I am also thoroughly familiar with what Psychology can do to shooters at very high levels of competition, either positively or negatively. There is no doubt that a shooter who has the most confidence has a much better chance of winning than anyone who doubts him/her self in the least.

So from my own experience, I was also skeptical of sanding the balls. I was unfortunately being a little facetious when mentioning those who did it won the Gold and Silver medals, though it seems that did not come across to others that way. I'm sorry about that.

Gus

 

[Artificer]

Sorry, had to cut my post above off early.

I wanted to add:

However, those competitors I mentioned who won gold and silver medals in International Competition also tried almost anything to improve the accuracy of their guns and scores. They also had many years of testing different things to see if they actually worked (or not) and if the things did not, they would not have done them.

So even though I never found a reason to sand or work the balls for my smoothbore, I cannot discount that they found something advantageous by working the balls.

Gus

 

[John May]

Good evening all
I would like to thank you for your input to this post as it has now given me some interesting research to do.
As an immediate result I have decided to 'have a go' at roughing up the surface of the .69 balls I use in my Ardesa Cannon (which, incidentally I am shooting in a competition this week-end).
I will be shooting 3 cards, One a standard 10 from 13 bullseye card and 2 ship targets (see below) which are 10 from 10. My cannon is in standard form with only a small modification to the sighting system.
I will rough 10 of the balls used on the first ship target and compare them with the second. Might be pure bunkum but I am looking forward to the outcome. After all experimentation and enjoyment is what it's all about... isn't it??



Don't ask me how but this was a silver medal winning target!!

 

[Billnpatti]

Yeah, I can believe this target would take the silver. You took out the forecastle or is it F'castle? I don't know how to spell it but you know what I mean. Then you took out the rudder, one mast and three sails plus a pretty devastating hit to the bow. I would guess that in real life, that skipper would be willing to talk terms. :surrender: :thumbsup: