roundballs without patch

[sr500]

I wonder if i could shoot bare roundballs, if i take balls that have the same size as the groves (bottom) of my bore? Soft lead, and a starter. And maybe over powder wads.

 

[Many Klatch]

You will probably need a hammer to force the balls into the barrel. Without patching, there will be nothing to fill the grooves. If you don't fill the grooves, then much of the force of the gunpowder will blow past the ball. I have shot bare ball a few times in my rifles when I was in a speed shoot and the targets were easy, but my lead balls are smaller than the actual size of the bore, since they are sized to fit the bore with a patch.

There are people that shoot bore sized lead balls, they have to clean after each shot, hammer the balls in with a large hammer and a steel rod and they get wonderful accuracy, but they also are shooting bench guns that weigh 40 to 50 pounds.

Many Klatch

 

[paulvallandigham]

WADR, you need to stop trying to invent the wheel. There are many problems associated with shooting bare ball in a ML rifle. Manny has touched on most of them.

A round ball is what it is. It was intended to be just short of bore diameter, and used with a cloth or leather patch. THAT IS THE TECHNOLOGY of the round ball. Its been around for 500 years. Do you really think that you are going to do something that has not already been tried?

 

[Juice Jaws]

Why make things harder than they are. Of course you can shoot just round balls in your gun, but what is the use of it? Shooting ML is not rocket science, it is really very simple.

 

[playfarmers]

I look at the patch as a friend. It does a little cleaning every time I load, so clean up at the end of the day is just a few minutes. When I shot lead bullets, clean up was a big job.

 

i think we hava all had these thoughts so here is what i came to.
yes you can shoot a unpatched bore sized ball. will it be accurate-yes
is the cleaning worth it - i dont think so
but to answer your question yes you can :hatsoff:

 

[bwhoffman]

training and some good coaching seems needed here before we loose someone to not so safe practices.

Listen to what is being said on this forum.
roundballs and conicals are two different creatures. safe powder levels, patches, lubes, all play a part in successful shooting.

 

[Tim Clark]

Necessity may well be the mother of Invention, but let us not forget that Invention has a nanny that goes by the name of Curiousity. And she's not always the best suited for the charge.

I am reasonably sure that this very thought of yours was behind the development of the Minie ball, etc. In battle, the very act of using a patch - regardless whether cut-at-muzzle or pre-cut, it matters not - could well mean the difference between victory and defeat. Let's face it, the sheer amount of lead in the air from one side or the other mattered most, and even with numerically superior forces if reloading was slow, you were at the disadvantage. Unfortunately this practice when used with round balls may well have caused more problems than it solved?

So let's follow this to the logical extreme, keeping in mind that the best experience in the world is "someone else's." Those gone before us were limited by technology and lack of data, not by imagination, initiative or genius. "Primitive" is a relative term, and does not mean "Ignorant." Anyhow, suppose that you tried a ball without patch. Obviously the results were not superior to using a patched ball, particularly with a rifled barrel, otherwise we'd not be using patches or lube today. With this point settled, then what?

At this point I'd suggest to you that you read up on the history of the conical bullet, especially with respect to muzzleloaders. And along the way you'll have your answer.

Not trying to put you off, certainly not; rather I (we all) would set you along the correct path and nudge you back on it when you veer too far off. That's all. Not with condescension, just that at one time or another, as has been said, we've all had similar thoughts on various topics. Nothing wrong at all with that. How else would we discover anything new? But for those few things that ARE settled, well... let wisdom rule.

 

[Headhunter]

Seen em do it in the movies, thats about it.

Read about it in one of my Hawken books for close combat in the old days fighting Blackfeet & Crows and such.

A couple movies that did it that I know of right off.

The Mountain Men

Man in the Wilderness

I wouldn't think its a good thing at all.

HH

 

[PreglerD]

Shooting with unpatched balls out of rifled guns has its roots in the military time. For example the german jaegers in the Napoleonic Wars normally shot with PRB, but they also had so called "alarm cartridges" which they used when they were in a hurry and no time to load a PRB with a measured load. This cartridges were the same as the infantry of the line was using, so powder and ball in a papercharge. This load was only waded with the paper. Nevertheless it was possible to hit a target with this rolling balls at 50 yards. Jaegers even shot at marching groups at longer distances.
Another use was in the times when all military longguns were rifled (since 1830). There was a so called buckshot load (in GE: Postenschrot). This word belongs to military service when guarding. the guarding soldiers use also one or more RB's without patch, because the chance of hitting a human target at low distance is with more bullets bigger and a unpatched ball is easier to load.

For normal shooting I hold it with the other responders. Use PRB's!For more accuracy and fun.

 

[RedFeather]

I've read that lead bullets were hammered into the barrels of the early Jaegers. The patched round ball came along and that practice kind of ceased. As for loading naked balls, I would guess that conditions like combat would allow you to do so, but at your own risk. If the ball should migrate back up the barrel, you could have a burst or bulged barrel.

Saw an account of buffalo hunters using flintlock smoothbores on horseback. They would carry extra balls in their mouth, load from the horn and spit the ball down the barrel, then tamp the butt on the ground to settled the charge while shaking powder into the pan from an over-sized vent hole. Supposedly, the spit held the ball in place long enough to a get a shot off. The account did say that this sometimes resulted in some damage to the gun and user.

For those target shooters who use over-sized balls, do they have some special seating appartus to keep them from being deformed when loading? I would think that all of that hammering would be bad rather than good for accuracy.

 

[fluggies4]

I was standing beside a fellow shooter on a woods walk at a local rendezvous who loaded powder and bare ball in his CVA mountain rifle. When he tipped the rifle to put a cap on the nipple, the whole load dumped out on the ground. Could have been nasty if the ball had only rolled part way out. :shake:

 

[sr500]

Ok, just a thought. Now i know, dont have to try. Thanks.

 

[Bill Hall]

I recall three times when I used bare balls for quick dispatches of wounded game. These were all very close shots of course, so I know there was a significant power loss as the balls didn't have near the penetration or tissue damage that would be expected from a patched ball. But hey, it was fast and it worked. Bill

 

[Leatherbark]

I read an article in a Guns Digest one time about a fellow (C.E.Harris) who used .451 bare balls over a wonder wad in a T.C. Hawken and got amazing accuracy.........................Bob

 

[paulvallandigham]

Ed Harris did a lot of technical work for the NRA years ago. He still is active in N. Virginia. Depending on the bore diameter of the " .45 caliber " rifle, and its groove depth, you can get good accuracy using bare balls. But, you also get a lot of leading, and the ball has to be hammered into the barrel because it is actually groove diameter, or even a little larger in diameter. I have seen this done at some matches where the shooters are shooting chunk guns or slug guns. The guns are usually smaller in caliber than .45, but the loading actions are the same. Generally, these guys are sending an oval shaped " ball " out the barrel at high velocities to hit targets at no more than 100 yds. Heavy powder charges, and a slow twist barrel, so that the " slug " screams down range and gets to the target before winds can deflect them much. I am speaking of velocities that are near 2500 fps at the muzzle. At that speed, shooting any caliber that is larger really beats the shooter's shoulder with recoil.

 

I used to get very good accuracy with home-made solid base "conicals" loaded bare in my old .36 underhammer. I was new to MLing and didn't know any better. Made the mold by simply drilling into a brass block with the proper bit diameter. More recently, when I got long-awaited custom .50 flintlock rifle I had ordered, and in a hurry to shoot it, I went into my rural backyard to shoot it offhand at a mark. The patch material I grabbed was too thick for me to start the ball and I did not have a short starter handy--so I just loaded a bare .490 ball over a guessed at charge (60 gr) to see how it worked--being careful to keep the muzzle canted up when I primed. The ball hit the mark at 35 paces. I don't recommend this. There is some historic reference to it--after the bore has been fouled as in battle, some folks loaded bare ball if in a hurry to get off another shot--as in being pursued by an enemy at relatively close range--one fellow was adept at loading on the run and apparently kept the balls in his mouth to 'spit into the muzzle'...

 

[paulvallandigham]

Mike Roberts: YOu are absolutely correct. And I think every guy over 15 years of age read those histories, and want to try to shoot a ML rapidly by pouring powder out of his horn into a barrel, then spitting a ball down it, thumping the butt of the rifle onthe ground to seat the ball, and then firing it, just like that thar fella did! I have supervised shooters at my range to do this, but do it safely, so they can get it out of their systems.

Its like fanning a single action revolver. Everyone who buys a SA revolver at some point wants to fan it, and see what they can hit.

What I did to help these NL shooters live their fantasies, was first make them run a damp and then a dry patch down the barrel to make sure there were no embers glowing down there, and to clear the vent or flashchannel and nipples. Then I let them pour a charge of powder into the barrel out of the powder horn. We then had them put the plug back in the horn, and put the horn on the loading bench behind them. They then put a bare ball in the barrel, and thumped the barrel on the ground to seat the ball. But, before they were allowed to fire the gun, they were required to use their ramrods to check to see that the ball was seated all the way down on the powder, and was not a bore obstruction.

Then the flintlocks were checked, to see if any powder made it out of the chamber into the flashpan. If not, the pan was primed. The Cap and Ball rifles had perdcussion caps put on them, and then the guys were allowed to fire the guns at a 25 yd target, turned around, so that they were shooting at a 12 inch square paper, about the same area as the torso of a man. Some hit the paper. Most shot over, or under( mostly under) the target. All learned a valuable lesson, particularly when they then cleaned the barrel for their next shots.

 

[spottedpony]

Reading these posts got me to thinking, and digging under my loading bench for a box of 45 cal soft cast bullets for my 45 ACP. i had my .45 kentucky rifle out plinking a bit today, & decided to try them out of curosity. now this rifle likes 40 gr of pyrodex over a 440 ball & .018 patch, soooooooooo, out with the calipers and i checked the bbl, low and behold groove to groove it ran .452/.453. the bullets for my handgun came in at .451. Just tight enough against the lands, i had to use my short starter to get them started down the bbl.
What the heck i says to my self, lets try it. To make a long story short, i want to play with them some more, they shot to the almost the same poi as the prb's did at 25 yds. (about an inch low)
Now, it was windy today, windy enough, things were blowing around on my shooting table, so i only shot half a dozen of them, along with a dozen or so prbs, but it has my interest enough i want to pursue it a bit more on a better day. The only negative i see shooting many of these bullets, is they only have one shallow lube groove on them but i'm thinking try a lube patch underneath too.
anyway the results look interesting enough to do some further testing.