Shooting "miscleaneous" projectiles?

[Grandpa Ron]

There is a You-Tube video that makes me cringe. The guys are shooting about everything you can imagine from a pump shotgun that looks to be a 12 gauge.

A real yahoos down on the farm act and a testimonial to the strength of modern shotgun actions.

I would really hate to see the bore of the gun when they were finished.

They are probably lucky that one of them did not end up with a hook where his hand used to be. :hmm:

 

[KABAR2]

"THE VIRGINIA GAZETTE
September 22, 1774

LONDON, July "but at last a young Gentleman shot it dead with a small Marble."

Marbles of that time were fired clay not glass... I have heard somewhere that clay ball(marbles) were used by the Confedercy in canister rounds for cannon...

 

[Oudoceus]

Where would someone get .600 ball bearings? I read somewhere that in Spanish Texas they sometimes used copper balls.

 

[roundball]

I experimented with some precision .562" solid brass balls in my .58cal last year in search of non-lead alternatives for ML hunting...deadly accurate at the range, then took a deer with one in October, worked perfectly.

 

[satwel]

I have a friend who claims to have shot M80's from his repro Brown Bess. He used a reduced load that would propel the M80 40-50 yards and light the fuse at the same time.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

If the lead-free phobia grows I suspect we will be seeing a lot of alternate materials being tried. Copper, brass, bismuth, steel, and tin are just a few that have been mentioned.

Fortunately since most smoothbores are 20 ga. or larger; our round balls starts out bigger in diameter than most modern projectiles expand too. They will plough a hole through most deer sized game.

Time will tell what will be needed for bigger game animals. We know that the Brits used hard lead in their early cartridge guns.

I suspect the sabot and copper slug, simlar to the inline bullets, wll be the staring point.

Who know?

 

[Heelerau]

You blokes have toooooooooo much time on your hands !!!
I did as a kid, fire a home made rocket out of a cut down cap lock single barrel fowler. Just a small blank charge, no wadding. it did ignite the rocket which flew up a few yards then promptly flipped and flew straight into the ground a few feet away from myself !! I was about 10 at the time.

 

[TrueBlueYankee]

A muzzle loading smooth bore handgun I built has been a hoot to shoot carpenter bees with. Loaded with course sand it has very limited range and the bees that are within a few feet are totally destroyed. A friend calls it sand blasting bees. We have played with lead shot, plastic beads, glass beads, steel shot and the course sand is my favorite to play with. There is no doubt in my mind that small smooth river rock would be deadly as lead at limited distance. The projectiles weight and shape would determine the distance it would be deadly.

Son of a gun. I never thought of that. I too have carpenter bee issues and my method of dealing with them has been to load chemicals in my backpack sprayer while standing on a 28 ft extension ladder...which I mightily hate. As it happens I have a CVA flint lock pistol that I made from a kit as a kid in the 70's that gets no use. I'm digging it out of my basement and making it my carpenter bee killing gun. What's your preferred load?

 

[hanshi]

Even a light, blank bp charge in a .32 will lay waste to any wasp nest instantly. Nothing survives the flame, burned particles and smoke of a squib load. You have to see it to believe it. And I'm talking being several feet from the target. 10', 12', it's murder.

 

[KABAR2]

Where would someone get .600 ball bearings? I read somewhere that in Spanish Texas they sometimes used copper balls.

Texas and most of the Spanish southwest.... there is a discussion on a Spanish Artillery forum about copper cannon balls... it seems there was an abundance of copper in South America so it got put to use.....

I would be careful using ball bearings if they hit a hard surface they can rebound I know of a case where one was fired from a small caliber cannon it hit a steel target rebound just missing the owner's head hit the rim of his truck and came back for another try!

 

[Rod Lassey]

For early accounts, John Tanner, who was captured as a child and adopted by an Ottawa woman, told of having to use his lockbolts to kill a moose, tying the lock on with a bit of string.

James Clyman wrote of men running out of balls, and breaking the brass mountings off their rifles and hammering that into balls.

Not muzzleloading, but around here several guys use .410 shotguns with arrows to hunt carp (shot pulled from the cartridge first). I'd suspect---but have never tried---that something similar could be done with a muzzleloader.

Rod

 

[cynthialee]

Remember reading somewhere that the Spanish in the new world used iron round balls in some instances.

 

[Joel/Calgary]

Remember reading somewhere that the Spanish in the new world used iron round balls in some instances.

There was fairly extensive discussion about that on various boards back when the (Nat.Geo.??) article with the forensics first came out, and someone posted a link (lost a few computers ago) to a period resource on forging iron musket balls. Iron balls likely gave better armor penetration, and the conquistadores apparently kitted out with their standard gear. What was never clarified was whether lead balls were also used in early muskets, or whether this was a later development.

Regards,
Joel

 

[frogwalking]

Chuck, Tim and I did have smoothbores when we were kids, or 15 anyway. We shot gravel out of the 10 gauge double that was given to us many times. Chuck once shot a bird out of it, and therefore it became a bird gun.

Tim shot an iron harpoon out of his .410 caplock. Made wads to keep it centered and everything. Nailed a turtle to a log with it.

Dixie had a tutorial of how to make an airburst projectile for a 12 gauge shotgun out of a 20 gauge empty shell casing. (Grind the rim off first.) We did that too. We also drilled holes in the nose of the big .58 mineballs, filled them with fine powder and pressed a .22 short case with the bullet removed into the hole. May have glued it in, I don't remember. If you do this, make sure you releve the center of your ramrod before ramming this beast down the bore. Over the years,

I have shot several ramrods only God knows where. Boy my rifle kicked much more than normal when I forgot to remove the ramrod.

Truly God looks after fools, drunks, and teens with muzzle loaders and gunpowder.

Frog

 

[blackdog of vt]

A disassembled bobber filler with orange chalk makes a nice splat. A few buck tied together with fishing line is fun too.

 

[Wes/Tex]

Truly God looks after fools, drunks, and teens with muzzle loaders and gunpowder.

Frog

Amen brother...tried nearly all those tricks and then some. It's a wonder I lived to be this old with all my fingers. Have burned the hair off my face twice through the years as well. Geeze Louise, I've done some idiotic things. I wish we'd had this kind of source back then to keep us from stressing out some pretty cool old guns! :youcrazy:

 

[frogwalking]

My buddy Chuck is approaching 70 yrs. old. He appears to have a few blackheads in his face. They are black powder from launching home-made rockets out of Raymond's cannon. Russell still can't hear well. Mother gave us $5.00 to bury a dead sheep. We blew the hole with a lb. of black powder. (It was cheap back then.) Russell lit the "fuse"; a length of plastic tubing filled with gunpowder. Yes, it did sort of blow him up. Thank God we did not think of blowing the sheep us! Just the thought brings tears to your eyes dosen't it?

 

[jaxenro]

I had a friend who back in the late 60's carried a sawed off Westley Richards muzzleloader for bar fights (don't ask) and would load it with the pea sized crushed glass from broken car safety windows. He said it was hell at bar room distances and cut up whatever it hit but didn't penetrate all that well and ran out of steam fast. He considered it non lethal but it would take the fight out of anyone real quick.

 

[robinsroost]

I have thought of loading 3 point, :stir: tin, window points, but have never tried it. I think this would make a devistating short range load......Robin

 

[Grandpa Ron]

I was only issued ten fingers and toes. I would hate to break a matched set. :shocked2: