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Shooting TWO patched balls?

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Anybody putting 400 grains in any shoulder, or hand held gun must have a screw loose, not to mention stacking 4 balls on top of this bomb.
Just think about it for a moment.
Your breech plug has maybe 12 threads, your touch hole liner, or drum has maybe 4 threads, your barrel might have a 5/16 wall.
And now you want to put your nose next to this thing, and want to squeeze on the trigger.
I don't think so!
A double ball properly loaded on a moderate charge is possible, and quite accurate to 75 yds.
Forget about this pipe bomb theory and get back to real muzzleloading.
Old Ford ( preacher!)
 
There's not a thing in the world wrong with a normal double ball load...and a double ball load is no more payload than the same caliber conical, and usually not the heaviest weight conical in a range of conicals for that given caliber.

Example:

Two 127grn .440's = T/C's .45cal/255grn Maxi-Hunter
(Their .45cal Maxi-Hunter weights are 190 / 255 / 320grns)

Two 175grn .490's = T/C's .50cal/350grn Maxi-Hunter
(Their .50cal Maxi-Hunter weights are 275 / 350 / 470grns)

I'm going to try and christen a .45cal Virginia on deer this fall and if I'm lucky enough to fill more than one tag, I also want to try to tag one with a double ball load for the hands on field experience
 
I think I want to try a double ball load in a short carbine that I have. It would not be legal to hunt here in PA with a double load but I still want to try it out one some targets.
 
To me, the most important discipline is to first short start each tight fitting PRB so they end up stacked on top of each other.
Then seat them both down together as if they are a single projectile...that way they'll be no worry about them somehow getting an airspace between them if they're seated separately.
 
I make "post it note" tubes for my shot loads with a hard card wad glued to the bottom. I use this same tube for multiple ball loads. I sometime shoot 3 or even 4 .490 balls in my .52 smoothbore. At 50 yds. shooting 4 balls, usually they will be in 3 or 4" shooting offhand. I haven't shot a Deer with more than 1 ball but it's legal here so may try that next yr. We are lucky if we get one tag so we don't get to experiment much on live game.
Deadeye
 
I think if I remember correctly I first read about shooting multiple balls in "Robinson Crusoe". It's well over 30 years since I read it so maybe my memory is flawed.
 
I've done it a lot!!!Not much good out past 50 yards but works well at shorter ranges. Used to be called loading for bear.Common practice years ago. FRJ
 
Marc Adamchek said:
Reading about modern hunting in Africa with Muzzleloaders. Esteemed BP hunter Don Kettelkamp is one of the authors. He relates the following:

In 1966 a gent named Charles Wilcox went hunting in southwest Angola. He "used 2 custom rifles, a Lancaster style flintlock in .577 calibre and a .50 calibre Hawken style percussion, both with Wm. Large barrels".

To take a black rhinoceros "he used the flintlock .577 with two patched round balls in front of 400 grains of FFg (not a recommended load or practice)".

Now gentlemen, I ask you, have you EVER heard of such a thing before, and what degree of insanity would you assign to this "practice"?

Am I missing something or wouldn't there be a possible chance that the 2 prb's could not clear the barrel and the rifle could turn into a bomb?

At any rate, I'm interested in hearing some voices of experience address this.

If I were silly enough to shoot a Rhino with a 58 caliber flintlock I would use a ridiculous powder charge and two balls as well. Better to use a 12 bore or larger rifle in the first place with one hardened lead ball as was done historically. Kentucky rifles were never used for this purpose back in the day. Bore was too small.
RBs are perfectly adequate for any game on the planet if sized properly for the game and cast of hardened lead for the larger species.
IIRC he shot about 200 gr of powder in the 58 but would have to dig out the old Muzzle Blasts issue to refresh my memory. Wilcox was a Hollywood stunt man who did several hunting articles for MB in the 60s.

The 19th century English considered the 58 (24 bore) to be a medium bore deer rifle certainly not a dangerous game gun. The 16 bore (.662 ball) was minimum for anything dangerous and 12 bore was thought to be minimum for stuff like African Elephant and 8 or 4 was better still. 12 would be marginal from my reading good only for lung shots. But shooting animals backed by a PH with a dangerous game rifle to settle any emergencies is different that someone hunting alone in Africa with maybe one gun bearer who does not even know how to shoot. Thus large game guns were often 8-6-4 bore and many were not even rifled since the English makers usually over twisted the large bore rifles and game like in the African Bush is often shot at 10-15 yards.

Basically two balls will be more effective on game than one but using a bigger ball is better.
Two 40s does not equal one 54 IMO. "Loaded for bear" is often thought to mean two balls and an increased powder charge and is documented I believe but I have no citation at hand.

I have probably shot a double ball load at sometime just to do it. But maybe not. I always considered it to be silly and impractical.

"Wait Mrs. Gbear I need to put an extra ball in my rifle".

Loading this way all the time makes no sense at all since general utility suffers. So if something occurs suddenly the single ball is going to have to do.

There were a number of ML hunters in the 1960s in Africa. Wilcox, Val Forget and even Turner Kirkland who shot an elephant with a 4 bore.
But not having done proper research he used soft lead balls like he was shooting Squirrels and the PH had to finish the Elephant off when the soft lead balls produced inadequate penetration. Or so I have read, exact details are only known to the participants.
Forgett was just trying to sell his Navy Arms Minie Ball rifles. Since he did not sell 12 or 10 bore RB rifles he used what he sold regardless of its actual utility. I never paid any real attention due to the firearms he used. But Minie Balls will not work hardened and likely will not penetrate well enough for really large game, such bullets were tried for this back in the day and proved dangerous to the user when they failed to work as well as a RB from the same rifle.
Wilcox and Kirkland did hunt dangerous game with round balls. The danger and their willingness to confront it cannot be disparaged. Their "silliness" was in improper choice of calibers and/or bullet alloy.
I get the idea they did not read Baker, Selous, Forsythe or even John Taylor or if they did they failed to heed what was there to be learned.

Lyman did limited testing of double ball loads in their first BP Loading Manual IIRC.

Dan
 
I accidentally loaded 2 .530 RB's over 110 grains fffg in a 15/16 straight .54 by green mountain. at 50 yds it made an oval on the paper and a grimace on my face. just another reason not to take the wife during load workup, distractions distractions. thankfully no damage done, but i don't need to do it twice.
 
Our ideas about confrontations with large grizzly bears are strongly colored by the famous Hugh Glass incident, when he got between a sow and her cubs. He was so severely mauled that he was left for dead. Even Glass later said it was his fault for not paying attention to the sign that bear were around, including tracks, but even more important, the alarm calls of other animals whenever a large predator is moving close to them.

Then, the ammo and rifle companies, always looking to sell more guns and ammo, particularly to the newbie hunters going to the West, would have artist drawings on calendars, and advertising signs, showing the lone hunter clinging to a small mountain ledge, his gun over his shoulder, and a huge, angry grizzly coming around the corner on the same ledge. Great drama, but no documentation that any such incident ever occurred. Grizzlies are at the top of the food chain, in their world, and like all top predators, they don't tend to be delicate in their movements.They are fast runners, and powerful killers, who take what they need when they need it. Like all bears, they are omnivores, so they can also survive off eating fruits, and grasses, if they have to.

With that understanding, I think any competent mountain man would hear or see a bear coming in more than enough time to load a second PRB down the barrel of his gun, take a rested position, and shoot the bear before the bear could close the distance.

I saw my first deer down a ridge trail hundreds of feet North of where I was standing by a dead tree, and actually worried that she would walk right past, above me, where I could not safely take a shot. Instead she turned and began walking down a side trail that passed within 35 yards of me.

If a "city slicker" like me can spot, and hear an animal as wary as a doe with two yearlings trailing her, so that I got the drop on her, I think those mountain men, no matter how "green" they were when they left St. Louis, or St. Joseph, were as capable at hunting as I am.

OH, I should mention, that the birds first alerted me to look to the north, where I first spotted the movement of the 3 deer. ( credit given where credit due.) :hmm: :hatsoff: The deer were moving faster than a walking gait, And three deer running alarmed the squirrels and birds so that the birds sent out alarm calls to tell everyone that could hear them( I didn't say "listen to them") that something or someone had startled this doe and her young.

[I learned to listen to birds and squirrels when I was a kid, sent out to find our family cats, when they were not in sight. Of course, when there was snow on the ground, I Just followed her tracks to find her. If I listened to where the birds were making the most noise, I invariably found my cat there. There were other cats in the neighborhood, but Babe was by far the best hunter of them all. She killed birds, squirrels, rabbits and mice that I know of, and probably any opossum or raccoon crazy enough to wander into her "turf".
My mother was always surprised at how quickly I found Babe. I didn't understand why she was surprised, but then, I never told her about the time I spent cutting sign and reading tracks. I was 44 years old when I told her about that part of my life, finally. She still was surprised- again!]
 
From a historical standpoint a number of Confederate units were using US Model 42 muskets which were .69 caliber some of which were likely using buck and ball loads.Double barrel shotguns {usually 10 gauge}were far more common than previously thought and were used by both cavalry and infantry.See CONFEDERATE CARBINES & MUSKETOONS by Dr.John M. Murphy M.D.who devoted an entire chapter {XXIII} to these weapons and their use. See also FIREARMS OF THE CONFEDERACY by Claude E. Fuller and Richard D. Steuart which has a number of references to the use of shotguns by Confederate troops.Although my knowlege as to Confederate weapons and especially cavalry weapons is limited,not being primarily a Confederate firearms student and/or collector,I believe that carbines were predominately rifled and were bored to the standard Confederate caliber of .58. I do know of a Confederate cavalry carbine utilizing the barrel and mounts from a British fowling piece in approximately .66-67 caliber which is also British carbine bore.I do not,of course, have any knowlege as to the type of load utilized but given the use of buck and ball thought to have been used in the shotguns, it would seem likely that a cavalry carbine in large caliber woul utilize the same load especially at close quarters or dismounted. It would be interesting to see a study of Civil War weaponry in smoothbore and the use of buck and ball loads. I have seen some information which seems to indicate a load consisting of a ball of approximately .66 behind three balls of approximately .32-36.I would assume that all four projectiles were contained in a single paper cartridge but am not sure.

I don't know whether this would be desirable for hunting but up to about 50-75 yards it could be pretty effective.
As always I welcome responsible comment.
Tom Patton :v
 
Good day gentlemen, I admit that my experience is a slight variation from double balling, but I did try buck-and-ball loads to whitness the effect. I was using a .735" doglock with a patched ball over 6 0.25" shot and and ounce of no 6 shot and the whole shebang pushed by a modest 200 grains on FFG. The range officed threatened to send me a repair bill for the parapet, and my musket finished at the 'present' position. Once the nose bleed subsided I was able to examine the remnants of the target board, which was at a 'whited-of-ther-eyes-distance of 25-30 meters, or thereabouts. Ah, the folly of youth......
 
Doc Coffin said:
A) .735" doglock with a patched ball
B) 6 0.25" shot
C) ounce of no 6 shot
D) 200 grains FFG.

There may have been a minor misunderstanding when you learned about the versatile projectiles that could be used in a smoothbore.

They didn't mean ALL AT THE SAME TIME

:grin:
 
When I was told about the 2 patched round balls at the same time the old timer that told me said this. Cut your powder to 2/3 of what you do for one ball because of chamber pressure and make sure you push both balls down at the same time. I really don't believe I would use 200 grains of 2X in any rifle I own regardless of what was coming at me. As I've read earlier 2 round balls would be about the same weight as one mini ball and at close range 25-40 yards it would be pretty damaging to any animal coming your way. In some places I've read that the guides carry 12 gauge shoot guns with slugs and I wonder what the caparison would be. Now I'm not talking about the long hunters of the day I'm pretty much thinking about the ones that went into the thick brush after a know animal. I also wonder how much black powder would it take to equal the 3 inch mag slug.
 
* sigh * Bittersweet to see some of the old names in this time-hopping thread.

Check your local laws. Multiple projectiles would be illegal in any season for deer in NY.

Dead is dead. Two holes is just more meat damage. If you aren't confident with one shot then two a bit slower may be the answer, but so might be more practice.
 
Anybody putting 400 grains in any shoulder, or hand held gun must have a screw loose, not to mention stacking 4 balls on top of this bomb.
Just think about it for a moment.

I have thought about it a lot. And I do it all the time.

The .730" balls from my Bess tip the scales at 586 grains. The .690" balls from my 12 gauge tip the scale at 495 grains. The conicals from my 58 caliber rifles variously tip the scales from 525 grains to 580 grains. Heck, lots of 54 caliber conicals top 400 grains.

I might have a screw loose, but I'm in the very good company of thousands of other shooters firing loads recommended by the manufacturers for their guns. Guess the company's are screw-loose, too.
 
There were six ball wounds at the Boston massacre. Leading to accusations the Brits had double balled. It was not an uncommon practice in the old days. In Robinson Caruso Defoe has Robinson loading up to five ball in his gun.
Lyman did experiments that showed the balls badly malformed. I don’t think two balls through the chest will make the deer more dead, however at close range I might be tempted against a hog.
 
I shot the double ball method a month or so ago. Came back with my range report and posted. I think it turned into about 4 pages of replies. Follow Claude's link its all there...very interesting and controversial! More importantly from a safety aspect, you need to short start both patched balls and seat them as a single projectile. I think we discussed the possibility of an air pocket that could occur between the two patched balls that can/may cause the second ball not to seat firmly causing the second ball to become an obstruction. I would not recommend more than two balls ever! You would be better off,if you wanted more, to load up the old smoothbore with some buckshot!


It is not as outlandish as some think.

In "Limited Time Fire" pistol matches you start with a loaded pistol, percussion you have 5 minutes to shoot 5 shots and in flintlock you have 6 minutes to shoot 5 shots. It pays to know where 2 balls will go on the target if you know you do not have time to get the fifth shot off in the time allowed.

Better to have 5 holes in the target versus 4, even if the last 2 are 5's.
 

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