Stopping power of a brown bess

[ronrryan]

Back when I had some interest in African hunting, I remember reading that it was not unusual for white hunters to find lead ball and homemade projectiles from native muzzleloading weapons under the skin and in the bodies of animals they had dispatched with modern weapons. Probably not good powder, properly patched balls, and marginal marksmanship, among other issues. Good smoke, Ron

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

This is the thing that people forget about when talking about accuracy in muskets. Once you move away from the standard military loading(truly a case of close enough is good enough for government work) and start patching a properly sized ball, everything changes.

When the so-called experts on the Military Channel or the History Channel talk about the inaccurate musket, they always fail to mention that it is the load that is the problem and not the musket. Probably because they don't know this. It's fine to load in the military style when giving a demonstration of an historical nature and it should be mentioned that such a load gives poor accuracy but it wouldn't hurt to point out that with a few small changes in the loading procedure the musket is capable of much more. After all, the lowly and "inaccurate" musket helped build our nation! It deserves some respect. :thumbsup:

 

[robinghewitt]

They did the penetration test in 1810 while playing with Gardener's nail breech. The target was a box of half inch thick saturated elm boards spaced 3/4" apart, the range was 60 feet.

Using a ball over 6 drams of powder in a common musket, loaded and rammed in the usual way, they penetrated ten and a half boards :thumbsup:

 

[Grizzled Roberts]

Russ T, Yeah the history channel makes me sick some times. That had a special on last week about
sharp shooters, The had the best bow shooter on the planet, one of the best cowboy shooters ( although most of his trick shots we do with flintlocks! ) Then that had their "expert" on flint locks. This man missed a watermellon at 25 yards with a Brown Bess. He then mentioned the muskets were not accurate and that the soldiers closed their eyes before shooting. I shoot the smoothbore silly wets at Friendship every year.
I have had several hits on the 120 yard bears with a Brown Bess Musket over the years. When he shot a flintlock rifle he missed the center a good 4 inches at 25 yards. The History Channel
needs to find some better experts when demonstrating flintlocks!!

:v

 

[celtan]

I think the usual fora .69cal load was more like 60-80 grains FF, and that was enough. If you used more, for some reason the ballistics suffered significantly, not that they ever were renowned for their reliability or accuracy...

Best

M

 

[CoyoteJoe]

There seems to be some confusion as to what was the standard military load, I had in mind 100 grains and 1000 fps but I don't really know why I thought that. Some have mentioned 6 drams, that would be 165 grains and a real shoulder crusher of recoil at about 1250 fps. I still believe a modern 12 gauge one ounce slug load at the standard velocity of 1600 fps would be superior to any load one can safely fire from a Bess. Likewise a 20 gauge shotgun slug weighing 3/4 ounce and doing 1600 fps at the muzzle would beat the loads most people fire from .62 caliber fowlers and trade guns.

 

[poordevil]

I had stated eariler that I thought 1600 fps was high for a slug. I went to the Federal web site and see a 2 3/4" 12, 1 oz. slug is listed as 1610! So I learned something. It also listed 1oz as 438 gr and 7/8 oz as 350 gr. just FYI.

P.

 

[CoyoteJoe]

Yeah, the "big three ammo makers" all load the old Foster type slugs at about 1600 fps for 12, 16 and 20 gauge, the .410 jumps up to about 1850 fps but that weighs only 1/5 ounce, or less than 90 grains. That speed is one reason slugs often don't shoot to the same POI as the birdshot loads which normally are heavier and slower.

 

[torn moc]

1600 fps on a one ounce chunk of lead is a whole can of WHOOOOOOMP ! :hatsoff:

 

[tg]

Most smoothbores are capable of clean kills at ranges that exceed the abilities of most shooters who have not spent a lot of time with a particular gun.