AmericanLongRifles Forums
General discussion => Black Powder Shooting => Topic started by: Flint62Smoothie on January 27, 2025, 05:12:51 PM
-
Not really ... but it was a FUN experiment once I learned the range! The target was 25-yards away and to try and hit that target I had to put the bell of the muzzle at the top of the berm.
Arm: Early 1700s flintlock British Hand Mortar
Projectile: Tennis balls, used
Load: 90-grns 2Fg
Wadding: 4" square newspaper loosely crumpled ahead of the powdah in the 12-Ga sized firing chamber.
An interesting side note, any TIGHT wadding below the projectile, like I tried a 12-Ga fiber wad (cut in half) placed on top of the powdah column, significantly reduced the range of the projectile.
Here's the kicker ... I was the only smoothbore shooter who attended the shoot yesterday, a very, very low turnout, maybe due to all the football games scheduled. Anyways, it looks like I might have taken 1st place in the smoothbore 'smallest group" contest, LOL!
Historically, hand mortars firing cast iron hand grenades were only used with indirect arcing artillery-type fire, say muzzle up at a 45-degree angle or such. They were also fired with the butt place against the ground, or maybe off the hip (no historical record of it) or held by the side, but definitely not from the shoulder. As such they are no way/no where capable of direct aimed fire as say the WW2 M9 Rifle Grenade was, when fired from the M1 Garand using blank loads.
I kind of did it for a lark or a spoof, but also in the pursuit of experimental archaelology and I thought others attending would be interested in seeing, handling, and shooting something that they might only see in a museum or in pictures. As a bonus, all but 1 projectiles were recovered, the other being blasted 200Yds away at a distant treeline. Plus mostly - I actively shoot all of my 'toys', none are safe queeens! Alas, I do not have any cast iron balls around ... but I bet that sure adds to the recoil tremendously!
(https://i.ibb.co/dtXSDrL/IMG-4084.jpg) (https://ibb.co/G9GXR0t)
-
For range and accuracy try a lacrosse ball. Tennis balls turn inside out with 90gr fffg but send a lacrosse ball way out there (or way high) with enough velocity to bounce them off my neighbors tractor (100+yards)pretty consistently.
Kevin
-
No issues here w/ tennis balls and can lob them out to the 200Y berm with ease … and only 25-cents each used, haha! Used lacrosse balls are $2 each …
-
as an added bonus, tennis balls probably bounce halfway back from the 25 yard target. Easier to find... and re-usable?
-
the original "Byrna Launcher" less than lethal home protection. love it.
-
Very cool!