weight of .62 cal cast balls?

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

Fiftyfour:  you've asked a valid and interesting question, and it would be good to listen to my answer.  A muzzle loading rifle requires a ball and patch whose combined dimensions seals the bore to the bottom of the rifling, if accuracy means anything to you.  Also, the patch must carry enough lubricant, having been squeezed between the lead and steel to push ALL of the fowling from the previous shot down onto the powder when you load.  In order to get this phenomenon, a dead soft lead ball .005" to .010" under BORE size, and a patch between .018" and .022" is usually required to fill the rifling.  That is a tight combination, and the weave of the cloth will be imprinted into the lead, as will the actual lands of the rifling.  A hard ball, ie:  one cast from an alloy of lead containing metals other than lead such as tin or antimony, is much more difficult to compress and will be harder to load, and worse, may cut the patch, ruining accuracy completely.  So, if you have to use an alloy of lead with a hardness greater than bhn 5, you will need to use a smaller ball, ei:  '010" to .015" smaller than your bore, and a thicker patch.  The smooth bore and round ball is a good example of that, since there are no rifling grooves to fill.  I will add that the tight combination I described above is not difficult to load with a hickory rod, but starting that combo into the muzzle will require a muzzle especially prepared, and a starter.  There has been much written on this site regarding this topic, so I will not drag it out any further, but it boils down to what you want to achieve and what you're willing to do to achieve it.  I personally do not even know how to spell mediocrity, and cannot tolerate it.

My .62 cal rifle has a Rice barrel whose bore is .620".  My .610" Lyman ball mould casts pure lead balls that are .613". I load easily with a compressed .022" denim patch, and I use a starter.  This rifle gives me and my old eyes consistent 2" groups from the bench at 100 meters.  A machine rest like Hugh Toenjes' I know would produce one hole groups at that range and beyond.

My Chambers Pennsylvania fowling piece has a .620" bore as well, but no rifling.  I use a .600" ball from a Lee mould and the same .022" patch, but I use pure lead, so loading is easy, and accuracy is excellent.

Sorry if I have diverged from the subject of this thread.

[Daryl]

All, I find the Bear Tooth bullet weight calculator to be very useful and precise:  http://www.beartoothbullets.com/rescources/calculators/php/roundball.htm?v1=.495&v2=2876.1

I tested that calculator and it gave the weight of a .682" pure lead ball as 478gr. - that weight is 4gr. light, but that could be due to the mould casting a round ball, but with a slight sprue.

The 183gr. is very close to what my .495 mould casts in my alloy.

The .677" ball, cast of pure lead in my Tanner mould, came out correct, at 467gr.

TKS for the link.

[Maven]

You're most welcome, Daryl!

[yulzari]

When the British Army went over to machine made swaged balls instead of cast ones in the mid 1830s they found that swaged ones were 1/64 heavier than cast ones so you have there a measure of the inevitable voids in even well cast balls.

[Daryl]

When the British Army went over to machine made swaged balls instead of cast ones in the mid 1830s they found that swaged ones were 1/64 heavier than cast ones so you have there a measure of the inevitable voids in even well cast balls.

perhaps - look to the quality of the moulds (round? -  I doubt it) they used &/or the quality of the sprue cuts - look also to the ACTUAL diameters of the finished balls. There is so much room for different weights, such that NO firm 'reason' can be given for different weights.

When the US Army went to swaged balls instead of cast, they also changed the size from an average of .64" to .65" for their .60 to .70 cal muskets.

[yulzari]

In 'The Papers Connected With the Duties of the Corps of Engineers'-Volume 5 of 1837 there is a detailed paper upon the new machinery set in place in 1837 to form British Army service musket balls by modern compression (i.e.swaging) instead of casting. It demonstrates the advances then being made from an artisan culture to an industrial one. It notes the mass of the compressed ball is @1/64th more than the cast, which tells us of the potential for inaccuracy from the void in cast balls. At this time service cast balls were from standardised moulds to close tolerances at 0.685" diameter. The comparison is with the cast and compressed (i.e.swaged) service musket balls in 1837.
It can be downloaded as a PDF document at: https://ia600309.us.archive.org/21/item ... 05grea.pdf
Once you have it downloaded you can either read it therein or save the PDF pages 303-315 which form that paper. I have the relevant portion saved as a PDF but have no idea how to post it. It includes detailed drawings of the very substantial machines for the task.

What the relevance is of this to the OP is that it is a period and accurate estimate of the void in even a well cast ball. To be pedantic this is for a somewhat larger ball and I have no data on how the proportion of cast void to diameter varies between ball sizes but a 0.62" ball will not be markedly different.

[Daryl]

Interesting, so with the cast balls, they used .683" balls for the .73 to .80 calibre muskets, eh.  A couple Bess's Taylor re-built back in the 80's were .80 calibre. With such large windage,  do not think

 the swaged ball would be much more accurate - maybe it was? That is an even larger windage problem than what the US army was plagued with.

When the US army changed to the .65" swaged over the .64" cast, they doubled the number of hits at 100yards, from 1 out of 5 shots to 2 out of 5 shots.

Interestingly enough, it is reported they used a "turkey" target for testing musket accuracy.

[Daryl]

Just weighed .495" Hornady swaged balls as compared to .495" cast balls form my moulds.

The swaged balls weighed 183.8gr. while a cast .495" ball from my Lyman mould weighs 184gr.

The tangent sprue cutt-off from my Lee .495" mould casts a 182gr. ball - both moulds are casting .495" x .495".

I do have another mould I could test, an old Ohaus DC mould, with one cavity bored for a PP bullet, but what's the point?

It is interesting they felt it important to note the 1/64" heavier ball from swaging, compared to casting, for all the difference it might make in battle.

As we all know, quality is dependent on attention to accuracy.

[yulzari]

Daryl. By 1837 the Board of Ordnance and also the Honourable East India Company had tightened their standards for their armies' muskets and they were working to fairly close tolerances to 0.753" bores (0.733" for the Lovell Reduced Bore carbines). The simple fact that they were specifying tolerances to thousands of an inch attests to the industrial advances Britain was making over time. This is very different to the wide variations in service musket bores and balls of 60+ years previously and the trade muskets for private sales. Of course they allowed some tolerance for variations from the ideal measurements as we do today but they were not far off the ideal.

William Greener in 'The Gun 1834' was quite scathing about the windage in British Army muskets but then he never had to fire scores of rounds in action in a hot dry desert with only two sources of water to clean a fouled barre; one of which was the sole drinking water you had on you.

The windage of @ 0.0068" was a necessity in service. Awful for a civilian one of course. In the reduced 0.733" bore sapper/artillery carbines they used the same standard 0.685" ball with a 0.0048" windage but these would not have to fire scores of rounds in an engagement so would not suffer the same degree of fouling. I find that the service muskets do become more accurate as the fouling accumulates when using the service cartridge. Of course we must allow for the twice wrapped paper of the cartridge within these windages which is not inconsiderable.

Whilst they noted the difference in weight between the cast and swaged balls it was not enough to cause any change in the weapons or their use.

[Pukka Bundook]

Very clearly explained, John.
Thank you for the link in your previous post as well.
 
Richard.

[Daryl]

Daryl. By 1837 the Board of Ordnance and also the Honourable East India Company had tightened their standards for their armies' muskets and they were working to fairly close tolerances to 0.753" bores (0.733" for the Lovell Reduced Bore carbines). The simple fact that they were specifying tolerances to thousands of an inch attests to the industrial advances Britain was making over time. This is very different to the wide variations in service musket bores and balls of 60+ years previously and the trade muskets for private sales. Of course they allowed some tolerance for variations from the ideal measurements as we do today but they were not far off the ideal.

William Greener in 'The Gun 1834' was quite scathing about the windage in British Army muskets but then he never had to fire scores of rounds in action in a hot dry desert with only two sources of water to clean a fouled barre; one of which was the sole drinking water you had on you.

The windage of @ 0.0068" was a necessity in service. Awful for a civilian one of course. In the reduced 0.733" bore sapper/artillery carbines they used the same standard 0.685" ball with a 0.0048" windage but these would not have to fire scores of rounds in an engagement so would not suffer the same degree of fouling. I find that the service muskets do become more accurate as the fouling accumulates when using the service cartridge. Of course we must allow for the twice wrapped paper of the cartridge within these windages which is not inconsiderable.

Whilst they noted the difference in weight between the cast and swaged balls it was not enough to cause any change in the weapons or their use.

In your windage numbers, you are typing 1 too many 0's.   Your .00068" is only 6.8 thou, not 68thou as the windage actually was.  .00048 is 4.8 thou, not 48 thou. as you note the reduced windage measured. 
The Bess's Taylor worked on were Long Land pattern, pre 1800, iirc.

[yulzari]

Pesky keyboard simply won't answer to the helm Daryl. Just as well that we don't work in binary - 1111101000 pardons. I married a mathematician so that she could do the tricky sums for me. My role is to reach high things and lift heavy weights.

[Daryl]

--IT happens.