Load surprise

[Bob Gerard]

I was shooting black powder long guns with a friend yesterday. My first time shooting after my right eye cataract surgery, I was enjoying just shooting a 8” metal plate off-hand at 50 yards, switching between my .54 rifle and my .62 Fusil de Chasse. My Fusil ( loaded with 90 grains ff and a patched round ball) was doing ok though I was missing a few more than I liked. We got to talking and I inadvertently loaded my Fusil de Chasse with my .54 load of 75 grains of 3f. I decided to do what my friend was doing with his Macon musket and I just dropped my .595 round ball down the barrel (un-patched), primed and fired away.
Bang-on. Interesting I say to myself. Tried it a second, third, fourth and fifth time, smacking that gong every time. And with an equal load of #5 shot, I decimated a tin can at 35 yards (just a felt over powder card and some  yard grass for over shot wadding).
I now have a new load for my Fusil de Chasse 👍🏻

[Daryl]

Bob, have you tried 75 or 85gr. 3F and a patched ball?  Local chap uses 85gr. in his Penn. Fowler and he's VERY tough to beat on the trail
with us shooting rifles.

[Pukka Bundook]

Ken S was always tough to beat with his smoothbore as well Daryl!

[Daryl]

At Rendezvous B.C., Ken S and Jim W. were the consistent winners of smoothbore RB shoots.
SB is all Jim shoots, while Ken does shoot rifles, now and then. At rendezvous, it is always a contest between those two.

[Hungry Horse]

Bob, I think if you run an experiment with patched, and unpatched balls in your smoothy you’ll find the unpatch balls wins every time. They also should be at least a little undersized. Oh, and don’t spare the powder, the powder that blows by the ball holds it center instead of rattling up the barrel hitting here and there. As the velocity drains off, the ball starts to drift. Good luck!

Hungry Horse

[Bob Gerard]

I think I may up the auntie with the 3f and see how it preforms with 80g (patched and then unpatched) and then + 5 grain increments with the .595 ball. There was an audible delay in striking the target when using the lighter powder load (naturally) but pretty sure it still had plenty of knock-down power!
It is strange that I am really getting more interested in shooting my Fusil de Chasse over my nifty rifles lately (and my smoothbore pistols over my rifled one as well!)
This stuff is just crazy fun.

[Hungry Horse]

 In my experience the faster burning granulations don’t give you that even long burning push that keeps that cone of gas around the ball longer and keeps it going straight. Bullet should be 20 or thirty thousandths undersized, held in by a notched overshot card, or a slice of a cushion wad, or a chunk of wasp nest.
 I have shot 2F, 1F, and 2FG blasting powder out of my trade gun. All shot better than 3F. The pressure level of 3F is too high, and the burn time is too short.

Hungry Horse

[Brokennock]

Both my smoothbore 20 gauge guns shoot better with no patch, or with looser patch/ball combos, but no patch is better. I don't run just ball on powder with nothing else and waste a bunch of powder by not having a any gas seal or loss of velocity. I mostly shoot with 3f and a combo of powder/thin card, lubed wad .610 ball, thin card in my smoothrifle. Groups are less than 4 inches at 50 yards.
Or in my Fusil des Chase, powder, dry felt wad, lubed wad, .610 ball, thin card. This gun does not like that stiff card between powder and ball. Powder charges are 65 or 80 grains 3f for the smoothrifle and 65 grains 3f or 75 grains 2f for the Fusil des Chase.

[axelp]

I need to try a non patched load for my smoothbores.

K

[MeliusCreekTrapper]

I need to try a non patched load for my smoothbores.

K

That makes two of us. I also need to try some 2F loads. I have seen better groups with 3F as I raised the charge from 65 to 85 grains. I am shooting a .600 ball out of a .620 bore using .010 patching.

[axelp]

I use 2F in my 20 g smoothbores. It seems to work better for shot loads. I have 1F powder as well that I need to try. Probably up the load 10% and it should shoot fine. My smoothbore is so much less finicky than my rifle, but... I suck at rifle shooting to be honest. I suspect its me and not the load though. I have the steady, concentration of a 6 year old child, so pointing and shooting seems to fit my temperament better than anything resembling precision.

K

[hanshi]

I've gotten excellent (relatively) accuracy with unpatched ball with a .600 ball, over powder felt wad and something to hold the ball in place.  I do this with 3F as it is all I currently have.  I only fire three shot groups with a smoothbore unlike 5 to 10 as I do with a rifle.  Accuracy with both patched and unpatched ball generally stays pretty consistent.
Unpatched target is on the left and prb target is on the right.

[Maven]

If you're shooting 80gr. FFFg in your SB, you get more recoil than 70gr. FFg, but [at least in my gun], no better accuracy with the finer granulation of BP.  Also, Hungry Horse's recommendation for a OS only wad of some sort is easy enough to do and may give the patched RB a run for its money, especially if you are contemplating shots longer than 25 yd.

[Daryl]

Sorry for being a doubting Thomas ( my middle name) but I will have to see proof that unpatched balls in either rifle or smoothbore can shoot as well as a well patched ball.
Yes, I know I added "well" in front of patched.

All of the best smoothbore shooters I know  Ken S., Jim W., Taylor S. and Norm P., shoot patched round balls. Ken wipes ( not swabbed) between shots but none of the others do. All of them use load combinations that do not need wiping.

[alacran]

I built my first smoothbore over twenty years ago. I did a lot of experimenting with ball and patch size. I also shot with an over powder card a cushion wad a bare ball and an over shot card. I got pretty good accuracy out to 25 yards. However, the fouling was substantial. After a couple of shots the over shot card became unnecessary. The fouling was almost as bad as shooting blanks.
Not enough pressure is built up with a lousy seal.
I am as skeptical as Daryl. I would like to see 50-yard groups on paper. Even a marginal hit with a .595 ball on a gong looks impressive.

[Maven]

The "almost bare RB" as per Hungry Horse is easy enough to test v. patched RB, so why not try it?  However, at 25 yd., kneeling with my right arm on the bench, these are the results I got with patched RB's:  First target is with .597" -. 598" RB's; the second is with .603" RB (out of round Lyman mould).  Patched thickness was either .014" or .018" and really made no difference other than the effort needed to seat the RB.  Btw, the gun was my GRF 20ga. NW trade gun.

[Rmjchas]

It never fails to amaze me how each gun has it's own personality.   Yes, on average, patched balls in smoothbores are probably more accurate, but it depends.   I have one smoothbore I tried patched .595 and .600 balls with varying charges from 60 to 100 grains.  The "groups" looked like I was shooting extra large buckshot at the target.

For shiggles one day I dropped a .610 ball right on top of 70 grains and started getting 2-3 inch groups (50 yards)  that were a foot below the aiming point.  I ended up with a load of 80 grains, a 1/8 card, .610 ball and a thin card on top, and get consistent 3 inch groups on my aim point.

I am at the point where I don't make statements that any particular type of load is better than another.  Whatever gun you have, smoothbore or rifle, experimentation is key.   

[Hungry Horse]

 If the truth be known I actually learned this technique from a group of Canadians that used to come down from B.C. And shoot with us. They all shot trade guns, and we had just discovered them. I’m sure our Canadian contingent will love the fact that we got sent home with our tails between our legs the first time we shot against them up in Oregon, and we were shooting rifles.
 After burning a ton of powder, and getting no better, we decided they were cheating. So we watched them like a hawk, and took every opportunity observe them loading, and never caught them doing anything illegal. They even let us examine their trade guns (that was embarrassing) we found nothing.
 I happened to be standing near one of the Canadian shooters that had a shooting bag that was very much like shooting bags the early natives had that had no flap over the open bag. I could look right into the bag, and what I saw changed my trade gun shooting forever. He had no wads, nitro cards, or patching, and his powder looked like 1F. I went home and played with my new found knowledge for a year, then went back to Coos Bay and gave them a real surprise.
 If you don’t use the entire formula you’re wasting time, powder, and lead.

Hungry Horse

[Bob Gerard]

This is one of Charlie’s 50 yard targets from Sunday. He was shooting bare round ball and no lube with his original Springfield Macon Civil War (Confederate issue) smoothbore musket with no rear sight. Done off- hand as always. (Charlie will be at the N-SSA Nationals next month competing).
I don’t remember his load but it was just powder and ball with no wad ir wadding.
He was 21 years in the USMC, arms instructor, and it shows.

[Maven]

Wow!

[Dphariss]

Just don’t point the muzzle down even slightly with the unsecured ball, even by accident. I suppose if it was wet it might pickup enough powder to keep to from moving much, but this scares me. It seems this scared Francis Parkman in “The Oregon Trail” when describing the running of Buffalo with a trade gun and spitting a ball in the muzzle.

[Bob Roller]

That target makes the value of rifling questionable.I don't remember firing a smooth bore of any kind unless it was a shotgun SxS and with bird shot.
Bob Roller

[Dphariss]

That target makes the value of rifling questionable.I don't remember firing a smooth bore of any kind unless it was a shotgun SxS and with bird shot.
Bob Roller

You also have to consider the rule of compensating errors. When shooting offhand. A hold or other error cancelling out an error in the balls flight. As was stated in the 18th c. “Shooting standing is a poor test of the rifle”. Everytime I see something like this I think of the story in the Warner-Lowe papers of Nicandor Kendall scratch rifling a barrel with coarse emery and winning all the turkeys at a smoothbore only turkey match. This was pre-Civil War. For a time he was partnered with Robbins and Lawrence. The Warner-Lowe papers say he was the smartest my he ever met. And none of the 4 mentioned here were dummies. Robbins and Lawrence, for example, were the men who basically invented modern machine tool use in mass producing firearms parts. I often wonder how much of this came form Kendall.

[hanshi]

A loose ball on a powder charge tends to make me take a few steps well behind the shooter.  If there's nothing holding the ball in place anything could happen and missing fingers might show up where they should not be.

My best groups are from using patched ball, but the unpatched ones never get left in the dust.  I shoot at 50 yards and can't abide groups that won't fit in my palm; and I have small hands.  The photos I posted earlier show just how close the patched and unpatched balls group.  I don't have any powder slower than 3F and really need to test unpatched ball with 2F or 1F.

[Leatherbark]

If I remember correctly, NSSA does not allow anything that will burn in the load chain. So paper, wads, or cloth patches or anything that can cause a cook-off, or a fire are a no-no. Probably because the shooting is fast and furious since the matches are timed.
 
That is why the NSSA smoothbore shooters have developed the accuracy they get with their smooth bores. Seems some do the ball rolling between rasps to knurl the ball and use LLA to lube.  The balls might be exactly bore diameter after the knurling.  I've read of some of those fellows wrap their round balls in aluminum foil.

Bob