So, enlighten me…(about historicity of short starters)

[Clark Badgett]

Thanks, Dan. I've seen that picture before. Looks to me like the sheath on the strap --the one holding the dagger--is open at the bottom, indicating to me that it was not initially designed as a sheath for the dagger. Perhaps for a starter instead? I keep my starters on the strap in a similar set-up.
Just sayin'...
--JB

Yet everything else remains. Even the useless bullet board.

[jbigley]

Thanks, Dan. I've seen that picture before. Looks to me like the sheath on the strap --the one holding the dagger--is open at the bottom, indicating to me that it was not initially designed as a sheath for the dagger. Perhaps for a starter instead? I keep my starters on the strap in a similar set-up.
Just sayin'...
--JB

Yet everything else remains. Even the useless bullet board.

I guess I missed your point (although I agree about the bullet board. I don't use them). --JB

[Daryl]

When I hunted moose with the .69, or rabbits with the .32 and .45, I used bullet boards. They're GREAT! (just like Tony would say).

[alacran]

One of the great things about ball boards is that when it is cold you can put them inside your jacket. It keeps the bear lube warm.
 While it is interesting to speculate on what or what was not used in the 18th century, this is the 21st century.
When hunting I do not use a bag and horn, that is when I am seriously trying to put meat on the freezer. My ball block is on a thong around my neck. Everything else I need is in the picture below.

The particular ball block in the photo doubles for trail-walk use.
When hunting small game I use one similar to Darryl's.
On occasion I have done "period correct hunts" both for deer and small game. But these I consider to be fantasy hunts. That is it is more like a rendezvous. Not really important if I kill something at such an event.

[Leatherbark]

[jbigley]

PM sent.
--JB

[jbigley]

One of the great things about ball boards is that when it is cold you can put them inside your jacket. It keeps the bear lube warm.
 While it is interesting to speculate on what or what was not used in the 18th century, this is the 21st century.
When hunting I do not use a bag and horn, that is when I am seriously trying to put meat on the freezer. My ball block is on a thong around my neck. Everything else I need is in the picture below.

The particular ball block in the photo doubles for trail-walk use.
When hunting small game I use one similar to Darryl's.
On occasion I have done "period correct hunts" both for deer and small game. But these I consider to be fantasy hunts. That is it is more like a rendezvous. Not really important if I kill something at such an event.

Alacran--Nice outfit.  I like it. --JB

[Daryl]

When hunting moose, I carried started carrying the loading block with a round capper in my top pocket along with a horn of powder.
Later seasons, I carried 4 or 5 paper ctgs. in a parka pocket and capper in top pocket. That's it. For this hunt, the temp ran from -45F up to barely above freezing, around 33/4F
for a couple days, then drop back down again. Such is the weather with Chinook winds.
In a week period, the temp went from one extreme to the other, but then, it might be -40 for a couple weeks. Just lucky I didn't break a main spring.

[Clark Badgett]

Thanks, Dan. I've seen that picture before. Looks to me like the sheath on the strap --the one holding the dagger--is open at the bottom, indicating to me that it was not initially designed as a sheath for the dagger. Perhaps for a starter instead? I keep my starters on the strap in a similar set-up.
Just sayin'...
--JB

Yet everything else remains. Even the useless bullet board.

I guess I missed your point (although I agree about the bullet board. I don't use them). --JB

It means he got rid of the short starter yet kept the bullet board. The starter would be way more useful an item to keep, if one was present originally. Personally, I don’t think that dagger was the original knife used, but a later replacement.

How do we know when any of the items were added to or removed from that setup?

[duca]

Good point, SmyleeG - a 'cone' that is 1 1/2" deep, is more like a funnel.
The problem loading Leatherbelly's rifle with the long cone, was the long bearing gradual surface, which increased the friction and pressure needed to seat the ball.
That is the only way I can understand why it took a LOT more pressure to seat the patched ball, than into the short crown we make.  I read a letter written by Corbin
(bullet swaging/forming/re-sizing die company), who showed a picture of a die with the same from of 'shoulder' that we put on our muzzles, this rounded shoulder is
the correct angles and finish for moving "metal". I tried this/these angles on a muzzleloading rifle's crown back in the 70's when I was interested in what Corbin's was
doing and found it works.
So Daryl can you explain how you smooth your Muzzles like this? Thanks 😊
Had a lad at the Barnet rifle range (Burnaby B.C.) complain to me he couldn't load the combinations I was using in my identical rifle. .50 TC Hawken(s). The combination was
a .495" pure lead ball (telephone cable junction sheathing) and 10 ounce denim patch. I looked at his crown, and it was still the standard sharp cornered machined crown.
I use a pocket knife and cut the corners a bit, then a piece of emery from my possible's bag to smooth the crown. I then took one of his cast balls, piece of .022" denim and
loaded his rifle, just as easily as  I loaded mine, using a starter and his 3/8" factory rod.
Here is one made by Dave Crysali, with a tool of his making.

Another, by Brian Barker.

A couple of my own.

[duca]

Daryl can you explain how you smooth your Muzzles like that? Thanks

Anthony

[Daryl]

Sure: 320 grit emery or 320 grit wet/dry paper. Push thumb into it and rotate your wrist. Rotate the barrel 90 degrees every 15 seconds or so. I use a spray of WD40 on the paper or emery. I first push a large patch down into the bore to "catch" the metal and stone, then when finished, fish that out with a dental tool, tweezers, needle nose pliers or hemostats. Any of those work well.
If you are tool oriented, DaveC2 made one that does it perfectly.  The barrel doesn't have to be removed from the stock, but is handier if done so.
Most barrels come from the barrel maker, with about a 45 degree angled cut at the muzzle made by a cutting tool. Each of those corners need to be smoothed, ie: the tops of the lands and the bottom of the grooves to form the metal moving angles.
Crown as received:






DavC2's muzzle crowned with his adjustable tool.



Muzzle Crowned clamped a lathe's 3 or 4-jaw chuck using 320 set/dry in the end of a finger.

[duca]

Thanks Daryl

[duca]

You mentioned DaveC2 tool.?. Sounds interesting, any pictures of his tool? lol. You know, for the Barrel 😁

[Leatherbark]

A new bore such as this one will most certainly rip the patch when you "Snap" the ball and patch in with a short starter hard rap. The sudden compression will cut the patch.  I have tested this with patches lubed with mink oil.  Slowly push the load into the muzzle past the sharp edge and the patch usually survived when retrieved.  Rap in in fast and it will rip enough for the burning gases to finish the job.

So, I do and advise all to smooth up the crown like Daryl suggests.

Bob

[Daryl]

You mentioned DaveC2 tool.?. Sounds interesting, any pictures of his tool? lol. You know, for the Barrel 😁

Dave posted pictures of his tool, but I have not asked the correct questions to the search function to find them. Sorry.

[Dphariss]

I think we are missing somethings about bullet boards. If they were useless then David Cooke, for example, would not have carried one around. He was also a hunter, probably a market hunter and by the pouch contents likely spent a lot of time in the woods. He most likely fought in the War for Independence. And as a hunter surely had to dodge unfriendly natives at times. He was not shooting MLs and “treking” as a game. It was a way of life, serious business, perhaps life or death at times. He did not pack around a bullet board for ballast. When did he start using it? We will never know. Nor do we know what he did or where he lived prior to 1780.
The rifle shown is surely the last one he owned.

https://www.icollector.com/EXCEEDINGLY-RARE-RIFLE-AND-ACCESSORY-COLLECTION-CARRIED-BY-FRONTIERSMAN-DAVID-COOKE_i17332400

And I have read that the German mercenary riflemen used them to cut patches. Pushing a ball and patch in the hole(s) then cutting the cloth. And if you were in combat a bullet board would save a lot of fumbling. And would be simpler I think than sewing on patches.

[smylee grouch]

Good point. 

[alacran]

Thanks for posting Dan. Cooke's rifle itself is a no-nonsense piece. Aside from the stock wood itself there is no discernible decoration. What you would expect from someone who spends most of his time in the field. The bullet board itself is crude, unlike many representations that we see today.
This debate about bullet boards and short starters has been tiresome to me for years. Kind of like the use of haversacks in civilian use.
I use bullet boards for hunting. Way more useful than trying to find balls in a shot pouch, or a ball bag.

[Seth Isaacson]

With sets like the Cooke rifle and accoutrements, we don't really have any proof that the overall set is all original to each other or precisely what time period he was using them in if they truly were all his. The rifle and accoutrements are said to have been passed down through multiple generations of the family. The early generations may well still have been using and shooting the rifle, and they would likely have swapped some accessories out as needed or as it suited them and certainly could have lost a starter along the way if one was present. I lose pieces of kit all the time! 

Alacran, I agree these discussions can be tiresome at times, especially if we just repeat the same things over and over rather than dig up more information. I enjoyed looking into historical  publications to see what was written down in the period, but that didn't really resolve much in terms of the 18th century. It did pretty clearly show that there were American sources in the early 19th century talking about starters/mallets. Nothing we find is likely to change how very many people shoot today. It certainly won't change what I do at the range. Heck, I almost always load with a short starter and ranger rod for my rifles and a round knob "pistol loading rod" with my pistols because that is what works well for me and allows me to enjoy myself. My Murphy's Oil Soap, alcohol, and water patch lube isn't historically correct either, but it works for me. That said, for the historical purists, reenactors, and historians, finding an answer to question would be exciting, and we certainly still may find an American source discussing a short starter or bullet board in the colonial era/late 18th century.

[Dphariss]

What I see in some of this about equipment is that many seem to think that people in the past were too stupid to figure things out. They were not.  Its a VERY short step from a bullet board for cutting patches to carrying ready to go patches and balls in a board.
AND if you actually have stuff you need to operate with in the pouch it makes it hard to get to some specific thing to load the rifle so the bullet board mean you don’t have to dig for patches and balls in the pouch. Of course we have no idean when he started using the bullet board. But rifles had been in use for how long by 1770? 300 years perhaps? And nobody thought of this? In 300 years?
Its like the powder horn thing. Which I equate to more recent things like… Collectors would buy a mid/late 19c side arm used in the West with the “cowboy” leather it was used with. They would take the arm from the leather for display and throw the leather in a box, maybe. NOW the vintage leather is highly collectable, worth significant money but 40-50 years ago was just junk to most people. And its almost ALL separated from its firearm. See the book “Packing Iron”. How many pouches and horns did Kindig possibly leave behind when he bought a rifle? HMM? Which the family then perhaps threw in the garbage bullet board and all? Assuming it had not rotted away by that time. Remember this stuff was often used as toys by the family kids. As I stated before we only have the slightest snippets of such things from say 1770. And a significant percentage of the horns from this time are fakes, documentation for the fakery dates back over 100 years and maybe to our Centennial celebration of 1876. So….. Is it surprising we see so few bullet boards? Or pouches for that matter.

[rich pierce]

Old topic, annually or semi-annually revisited. Almost all barrels had relieved muzzles. Unlike “coning” today, the rifling extended undiminished to the muzzle in rifles with relieved muzzles. The relief in the couple dozen original barrels I freshed the rifling on was 0.010-0.015”. And no, this was not due to wear or other explanations because that would diminish the rifling, result in ovalization, and so on. This same setup was documented on an Oerter rifle in excellent shape in the Moravian book by Bob Leinemann. Clean, bright, and relieved for over an inch. Now you and I know this is not the way to get best accuracy so some of us close our minds to it like a bank vault. Never happened, because it wouldn’t work for me.


We don’t have to know how they did it, just accept real data. It’s possible that young fellas with great eyesight deepened the grooves by filing, then relieved the lands.

A number of original Hawken rifles were similarly relieved. The result is that a patched ball can be thumbed into the barrel, patch trimmed, and rammed home without any short starter needed. This is what period accounts of Audubon and Boone describe as loading procedure.

The proposition that “they had to pound the balls in somehow” presupposes that the muzzles were finished as they are today. Yes, they did have to pound them in when using late percussion barrels rifled by Remington or others during the established bullet board/short starter era.

[jbigley]

The last three posts are probably the best responses to my original question, although some of the rest were fairly informative--re: the way some of you load, shoot, etc. Even though the posts didn't provide an answer to my original question, I always appreciate new information, but not always revisionist stuff. (For the record, I am NOT a purist, nor an authenticity nazi).  I started this thread because I actually wanted an answer to my question. (In retrospect, I possibly could have made the question plainer). When I started muzzleloading in the 60s, conventional wisdom was that a short starter was used to load a tightly patched ball with a well-greased patch. "Thumb-starting" risked a broken ramrod, (which really puts the shooter into deep kim-chee). It made sense. Nowadays, I'm hearing some folks say that starters are a modern item, or at least weren't around for quite a while before the 19th C. Made me scratch my head a bit. Was their utility suddenly "discovered" when the calendar changed from 1799 to 1800? Or were things done quite differently before that? If so, what changed? Did the early shooters have some kind of material advantage that was lost in the 19thC and that was never re-discovered? Some folks are looking for documentation. It might not exist. Doesn't really matter to me, because I'm probably not going to change how I shoot just to be like someone's interpretation of Daniel or Davy.
Regarding bullet boards, that seems to be something that kind of wandered off the original topic. For the record, I don't think they're "useless," just that I personally don't use them.
What I've learned from all of the discussion in this thread is that no one really knows for sure. I don't think anyone *can* know. There isn't anyone alive today who was alive during the 18thC, so all we can do is give it our best guess based on what we DO know.
This will probably be my last post on the topic. Thanks to everyone who added his .02 to the discussion. --JB

[Longknife]

I realize  that everyone has not had the chance to view many original barrels so I took these pics. These are pictures of an original rifle signed W Zollman that is in our library. The barrel has really good rifling down to the breech and the original cone. I find this type of coning on just about every original barrel I have inspected. 

Here is a sample of the HC type of coning that Rich is referring to. I also assume that the coning was done with files by first filing out the grooves while following the twist of the bore. Then another file is used to file out the lands and gives the bore a Hexagon shape in this six grooved barrel. Yes, the bore is actually round! Compare this muzzle to todays crowned muzzles and you will easily see the difference.



Here is a shot showing the groves and lands. This 40 cal bore opens up to about .430.





Here is a 395 patched ball inserted with thumb pressure. It is interesting that the rifleling is coned about .390 into the bore, just the perfect size ball for the .40 cal bore. I find on most original barrels that the cone depth (into the bore) is usually the best size ball to use in that barrel. The cone at the muzzle usually opens up about 3 calibers, .400 to .430. in this barrel.

 

[Daryl]

The shorter the cone, the more accuracy potential the barrel will have.
Cones made today with various "tools" have too long cones, imho.
Modern BR guns from the 70's up to now will have square or 11 degree muzzle-crown/ends(11 degrees from OD to centre) with sharp corners, no rounding. These are the MOST accurate muzzle shapes, but can only be used on breechloading guns.
With the muzzleloaders, we must have a system to allow a tight combination of ball and patch to be loaded, without damaging the patch, yet be as close to the sharp muzzle crown as possible- if
the best accuracy is required.
Good post, Ed.