Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

[JerseySkilletLicker]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

The only thing I know about Williams Cleaners is that when I metal detected many years ago I sure used to find alot of them, seemingly "dropped", possibly by design, not sure.

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

Hallo!

I either misplaced my copy or loaned it out years ago and never got it back but so I cannot post the citation, but...

In the unpublished memoirs of Nicholas Pomeroy of Company "A," 5th Texas Infantry, he wrote that during the assault on Little Round Top that they replaced guns that no longer worked with those picked up off the ground.

NUG, typically, "N-SSA" guns are set up to fire a larger bullet than normal-
.002 or .003 under land size to promote accuracy. And yes, as shared, the .54 "Lorenz's" were not all bored and rerifled the same consistant .58 and vary by several thousandths with originals measuring .56, .57. .59, and .60.

The other side of the equation lies with how Period cleaning practices vary from some lad's Modern cleaning.
Rifles firing beeswax/tallow lubed bullets that are cleaned with Period methods foul less readily and clean more easily than those where modern chemicals and methods strip the bore down to bare naked metal.

Curt

[LibertyHallVols]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

Phil:
My "Li'l Wicky" doesn't go anywhere near the business end of a firearm! ;)
I think you are correct with regard to a quick rinse from a canteen. If firing quickly, the water may evaporate rather quickly. That would be one to try "for grins".

Bill X:
Great post! I agree.

Jim:
I wish I could comment on the size of the bore and minie I was using. I *think* they were properly lubed from what I can tell from all the info I've received.

The kicker here is with the head of the rammer. I 'spose I could have really "pushed" it down, but I didn't want to risk getting an original rammer stuck in an original barrel. With your Enfield, you wouldn't really have the same problem, because the head of an Enfield rammer is significantly undersized when compared to the bore. (which is why I used my Enfield rammer to push that ball home... and it didn't require a whole lot of effort)

I was shooting the 60-grain load, as would have been issued. However, from what has been posted here, that is likely more powder than is necessary.
...though historically accurate!!

Eric:
Thanks! Its a peach, that's for sure! I got it from an esteemed associate who shoots and is a 'smith in the NSSA. That was back in '07 or '08. It was a piece that he shot competitively and it shoots better than I do.

Curt:
Just saw your post (you posted while I was typing). Thanks for the "quote"!

[Mutt]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

First of all, great topic!

In regards to cleaner rounds, what I have heard/read (forgive me for not having the source right at hand, though I will try my darndest to find it!) some soldiers just plain didn't trust the round to do what it was supposed to; perhaps clogging the barrel further rather then actually "cleaning"(consider some of the exploding round outcomes). Because the cleaner round was oft times wrapped in green paper (correct me if I am wrong someboady) to insure it was used after firing 9 rounds, the soldier could ID it quickly and disgard.

Like Joe, a good friend also dug a good bit of these up back in the day, finding the zinc disc at the base intact from NOT being fired. They made for great creativity in carving as well. Best proof around, physical evidence. From what I've heard, the cleaner rounds DID work however.

My two barks. Again I apologize for lack of reference, but hope to correct this shortly.

Best Regards,

[Andrew Kasmar]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

I thought that green paper was used for the percussion cap cartridge?

[27thNCdrummer]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

I don't have the exact quote with me but I know that during the Battle of Fredricksburg the 27th North Carolina sent details of men to the rear to clean muskets because they had become so fouled. The 27th was located in the sunken road behind the stonewall along with men of Cobb's Georgia Brigade. They apparently were stacked several ranks deep and there rate of fire was so tremendous and extensive that the muskets became fouled.
I learned this from a friend of mine who wrote his masters thesis for ECU on the History of the 27th. I don't have a copy with me but I may try to get one again.

[FloridaConscript]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

Blue for williams cleaner rounds, yes?

[LibertyHallVols]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

Blue paper was for cleaner rounds:

http://historical.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=6015&Lot_No=57548&src=pr

[David Fox]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

Williams cleaner bullets did work, tho' soldiers didn't trust them for other reasons. I believe it was in '64 that the Army had decided to issue ALL ball ammo w/ Williams bullets, but the inventor was so greedy they let the contract simply run out.
When the U.S. M.1855 rifle-musket first went into production, its rammer head was found to be too tight for the bore when the weapon fouled. The head was reduced in diameter as a result. You state your Lorenz is a .58. Originally, they were produced in nominal .55 calibre. Although it is possible some were contracted-for in .58, most if not all .58s were rebored and rerifled to .58 over here. Ergo: I'm curious about the rammer head fitting the bore of your Lorenz so snugly. My (nominal) .55 Lorenz rammer lacks the brass bearing surface and the rammer head is a loose fit. Yours might be a U.S. 1860s after-market replacement and simply be too large.
Fouling in Civil War shoulder weapons was an unpredictable problem. Measuring the many dropped bullets found on battlefields and a cargo of ammo found in a sunken supply ship demonstrate that many minie balls were oversize to begin with, the "drops" being too tight to even insert in the muzzle and thus discarded by soldiers in combat. Powder quality varied. Rough bores fouled quicker than others. Even humidity played a part. With good bullets designed for the weapon (the Lorenz bullet used by Austria was not of minie configuration, for instance, and .577 Enfields were marginal at best for .58 U.S. ammo), good powder, good lubricant, and a good bore, rifle-muskets could easily go as many as 60 rounds without requiring cleaning. In the real world, that didn't always happen. That's why Union general Greene was so inventive defending Culp's Hill: he rotated regiments on the battleline partly so rifle-muskets could be swabbed.
As for smoothbores, they were notorious for quick fouling, whatever the size of the ball.

[LibertyHallVols]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

Dave,

Here's a pic of the rammer:


It looks original to me. Though, I will admit that I am no scholar on the Lorenz!

[Michael Comer]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

Cleaner rounds were discontinued after a while but evidently there were still a bunch in the inventory. I was at Franklin a while back and the fellow working in the visitor center told me they had done some work on an area of the battlefield that was being acquired if I remember correctly. Anyway, he said they found those cleaner bullets by the pot-load. So, they were evidently still being issued to Federal forces in Tennessee in late 1864 - maybe just to use the inventory up?

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

Hallo!

Williams' Patent bullets are complicated, and story in their own right.

Initially, they were Williams attempt to hone in on the Minie ball market in 1861 with a more accurate bullet.

They were initially wraped in blue paper, sometimes red. Toward the end they were in the same paper as regular rounds. The one brought home in 1864 in his cap box by Edward Blakeley of Company the 63rd OVI, wounded at Resaca, was a Type III bullet in plain paper. (Our family lore is that it was an "explosive bullet."

Intially, one Williams cartridge was in each bundle of ten cartridges.
In September of 1864, having fallen from any favor or interest, and Williams having died in May, that was increased to six in ten.

Six weeks later, that was changed to three in ten with no more cartridges being made. When that inventory was used up, the cartridges were gone and the bullets recycled back into lead pigs in storage.
After the War,some arsenals had some cartridges in inventory, but those were ordered to be "broken up."

So, a Williams' cartridge could be blue, red, or "plain."

In March of 1865, Mrs. Williams wrote asking if the bullets were stil in use as she had sold her husbands patents and wanted to add any money to the closing of the estate. Dyer sent her a short and terse reply that they were not.

Curt

[Mutt]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

I knew the cobwebs were mucking up memory a tad :confused_ Least I didn't say "purple" ;) haha Knew clarification would come with time.

Best,

[CSengineer]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

I've had to get a gunsmith remove the breech plug of my '61 Springfield and use a brass rod to literally pound out the .575 Minie ball from the barrel. I think it was the 5th or 6th round I had loaded.

Since then, I have become a die-hard believer in Enfield ammunition, instead of the U.S. style Minie cartridge. Yesterday I fired 60 rounds, without pause, using .54-caliber hand-cast Minies that I paper patched up to .550 diameter (the historic diameter of the post-1859 Pritchett ball), plugged with a shaped piece of 1/2-inch hardwood dowel, and then made into British style cartridges. The 60th went down without much more effort than the 1st. The wood plug ensures expansion; without the plug they are about as accurate as a smoothbore musket.

Historically, if the bullet end of the cartridge was larger than .568-caliber, including the bullet and the lubricated paper around the ball on the Enfield-type cartridge, the British rejected it. In 1859 the British changed the diameter of their Enfield bullet from .568 to .550 because of lessons learned in India and the Crimea; the larger bullet, wrapped in the lubricated paper of the cartridge, was hard to load in a fouled rifle. This is from C. H. Roads' The British Soldier's Firearm, but I cannot remember the page number offhand. I gauge my live-fire cartridges to the same standard.

I know comparing Italian repro barrels to originals is like apples and oranges, but in my Enfield with a land-to-land bore of .578 the first 10 or so bullets I load fall all the way to the powder with just the weight of the ramrod sliding them down. I fired 60 rounds, and I'm positive I could have kept going all day long. The beeswax on the paper for lubrication melts instantly in a warm barrel and some of it adheres to the powder residue as the patched bullet is rammed down. My theory is that this helps the residue flake off, and is partially carried away by the next discharge.

The ordnance officer for Breckenridge's Division complained of fouled arms in October, 1863, but said that the Enfield cartridges did not "choke up" a musket barrel:

"In all instances where I had issued the English cartridge (some of which I have got on hand) no such consequences were reported to me, nor have I heard of a single instance during my experience as an ordnance officer, nearly eighteen months." (O.R., S1, Vol. XXX, Part II, page 202)

I honestly don't know how a soldier could load more than 20 rounds of the Federal issue .575-caliber Burton bullets unless those cleaner rounds really worked well or he paused to scrape some of the fouling out.

My two cents, anyways.

[Jimmayo]

Re: Wiping a Musket Bore During Battle

Dave,

Here's a pic of the rammer:


It looks original to me. Though, I will admit that I am no scholar on the Lorenz!

I would bet my britches that is a repro rod. The originals have a hole through the tulip behind the brass band. Also there is too much steel on the leading edge of the tulip. I have two originals and will try and post a picture later if anyone is interested.