Buck and Ball Spread Pattern

[Cumpston1862]

Gents-

When the War started most of the boys marched off carrying older smoothbores before the Springfield 61 and Enfield 53 became well stocked in the arsenals. And one of the cartridges they would have fired from those old smoothbores would be .69 caliber buck and ball rounds. One .69 caliber round ball and 3-.31 caliber round buckshot. I wanted to see what kind of spread pattern a .69 caliber buck and ball would give when fired so I had some made up to find out.

I fired them from a repro model 1842 Springfield smoothbore made by armisport.

The target was placed at 35 yards. The target was placed on a stake so that it was 3-5 feet off the ground. The paper target itself is about 20" in diameter. As you can see from the pictures the spread pattern is still fairly tight at this distance but the buckshot are starting to go their seperate ways.

Using the .69 caliber hole as point zero. The first buckshot on the left is 5" from point zero. The second buckshot upper right is 7" from point zero and the buckshot lower right is 7-3/4" from point zero.

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Buck and Ball Spread Pattern

Hallo!

The Washington Arsenal trials for February 17, 1860 had 50 round fire by volley, and fire by file, and as skirmishers of ten men at 150 and 200 yards to judge the effects.

Obviously, the further away, the greater the spread.

150 yards, volley fire: 36 balls, and 79 buckshot

150 yards, fire by file: 35 balls, and 82 buckshot

150 yards, skirmish fire: 31 balls, and 84 buckshot

200 yards, volley fire: 18 balls, and 31 buckshot

200 yards, fire by file: 22 balls, and 23 buckshot

200 yards, skirmish fire: 22 or 20 (written over) balls, and 19 buckshot

Curt

[Cumpston1862]

Re: Buck and Ball Spread Pattern

Curt-

Do you know the size of the target they were shooting at for those distances?

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Buck and Ball Spread Pattern

Hallo!

10 square feet. (four 2.5 foot panels)
Curt

[Cumpston1862]

Re: Buck and Ball Spread Pattern

Thanks Curt!

I figured it had to be a pretty large target.

[GrumpyDave]

Re: Buck and Ball Spread Pattern

if a man is 5 feet tall and 2 feet wide guess how many square feet that is? ;)

[Camp_Randall]

Re: Buck and Ball Spread Pattern

This is what I found out when I fired my Armi Sport 1842 with buck and ball rounds at a man sized target at 50 yards:

I could hit a printer sized piece of paper all day long, the musket was more than capable. The few I missed (about 20% missed the paper) where due to my lack of skill with shooting offhand more than anything.

Buckshot hit the target roughly 50% of the time. There was no pattern to where the three .31 balls landed; some were close to the center of mass, others varied widely.