Cartridge Wadding

[KentuckyReb]

Hello, one and all. Man, am I glad to see this board back up and running. Many thanks to Paul Calloway and all the others bustin' their tails to put the wheels back on this board, right now in the middle of the Christmas season, no less.

I'm hoping I can get a little help here...wanting to put together some live roundball cartridges for my '42, just to mess around in the woods with and have some fun out in the field. (the field behind my house, obviously. Not THE field. :D) Thought about just using loose makin's but making cartridges sounds kinda cool too. SCTiger and others gave me the whole skinny on powder charge, etc. on the 'old' board, but...

So I'm thinking .678 round ball over...s__t, now I forget, 70 grains of FFg? And what kind of wad to put in the cartridge? Plain ol' cotton, or shotgun wads of ? gauge, or what? Appreciate any help. Welcome back, everybody. Good to see y'all again.

Micah Hawkins
Co.K, 7th Kentucky Infy. Regt. (CS)

[orngblsm]

Re: Cartridge Wadding

Sir,

I extensivly live fire both .58 and .69. I have never heard of using a .678 sized ball, though i'm not ruling them out. I would stick to the .69 or slightly smaller calibure ball if you can find them, that is if you want acuracy out of the old girl. I use a 75-85 grain charge of either FF or FFF. For wadding I would use the paper from the cartridge. If it's acuracy that you are looking for then you might want to consider some other form of wadding. I've always been a firm believer that if it worked for the boys of 61, it should work for us. You also may want to grease your balls with bore butter(it make clean up easier) Hope this helps

Respectfully,

[BCarp]

Re: Cartridge Wadding

No smoothbored military musket ever used a bore-sized ball in its cartridge. That would've been a sure recipe for failure after the first shot!
Definitely use the .678! Roll your paper tube using some sort of former (I use a Magic Marker!) that will give you a diameter wherein the ball fits snugly. Shove the ball down into the twisted & tied end making sure the sprue is either exactly up or down (not tilted at all to the side), then insert a 20 gauge fiber shotgun wad, then add your powder charge. Combat load for the M1842 was 80 grains. FFG is best.
When loading, tear off the powder end of the cartridge and ram the whole thing down with the ball and wad still enclosed in the cartridge tube. The paper in conjunction with the fiber wad forms a decent gas seal.
I hunt with a .69 cal flintlock, and this method yields darn good accuracy!

[orngblsm]

Re: Cartridge Wadding

Forgive me gentlemen in my previous reply; I should not have assumed that one knows that a .69 cal ball is not actually .69 cal. Obviously a .69 cal ball will not fit in a .69 cal bore; the ball must at least be minutely less in diameter. I merely meant that when ordering ammunition .69 cal should be the purchased round. If .69 cal balls are actually sized to .678 then I apologize for my ignorance.

Respectfully,

[1stMaine]

Re: Cartridge Wadding

Comrade,
It all depends upon wat type of ball ammunition you want to use. The Ordnance manual (1862 edition) lits three types of rounds for the M1842 musket as: elongated ball, round ball, and buckshot.
The elongated ball is .685 inch diameter , with a 70 grain charge.
The round ball is .650 inch diameter, with a 110 grain charge.
The buckshot lists no size for the shot, but a 110 grain charge.
If you create the cartridge according to the Ordnance instructions, there is no need for any wadding. The inner and outer tubes, comined with the thread ties seperate the ball from the charge effectively, so no powder is lost.

Wrapper colors for the bundles are{ elongated ball=ordinary, round ball=green, buckshot= red.
Trusting that this is of some small use, I remain,
Respectfully,

[Mike Ventura]

And then...

...do you use that same weapon at a reenactment where you are going to be firing?

This is the age-old conundrum of live firing a weapon primarily used in reenacting scenarios and the danger that can result from metalic residue from the cartridge ball that can build up in the barrel and then later be expelled when fired. This in effect creates a live round.

As has been suggested numerous times on the "old" forum, if you are going to live fire a reenactment weapon, use a separate barrel.

[Clark Badgett]

Re: Cartridge Wadding

Mike, what you are refering to is 'leading', while it is possible it is only minutely so when using round balls. Most leading occurs from the dual results of heat from the powder ignition and the obturating effect of elongated or Minie balls, and also can result from a lack of lube on a ball that is intended to be very slightly undersize or oversize, depending on the pistol or rifle. Now I have heard of the skirts on some Minie designs being too thin and getting seperated from the bullet upon firing, but I have never heard of this happening with round balls in a smoothbore. Solution to this is having a Minie with a heavy skirt and using plenty of lube on the bullet. Another note that I think should be mentioned here is to nevere use ANY petroleum based lubes or oils in a black powder designed gun. The petroleum reacts with the resulting fouling and causes the fouling to become like a tar substance, making both cleaning and follow up accuracy not so great.

[KentuckyReb]

Whew! Ask and ye shall receive!

WOO-HOOOO! Man, I'm glad this board is back up and running. It's just wonderful to see how friendly and helpful folks are. Many, many thanks to all, pards, for the input. By all means, anybody else jump in too--I'm just breakin' in real quick to thank everybody for the replies and excellent info. To my erstwhile foe from the Empire State, don't worry about the .69 caliber thing. I just got that ball size from the Thunder Ridge site... they have Warren balls that are supposed to be swageless... But anyhoo, they list two or three different sizes for the .69 and I just kinda picked the .678 out of the air. All of the input is greatly appreciated, particularly the wad size of 20 gauge. They sell shotgun wads on that site too, and the durn things start at 4 gauge and go up from there into the middle 20's a single gauge at a time.

4 gauge? Begad.

I was also unaware of the inadvisability of using a petroleum-based product in the maintenance of a punkin-slinger. So... No more Hoppe's. What then? I've never used the Ballistol a lot of my pards holler about all the time. But I assume it's also petroleum-based. If I might impose a bit more, what would be good instead, and have I possibly done damage to my firearm's bore or breech in the year or so I've had it, using, as I said, Hoppe's Gun Oil? No #9 or any other bore cleaner... just sloshin' the canteen water 'til it's clean, then swabbin' a bit, then a real light dab of oil on one of those bore swabs.

Think I'll try some B&B rounds with .650 balls. They sell those too. I'm thinkin... just three .220 ball bearings? Dumb question, I know, but with buckshot being illegal for hunting purposes in my state, I don't know if I can find the .22 caliber buck I seem to recall reading about somewhere.

Well, like I said, by all means continue if anybody else wants to jump in. I just wanted to take a quick yap at y'all to say thanks much for all the help.

Micah Hawkins
Co.K, 7th Kentucky Infy. Regt. (CS)

[KentuckyReb]

Re: Whew! Ask and ye shall receive!

Just testing my auto-signature, seeing if I did it right...

[Clark Badgett]

Re: Cartridge Wadding

Micah,
No, using petro based cleaners won't do any damage per say, they only make fouling harder and clean up worse. I've heard a lot of great stuff about Balistol from my BP cartridge pards, but I still use just plain old water and then oil the bore with sweet oil, better known today as olive oil. As for what to use while shooting, 50/50 beeswax and Crisco does a great job was a bullet lube, and unless you want to rend tallow from cow fat, it's as close as can be had. If you don't want to use Crisco, you can try the lard that is available at most major grocery stores, but make sure it doesn't contain any salt. Now while I'm sure you will hear horror stories about BP soot ruining barrels, don't pay that much attention. The worst cause of barrels rusting is actually caused by the desicant nature of BP soot. Back in the era when BP was the onliest powder available, the the caps and later primers of cartridges contained chemicals that when mixed with fouling and the moisture that it draws yeilded a very corrosive mixture.

[Robert Braun]

.69 cal. round ball

According to examples of original cartridges preserved in the National Collection, "buck and ball" ammunition generally consisted of one .63 cal. round ball and three .31 cal. buckshot.

Source: Small Arms and Ammunition in the United States Service, 1776-1865 , plate 24.

[KentuckyReb]

Re: .69 cal. round ball

One .63 and three .31. Sounds good. Gimme somethin' to do while the snow flies. Thank you much.

[JustRob]

Re: Cartridge Wadding

I have live fired my '42 on several occassions. If I recall correclty, Joe Bilby stated the original load was a .675 cal. round ball with three .32 cal ball and 110 grains of FF powder. If I'm mistaken about the calibres, it's my faulty memory rather than Joe's research.

I do not use extra wadding, and rely strictly on the cartridge paper to do the job. If cartridge paper was good enough for the old guys, it's good enough for me. I'm pretty accurate with this load, and can regularly hit pumpkins at fifty yards.

I also find "Bore Butter" to be an excellent non-petroleum based lubricant for my cartridges. It also works well for all the metal surfaces of my musket.

Heinrich also recommends a 50/50 mix of beeswax and tallow. I haven't used this myself, so I can't claim any personal experience.

[KentuckyReb]

Re: Cartridge Wadding

That's what I should have originally done--seeing that in your post, 'If cartridge paper was good enough...', makes me realize that I should have just come out and asked, in the first place, if original cartridges had wads in 'em. I just asked what to use because I assumed they did, but did they not, then?

[Gordon Frye]

Ball Diameter

Prior to the 1840's, the diameter of the roundball for the .69 musket was .64" (18 to the pound, or 18 gauge) and using 130 grains of powder (earlier it had been 167, but of course this includes priming), while in the mid-1840's, to improve accuracy (and due to better quality control on the bores of the muskets themselves, as well as the use of pressure swaging, rather than casting the balls) Ordnance increased the size of the round ball to .65" (17 to the pound, or 17 gauge), and reduced the charge to 110 grains. The .69 musket is nominally a 14-bore (14 to the pound, or 14 gauge), so you would think that you have quite a bit of "windage" to account for. However, keep in mind that you will also have several layers of cartridge paper to help increase the actual diameter of the ball, so it's not nearly as loose as it may seem on paper.

The above are correct in that the buckshot are of .32", and usually three of them would be used over the roundball, or eight of them in a buckshot cartridge. From what I gather from the writings of the day, buck-and-ball was the most common cartridge issued for the .69 musket, be it a flintlock or a percussion version.

Gordon Frye