Round ball loads......

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Ray
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Round ball loads......

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gamekeeper
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Re: Round ball loads......

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Modern ballistic science can produce bullets capable of all sorts of advantages over the simple round ball BUT if a round ball has killed you you are not going to be anymore dead if shot with the latest tactical bullet. Just use enough gun and hit what you're aiming at is still good advice.
I have owned several .36 and .45 round ball firing pistols and long guns never thought of them as being deficient in the kiling department.
However my .31 pocket Colt by Uberti did not instill much of a sense of security even if it was Colts biggest Cap n Ball seller.
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Re: Round ball loads......

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Good question, Ray. Virtually all my round ball experience has been with paper targets; the deer just weren't playing ball.
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Grizz
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Re: Round ball loads......

Post by Grizz »

Ray, I have a different caliber of round ball ammo. 69 caliber balls I load into 12ga shells, replacing the bird shot in the cup and closing the hull over the rb. shoots great. approx same weight as the shot it replaces. not on subject of revolver calibers, but on topic of round ball loads ! :lol:
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Re: Round ball loads......

Post by piller »

Just a thought: Weren't the round ball loads in a rifled barrel proven to be accurate to several hundred yards at official competitions? I realize that those were some of the best, and not the typical barrels in use. Round balls of lead were probably not as bad as many in the tactical community currently believe.
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Re: Round ball loads......

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Round Ball Stuff
Remington-Javelina.JPG
I took this Javelina with my 1858 Remington .44 ... about 30 yards or so. The ball made a larger entrance hole than the exit wound, which seems to be typical with handgun loads. The ball expanded as it penetrated the animal, then the "nose" portion sheared away as it continued through and out the other side. The shot was behind the right shoulder and the exit wound was in the left side of the neck. The Javelina dropped immediately and died in that spot.

On another occasion, when I was first married we were renting a mobile home in a mobile home park. On this particular day the neighbor was shot with an 1860 Army Colt .44 .. just below the belly button. The ball went completely through him, hit the top of the kitchen table and ricocheted through the upper cupboard door, stopping in a loaf of bread. He survived, though he was in bad shape for a long time. The doctors had a mess cleaning the black powder residue out of his insides. He was several years getting back on his feet.

For the 12 ga. shotgun I loaded a .720" diameter round ball over 28 gr. of Unique. This gave 1400 fps from the 18 1/2" barrels of my shotgun. I put express sights on the shotgun and found the barrels nearly converged at 50 yards. It was H E double-hockey-sticks trying to shoot that thing from the bench! I shot several cars with it and the ball, cast from wheelweights, never stopped in a car.
shotgun_rbload.jpg
I used Winchester AA hulls and wad. I cut the "fingers" off the wad.
shotgun_rbwad.jpg
shotgun_ball_slug.jpg
The round ball compared the hand-cast slug.
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Re: Round ball loads......

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Re: Round ball loads......

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Re: Round ball loads......

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Re: Round ball loads......

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I shot a deer with my Rogers & Spencer loaded with a round ball. Big doe, range was maybe 15 yards. Took both lungs and a piece of the heart. She went less then 30 paces. Ball was smashed into a flat disc under the offside hide.

Killed all manner of pests with round balls up to raccoon size. 36 and 44. No complaints. The dead soft ball does the job even though they lack weight.


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Re: Round ball loads......

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Re: Round ball loads......

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Re: Round ball loads......

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I found this on the internet ... from a Muzzle-Loading Rifle Match.
1.jpg
That's pretty fair accuracy.

:lol:
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Re: Round ball loads......

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Re: Round ball loads......

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Ray wrote: Thu Aug 06, 2020 9:12 pm
yooper2 wrote: Thu Aug 06, 2020 7:31 pm I shot a deer with my Rogers & Spencer loaded with a round ball. Big doe, range was maybe 15 yards. Took both lungs and a piece of the heart. She went less then 30 paces. Ball was smashed into a flat disc under the offside hide.

Killed all manner of pests with round balls and well up to raccoon size. 36 and 44. No complaints. The dead soft ball does the job even though they lack weight.


Eric
Exactly what I mean.....almost everyone acknowledges adequate power with black powder but when you load a centerfire smokeless powder cartridge with round balls at equivalent speeds you get chastised and censured for using underpowered gallery loads.....if your percussion revolver load was adequate then my .44 or .45 revolver or levergun round ball loads should be as well but the general shooting fraternity does not concur.....

There is a gentleman here whose signature line expresses my thoughts on this psychological inequity exactly. To paraphrase "A 30-30 levergun is considered underpowered for big game hunting but a like chambered 14" contender pistol is thought to be quite adequate ! "

I wouldn't worry about what the "general shooting fraternity" thinks. Most folks don't shoot very much at all and kill animals even less. An even smaller percentage does so with 19th century cartridges using cast bullets or muzzleloaders. Try it for yourself, form your own opinions, and let us know how things shake out for you.


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Re: Round ball loads......

Post by 6pt-sika »

Provided in don’t croak I’ll eventually kill a deer with a single .775” roundball from my 8 gauge .
929B65CD-DCE2-400F-AED4-29AAE2A9791E.jpeg
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Re: Round ball loads......

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Re: Round ball loads......

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somewhere online there is a video of someone shooting 12Ga slugs from an 18 inch cylinder bore and hitting a steel target at 200 yards... from a smoothbore!

essentially I have a 69 caliber sabot by using the birdshot cup. for around 27c ea. I have the 69 cal rb mold.

my other mold is #1 Buck... with the thought that I'd have a lot of 30-30 pellets, or any other 30, incl 300 blackeye, or ball n buck with a 3" hull.

variety is a spice of life

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Re: Round ball loads......

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.375" round ball for full choke .410s.....
410_light_game_slug.gif
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Re: Round ball loads......

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gamekeeper wrote: Fri Aug 07, 2020 9:31 am .375" round ball for full choke .410s.....
I used to shoot .44-40's out of my 410 .. at least that's the way I remember it. I am not sure if I shot .44 Specials or not. That was about 60 years ago ........ -sigh-
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Re: Round ball loads......

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I shot 410s out of my Marlin 444. fed the carts from the magazine and ejected OK. Funniest pattern I've ever seen, two concentric circles without anything anywhere near the center.
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Re: Round ball loads......

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I hunted pronghorn for 25 years with a flinter and round ball, only got skunked once and it wasn't the fault of the the round ball or the rifle. :roll: :D

Everything I hit either fill over DRT or ran off a little ways, never more than 100 yards, and fell over DRT.

Kinda puts the "hunting" back in hunting. :D

Image
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Grizz
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Re: Round ball loads......

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that's a wonderful image. I'd like to shoot a flint lock some day before I can't
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Re: Round ball loads......

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jnyork, I remember that great photograph, I have often referred to it when talking to so called hunters that need a scoped magnum for everything.
You Sir are definitely a real Hunter and I take my hat off to you....
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Re: Round ball loads......

Post by GunnyMack »

I have a Lyman Great Plains .54, if I do my part its a one hole gun at 50yds. Every deer I've shot has died with a round ball hole in it. I also have a T/C Cherokee. 32. Figured that would be great for tree rat hunting, ya gotta get head shots otherwise the body is pretty beat up. I even tried it on prairie dogs just for kicks!

Still have some of those light game slugs for the 28 ga to play with, the 410s and lilgun are screamers!
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Re: Round ball loads......

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Grizz wrote: Fri Aug 07, 2020 12:27 pm I shot 410s out of my Marlin 444. fed the carts from the magazine and ejected OK. Funniest pattern I've ever seen, two concentric circles without anything anywhere near the center.
I was on the range with Paco one day and he was shooting this levergun .. loading them one at a time into the chamber, firing, ejecting the shell and loading another by hand. The gun was no recoiling and was kind of making a "POP" sound through my ear protection. I asked him what he was shooting and he said "My .444 Marlin." I asked, "What's the load?" and he said, "Factory .44-40's." Sure enough. He was loading them single shot and shooting them at the 100 yard rams on the pistol range. They shot just fine.

I have shot 410 shells in a .45-70 Trapdoor Springfield .. an original one. Never did hit much with it. The rabbits were pretty safe.
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Re: Round ball loads......

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that's a great story. how were the fired cases? reloadable?

I saw a 444 round fired from a 45/70. that case was not reloadable :!: :lol:
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Re: Round ball loads......

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Grizz wrote: Fri Aug 07, 2020 10:14 pm that's a great story. how were the fired cases? reloadable?

I saw a 444 round fired from a 45/70. that case was not reloadable :!: :lol:
Yes ... they were not deformed ... the initial part of the chamber is quite similar.

SAAMI .44-40
44-40.JPG
SAAMI .444
444.JPG
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Re: Round ball loads......

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Another tip o' the hat to Mr. York for his pronghorn adventures with a flintlock.
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Re: Round ball loads......

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I have read too many recent magazine articles. My disgust at being told that it takes a bullet moving at 3,000 fps to kill a pronghorn is growing all the time. Of course, shooting at 500 yards probably does require some speed or a heavy bullet with a rainbow shaped trajectory. Not much skill at stalking, but a lot of speed on the bullet.
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Re: Round ball loads......

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piller wrote: Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:02 pm I have read too many recent magazine articles. My disgust at being told that it takes a bullet moving at 3,000 fps to kill a pronghorn is growing all the time. Of course, shooting at 500 yards probably does require some speed or a heavy bullet with a rainbow shaped trajectory. Not much skill at stalking, but a lot of speed on the bullet.
And not caring much whether you wound an animal or not.
A 3000 fps bullet .. or a 4000 fps bullet .. still takes time to get to its destination.
A lot can happen during that time.
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Re: Round ball loads......

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You couldn't use a "real" rifle for hunting squirrels on Ft Ben Harrison, but you could use blackpowder.
My .54 T/C Renegade with RB, and a light load of Pryodex P would print ORH at fifty yards.
With a Max load, it would approach 2000fps, according to the T/C manual, and it was a monster on those big Indiana whitetail.
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Re: Round ball loads......

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Re: Round ball loads......

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Ray, I had to refresh myself on Secretary of War Dearborn's role in the creation of the Harper's Ferry Model 1803. Thanks for the prompt. This is a rifle I have long admire and always wanted to own.
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Re: Round ball loads......

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Now that I'm retired one of the things I want to work on most is a round ball load from a 28 gauge. I have an H&R single shot that reminds me of a trapper's trade gun. The light recoil just calls out to me. I'm thinking I'll end up with a .54-.58 cal round ball from a smooth bore.
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Re: Round ball loads......

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This can be handy ...
balls weight.JPG
One of the earliest ways to designate the size of the bore of a gun was to figure how many bullets for it could be made from a pound of lead. Since at that time all bullets were roundballs of lead, this made a good standard. In time this designation of 'balls to the pound' became synonymous with gauge, so that what our forefathers called '28 to the pound', we now call '28 gauge'. The British commonly used the term 'bore' for 'gauge', so their '28 bore' is the same as '28 gauge' or '28 balls to the pound'.

Knowing that there are 7000 grains in a pound, we can simply divide 7000 by 28 and see that 28 gauge balls weigh 250 grains each. If we measure one of those balls, we see that it is .550 inches in diameter. In modern usage that is the same as '.55 caliber'. The same relationship holds true for any size bore, of course.

An interesting observation is that there is an inverse (opposite) relationship between weights and gauges. In other words, as the gauge number goes down, say from 20 gauge to 10 gauge, the size and the weight of the ball goes up. A 20 gauge ball weighs 350 grains, and a 10 gauge ball weighs exactly twice that, 700 grains. Or, going the other direction, a 14 gauge ball weighs 500 grains, so a 28 gauge ball, twice the gauge number, weighs half as much, 250 grains.
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Re: Round ball loads......

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Funny how some people refuse to understand that.
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