Buck and Ball?

[karlsgunbunker]

I always wanted to try shooting Buck and Ball.
I read about it being used in the Revolutionary War.

I have a .45 Kentucky rifle and a .50 Inline.
What size shot would work and how would you load it?

I figured, Powder, shot, patched ball on top.

Does anyone have a "Recipe" for Buck and Ball?

 

[osprey176]

I believe the buck and ball loads were shot from smoothbore muskets.The shot would spread so fast out of a rifle,the effective range would be very short.

 

[buttrap]

What he said it was a load for the short barrel huge bore carbines is all as they could not hit a barn past 50 yards.

 

[Shadow 7D]

^^^^^^^^^^
this, rifling will spin out the shot pattern creating a doughnut
it's part of the reason everybody laughs at the taurus judge its ok close in, but it spreads out FAST.

 

[Kaeto]

The load was also used during the Civil War. It consisted of one roundball and three buckshot on top of the roundball.

 

[4v50 Gary]

What Osprey said.

Buck and ball was normally three buck shots and one ball (the ball size depends on the bore of the musket). Buck 'n ball was the predominant infantry load until the adoption of the minie ball.

 

[wittzo]

They used buck and ball primarily in the .69" Springfield musket because you quadrupled your firepower.
There's a chart somewhere that compared the .54" '41 Whitney/Mississippi rifle to the '42 Springfield musket with hit probabilities at 100 and 200 yards and their rate of fire. If memory serves correctly, 100 soldiers shooting rifles can fire 400 rounds per minute. Using buck and ball, they can fire 1600 rpm. At 100 yards, the '41 MS rifle has a 98% hit probability, the '41 musket has a 250%(?) hit probability. Not only would you hit one guy you're aiming at, you would probably hit one or both of the guys to either side of him.

The Americans did use buck and ball during the Revolutionary War, George Washington promoted it's use.

 

[Shadow 7D]

Please note, smooth bore muskets

 

[Curator]

I am not sure that "Buck & Ball" was used in the Rev-War but certainly it was there after. At the battle of Lundy's Lane on the Canadian side of the Niagara river, Winfield Scott had his troops load their .69 caliber muskets with ball, buck shot or buck & ball. During the 2nd Seminole war, 1835 to 1842 Buck and Ball was the "official" loading with their paper cartridges made with one .65 round ball and 3 #1 (.30 caliber) balls on top of 110 grains of FFg (musket) powder. 10 grains went into the pan then the remainder went down the barrel with the balls and paper loaded on top. No attempt was made to remove the paper since it kept everything from rolling out. Balls recovered from Fllorida Seminole War sites have the distinctive flattening and three dimples on the top side where the buckshot rode.

This load was still in the supply pipeline at the beginning of the War between the States. There is a monument on the Gettysberg Battle site displaying the musket ball with three buckshot ballanced on top. Most folks think it is a decoration.

Having reproduced these loads with my 1816 Springfield flintlock musket replica and 1842 percussion smoothbore musket, I can attest to the fact that while you can actually hit a man-sized target out to about 75 yards with aimed fire, the main round ball is likely to hit but the buckshot usually misses. Of 20 man-sized cardboard targets fired at 75 yards with either gun, less than half of the shots had even one buckshot hit the target. Now I didn't line them up on line volley fashion so than might have given different results. I chalk this up to building confidence in soldiers who don't really know this loading isn't going to make any difference to the outcome--But their confidence might.

 

[wittzo]

I did a quick Google on it, here's a link to another forum where a guy is trying to figure out what size buckshot they used and cites several Revolutionary archaeological digs that recovered buck and ball loads.

Here's some pretty good validation from the Springfield Armory museum that gives a brief history of the '41 Springfield musket. It has a paragraph about buck and ball that refers to it being used in the Revolution. That first sentence fragment is their typo.

http://ww2.rediscov.com/spring/VFPC...g/DETAILS.IDC,SPECIFIC=9828,DATABASE=objects,

Although loading a single-round ball seems to have been stanAlthough Champlain used full-sized balls, by the time of the American Revolution it was common practice to load smaller buckshot, averaging around .30-caliber, along with a musket ball in the paper cartridges used in .69 and .75-caliber muskets. The number of buckshot per cartridge varied, and, in the 1775 attack on Quebec, General Henry Dearborn carried a musket 'charged with a ball and Ten Buckshott.' In October of 1777, General George Washington recommended that his men deliver their first volley with a load of 'one musket ball and four or eight buckshott, according to the strength of their pieces.' In October 1777, Washington ordered that 'buckshott are to be put in all cartridges which shall hereafter be made.' Some Revolutionary War cartridges were purchased from contractors, while others were made up by the soldiers themselves. Maryland issued troops bullet molds casting both buckshot and musket balls.
Single-ball, buckshot-and-ball, and straight buckshot loads of from twelve to fifteen pellets remained part of the American military ammunition inventory after the Revolution. Those men on the Lewis and Clark expedition who carried muskets were issued one hundred balls and two pounds of buckshot each and cartridges loaded with both buckshot and ball were standard issue during the War of 1812. Single-ball loads for the .69 caliber United States musket fired undersized .64-caliber projectiles to facilitate quick loading, at the expense of accuracy. The addition of buckshot made a hit more likely.

here's a link to another forum where a guy is trying to figure out what size buckshot they used and cites several Revolutionary archaeological digs that recovered buck and ball loads. He also mentions Washington's orders for buck and ball to be used.

http://forums.gunboards.com/showthread.php?64021-Rev.-War-Buck-n-Ball-loads


The majority of excavated shot displayed from our Ft. Clinton, lost and destroyed by the British in Oct. 1777, are clearly larger than .25 and appear to average in the low .30’s
Thomas’ three-volume tome, Round Ball to Rimfire, demonstrates pre-Civil War buckshot as .30 from the Hudson Highlands in 1781 as well as
a packet of ten cartridges possibly of Rev. War vintage where the buckshot in the one removed for testing shows to be greater than .25 next to the .69 caliber ball they sit atop.
A curator at the West Point Museum shared that they have two known-to-be Rev. War buck-n-ball cartridges there and the x-rayed buckshot is .32 diameter.
The Heidelberg College excavation of the 1795 Fallen Timber Battlefield found three .25 pellets vs. 35 .31 pellets.