"how many rounds....." Topic

could you fire from a napoleonic era musket before it became too foul to reload? (modern experience can add some insight here)

How many round could you fire from a military musket before the flint would stop working well and need to be replaced/reknapped?

(My experience from deer hunting etc. in PA USA is that it was highly variable. Some flints could work for a hundred or more fires. Some would work well for 2-3 and then be useless. I know that I am not connected to people who did this "for a living" and am undoubtedly doing a lot of stupid things. Any historical evidence or tellings of how veteran or rookie troops would be performing? And for what nation?

generally speaking, after the 3rd round you've probablt shot your ramrod.

I'm not that old yet!!!!

That's why NCOs often carried one or more spare ramrods; to pass out to the newbies who had fired theirs away.

Well …. there is also the third rank for most nations …. if you foul or the flint fails or whatever, there is a third weapon in your file (and hopefully an experienced old soldier to clear/fix your weapon).

So, if you are trying to fire at a "reasonable" pace (1 round/minute/man), you really should be able to fire all your ready ammo (Russian 60 rounds/man in the cartridge pouch for infantry) before you have lost too much of your firepower due to fouled weapons, etc. So, in 90 minutes, your line has shot 180 rounds/file – or very nearly that. Up to 1/3 of the weapons can be out-of-serivce at that point, and you still haven't reduced the firing of your line.

After that, you would need a visit from/with the company ammunition caisson to replenish. But really, that's lots of shooting just with the ready ammunition.

- Sasha

I find that shooting with ball cartridge less fouling occurs than with blanks. The ball must carry some of it away.

I've had flints last forever; then the next one smashes on the first shot! French light coloured flints don't seem to last as long as the almost black British ones.

My best record without misfires is 22 rounds of ball cartridge at a target shoot. Charleville musket repro. Mind you it was in a torrential downpour or I might have done better! Came in third!

Billsfan,

I have fired 60 rounds made to the original specifications with an original Brown Bess on several occasions with no trouble. I have never tried any more than that, but I am sure it could be done.

The life of a flint is very variable. I have managed to fire the 60 rounds with just one flint and no misfires. Some locks smash flints up fairly quickly, and some don't. Those on original muskets seem to be much better in general than those on replicas. How the flint is fitted also makes a huge difference to both its life and whether the musket fires reliably and the British issued a General Order covering this in 1809.

From eyewitness reports mentioning rounds fired:

The "Soldier of the 71st" fired 107 rounds at Fuentes de Onoro and 108 at Vitoria (could be the other way round).

William Surtees fired "near 200" rounds in a single action in Holland in 1799.

William Brown of the 45th regiment claimed to have fired 250 rounds at Orthez.

Charles Cadell recorded that every man of the 28th Regiment fired 170 rounds at St Pierre in 1813.

I am not sure whether the same could be done with the smaller calibre 0.69" muskets used by most other nations, although much would depend on the size of the ball and the quality of the powder.

One of the reasons that there appears to be less fouling with live rounds than with blanks, is due to the force required to push the ball down the tube and on it's way downrange.

The mass of the ball allows the powder to burn more completely, since it needs to build up pressure to get the ball moving. That pressure also is increased which means a more hot and more complete burn of the powder, leaving less ash, and of a lower quantity than with a blank round.

With that blank, there's little to nothing to impede the expansion of the gas as the powder burns, and so lots of larger particles remain unburned and the heat and force pushing them down the bore causes them to tend to attach to the inside surfaces.

In addition, the .69 weapons "appear" to foul faster because, although using a similar charge as the .75 weapons, there is less interior surface in the barrel. That means that the coating/fouling "appears" to build up faster, when in fact, in the .75 it's able to form a thinner coating do to the larger interior surface area of the bore. It's the same amount of fouling, just in a different thickness depending upon the bore of the weapon.

V/R

As a longstanding medical-service reenactor, my personal experience with actually personally firing/caring for black powder weapons in the field is minimal (carrying 30 pounds of combined real first-aid equipment/period gear/multiple canteens, and buckets of ice leave little portage space for an officer's revolver, so it usually got left back in the tent), but…

Post engagement, I have witnessed troops pouring hot/boiling water from a camp kettle or coffeepot down the muzzle to loosen up the fouling. What would be the result of pouring a slug of canteen water down the hot barrel of a semi-fouled musket while on the field during a lull in the fighting, inserting the tompion, and shaking it up and down to dissolve the fouling? Would the barrel be hot enough to warm the water to solution-temperature?
Would it help or hinder the situation?

the average was about 60 shots, I did fire such an amount on a replica as well, I noticed however problems – as it got increasingly difficult in the end to withdraw the ramrod.

The French averaged the life time of a flint at about 20 shots, hence one in the lock and two in the spare part container in the cartdirge box (already fixed in lead, so to make changing different).

It is diffucult to asses modern life time flints in replicas, there I know from people shoting originals, that the flints spark better.

Also the quality of flints did vary, the French used so called "blondes" which were regarded as one of the best in the market. They were knapped differently for example to the English dark flints.

In case you would pour down could water you are creating sludge and you would need a lot to clear the gun barrel and then – the most next important step – you have to dry the interior of the barrel, hot water works well.

There is first-hand account of some French soldiers peeing down the bores of their muskets to cool them off because they were getting to hot to hold. They then fired blanks to dry them out.

try to pee down a barrel which is baking hot after 60 rounds, I ask myself when reading this, is this a "bull" stroy?

are you saying they could not aim their dicks as well as their muskets?

When my was in the Army he was told that if nothing else was available to pee down the barrel of his rifle. A .69 bore too small for you? Try .303.

As a renactor we said when you had your third misfire you were dead

According to this contemporary comment it looks as if not quite 40 rounds could be fired continuously before the barrel became too hot to be 'touched by hand'. It is, however, evident that barrel was too hot to handle ahead of this judging by the comments about holding by the sling and the stock of the swell of the stock.

link

Later the author comments that after 25 rounds the barrel was too hot to touch

link

So that based on that although the barrel became too hot to touch after 25 rounds 'continuous' fire it was possible to carry on firing beyond that – to 35 and 37 rounds in the first case.

This is from:

link

the barrel gets awfully hot very quickly, but then, it is not necessary to touch it at all, just use the stock – I never had any burn problems by doing that firing about 60 cartridges.

von Winterfeldt I do not doubt you – the point is that in the example published in 1806 that I linked to the officers running the experiments 'thought it advisable to desist' after respectively 35 and 37 rounds more or less continuously (apart from a break to turn the block in the cartridge box – incidentally they needed assistance to do this).

you certainly would need assistance to turn a block in the cartridge box, the same as for the French infantry, to get the two additional ammunition packets of 15 each out of the back pack and into the box, this all would need time and shuffling and bringing down the rate of fire immensly.

About peeing down the rifle, it would be a good painting to show a whole battalion in the middle of the battle field to do this.

Of course, somehow you have to avoid getting in touch with the hot barrel and find a way to lower the 5 feet long musket in that level to hit the interior of the barrel as well.

Don't forget to take the bayonett off beforehand as well.

A key factor in the barrels heating up to that degree in the linked publication is that the soldiers were specifically trying to shoot as fast as possible (i.e. around 3 rounds per minute).

If the rate of fire was less than this, then the barrel would not heat up so quickly. Speed of fire makes a huge difference here.

Yes but the three rounds a minute business wasn't from when you saw the enemy until they ran away, you'd be out of ammo in no time. However if you are holding fire until 50 yds., and you first volley doesn't stop 'em, you haven't got at lot of time to get additional shots off before the enemy tries to ventilate you with their nasty, sharp, pointy, thingies.

It's not just the rate of fire, either. The sun alone can make those barrels awfully hot in no time. I have personally experienced it.

I also tend to point out that the "three rounds a minute" bit is vastly overstated. Those numbers were really only possible under controlled conditions on a range, and NOT in combat.

Could it be done in combat? Yes, but not for very long, and not with any real accuracy either. The soldiers are simply too close together to gain that rate of fire. Add in the slow but steady buildup of fouling in the bore, and you are most likely to see 2 rounds/minute for short periods, with most fire likely given at closer to one round/minute.

It's not that it CAN'T be done. It's that the environment on the battle field simply won't let you do it.

The Duke of Wellington is quoted as saying that if troops were not kept under control they would fire off 60 rounds in an hour. A round a minute. Again, as I posted earlier, being able to fire three rounds a minute isn't meant to be sustained from the moment an action started 'till it ended, but a useful ability against troops determined to push you off your bit of real estate.

I has always wondered about the quality of black powder now and then. I have a sneaking suspicion that the modern stuff is dirtier than the period powder.

I think the opposite is true; the modern powder, due to modern production practices and machinery is better than that made in the 18th century.

Ok, you live shooters out there, how many grains were you using?

Remember that the typical charge for a one ounce ball was 1/2 ounce of powder. 32 charges to the pound.

How many grains in a pound of powder? It is usually reckoned at 7000 grains.
7000/32 equals 218.75 *per cartridge*.

I've seen an order from (IIRC, the colonel of the 23rd) directing that cartridges be made up at 45 to the pound instead of 32, and that was in 1775. What the British did (or the Americans) did during the course of the AWI, I am not sure. (45 to the pound is around 155 grains).

US ACW manuals state a 60/65 grain powder charge for muskets/rifled muskets. That equals 116 charges per pound.
British regulations for the late 18th century stated 165 grains for the Brown Bess musket. This includes powder to prime the pan. This would give about 42 charges per pound.

the powder charge was usually half the weight of the bullet, don't forget that the cartridge was used to prime the pan.

The Prussians found out in the Napoleonic wars that a third of the bullet weight was sufficient (they had the self priming pan though).

It is difficult to speculate about the quality of the powder, what I noticed is that original guns gives much more and better sparks than re – constructed ones, especailly when using French flints (in case you still can get them)

I was reading an article about a CW reenactor who had a repro, breechloading carbine. After 5 rounds he had trouble chambering a round, and closing the breech. He then looked up the ordnance report of the weapon's test. 1,000 rounds fired at the test, no mention of fouling problems. He then went and made his own powder(no booms), base on 1860s US Army specs. Some of the exact same ingredients he couldn't get, but he figured he had made grade II powder rather than grade I. He got more bang, less smoke, and less fouling. After that chambering a round wasn't a problem.

Flints of high-quality were usually good for between thirty and fifty rounds. The French infantryman usually, or was supposed to, carry two or three extras.

The flint was wrapped in an 'envelope' of sheet lead with only the front of the flint exposed which would give it a tight fit in the lock.

The French artillery arm had 168 'flint-chippers' (caullouteurs) always employed preparing flints.

The musket barrel fouled after between fifty to sixty rounds.

The infantry giberne (cartridge pouch) held 35 rounds along with a tin flask of oil. On the side of the pouch there was a picket that held a screwdriver, a bullet extractor, the extra flints, along with their lead 'envelopes', a greasy cloty, and a wooden flint used during drills (pierre de bois). Each infantryman also had a pricker to clear the touch hole of the musket.

Once every nine rounds or so, the musket would misfire-the flint either wouldn't spark of the priming powder in the pan went off without discharging the round. A hangfire could occur about every 18 rounds. That meant that the powder train was burning slowly and would eventually go off. If you weren't careful and were exploring the reason for no 'bang' you might get a very nasty surprise.

In almost all the cases, the refusal to spark was caused by fouling buildup on the frizzen. A simple wipe or two with a small piece of cloth or the edge of a handkerchief was sufficient to wipe away most of the buildup.

As with all weapons, the flintlock could be a bit cantankerous if not kept well cleaned and serviced. As noted above, the soldier had a wire prick in the implement pocket of his cartridge box. Some accounts refer to soldiers as taking that item out and placing it behind the hat cockade or in the ribbon for easier access in combat. Some troops were issued with a small chain which held a prick on one end and a small brush on the other, with a loop in the middle of the chain to fit over a coat button.

Keeping the frizzen clean and the touch hole and pan clear needed to be a constant task of the soldier if he wanted to keep his weapon in good order. The only time it became difficult was in very humid conditions, where the moisture in the air could build up in the pan and the surface of the frizzen, making the residue more of a very thin paste. Pain in the patookus, that.

Here's a copy of one type of pick & brush.

The size of the flint is very important otherwise the spraks won't fall into the pan – then the spring – in case to hard the flints will crumble and splinter very quickly, if too soft, not enough sparks, also the quality of the steel of the frizzen, which would produce a hugh amount of spark or hardly any, the quality of the flint, how it is knapped (notice the difference between English and French knapping).

The prick was often attached to a chain and which was fixed on a button of the uniform, or on a string attached at the back of a cartridge pouch belt.