How fast is a musket ball

Some modern mixtures use sodium nitrate instead of potassium nitrate, both salts. The source of carbon is charcoal, willow being historically the most popular. As the finer granulations of black powder burn faster due to more surface area per weight, the combustion speed was partially controlled by powder granulation size. You needed slower powder burns in those long barrels, a courser granulation was used, fast combustion and the finer grains where used to ensure complete combustion in the shorter barrels of handguns.

As the energy in black powder, the diminishing returns of increased charges, the muzzle velocity of black powder is from the extreme high of about feet per second fps down around fps. Most guns will fall into the 1, to about 1, fps area.

And with round balls the only way to increase the energy is to go to bigger bores, shooting larger balls. Take the. Sectional density SD is 0. The Kinetic energy KE at 1, fps is only No atmospheric oxygen required. Submerging an AK 47 gun and firing it underwater appears to make it work better, according to high speed footage. When the footage was slowed down, they discovered that not only does the weapon still fire while under water, it actually reloads itself faster.

Skip to content Popular. January 29, Joe Ford. The 18th century and present-day definition of point blank are essentially the same. Both state that the barrel of the firearm is parallel levelled to the horizon. But the barrel has to be elevated; the physics are the same for a modern high velocity cartridge. The velocity of the ball, sighting, and the other variables you mention are irrelevant to my point yet reinforce it.

Velocity differences with respect to point blank range are covered in the present-day definition. The same holds for, and is stated in, the 18th century definition. The critical factor is that the barrel is level to the horizon ground. The bullet must begin dropping immediately. His argument seems to rest entirely on the definition of point blank range, which as I said is essentially the same then as today. The point blank range for a musket is much less than yards.

I may have a look at the original sources to help clarify this discussion for myself. As someone who has shot and hand loaded both smokeless and black powder cartridges for over 50 years and fired at targets up to yards in some cases with an original Sharps.

The key word is effective. Musket balls can easily reach yards, but hitting anything is pure chance. So if the ball travels yards is that the effective range? And so forth. One last comment. Nothing wrong with the Ivory Tower. The best of all worlds is combining the analysis and scholarship of the Ivory Tower with practice. Those people I call scholar practitioners. I also build from scratch flintlock longrifles. I too would be interested in doing some long range testing.

The problem still lies with the differences between gunpowder two centuries apart. Making niter was an imperfect science to say the least. American made gunpowder was inferior to almost all European powders and that had a wide range of quality as well. That means all musketry calculated today is nowhere near what it was in the 18th century.

They used an average based on their experiences and those differed because of the gunpowder quality. Even if the chance of being hit by the ball is remote there is still the danger of being hit.

Well, the discussion has gone pretty much as I expected—using modern experience s to debate the article. If one wants to debate that conclusion, then similar primary sources of information should be used. A question: Does anybody have period documentation of the muzzle velocity of a land pattern musket? I must admit that I find it difficult to believe that distance but, by the same token, I find it even more difficult to deny numerous primary sources making the same point.

As Jimmy Dick has pointed out, the powder is considerably different. Further, our repro firelocks are equally different—most smaller and lighter than originals as well as made of different materials. I have yet to hear of anybody using charges of that size today so there is no way we can know what impact that has on range. My last comment. It seems to me if that was the effective range firing would begin at that distance.

But be that as it may. Of course, that brings up battlefield tactics and may further complicate the discussion. I rely on the eyewitness accounts more than the theoretical calculations for design of fortifications.

And present-day experience does bear on interpreting the past. All bits of information need to be weighed and integrated to synthesize a strong interpretation. My comments have focused on the definition of point blank. Unfortunately, I confused that issue by introducing a present-day definition. I did that in an attempt to clarify the language in the 18th century definition which obviously is archaic.

As I explained the 18th century and present-day definitions say the same thing. How much weaker who knows and what velocity was generated by grains is not known. But that does not matter for the definition of point blank, which seems to be the lynchpin of your article.

Clearly we disagree and I and the rest of the commentators are talking past each other. Perhaps if somebody does some shooting at yards it will help clarify the discussion? To that point — has anyone read the article I cited in my original post? It has a discussion of test firing that Prussians did at yards. Albeit it Napoleonic war era, but it provides information relevant to this discussion. Perhaps powder had improved by then as the charge was grains.

If you want to disregard that as irrelevant to the discussion OK. Maybe Hugh using his software can calculate the drop at yards for a.

You might want to read the article as it informed my comments. Mike, just to be as clear as I can since you keep coming back to the yard range. I do not doubt that a musket ball in the 18th century could have a range of yards. None of my friends that shoot black powder firearms doubt that. Of course, that presumes a normal charge and not a squibb load. So the yard range for an 18th century musket is not a revelation to me.

Nor do I doubt that a musket ball could be lethal at that range and beyond. So if your only point is that a musket ball could travel yards using 18th century technology I concur. And I would think it could go much further. By effectiveness, I mean the probability of hitting a man-sized target because we are talking about battle conditions that you aim at. And that is clearly what Hanger commented on — not the greatest distance a ball could travel. I am not saying that they waited until yards, for example, because the ball would not travel farther than that.

Using fps as an example, at yards they would have to aim 20 feet above the target to hit it. At yards the drop is about 2 feet as near as I can read it off the graph in Willegal. A variation in velocity makes no difference to my argument.

If you want higher velocity for the sake of argument then hypothetically you might have to aim 10 feet high at yards and 1 foot at yards.

If slower that fps, you would have to aim higher at both distances. You decide at which distance you are more likely to hit the target you aimed at no matter what the velocity. In this regard, Don Hagist is essentially saying the same thing I am and much more succinctly. All of you can argue about the affect of powder, equipment, etc. You are shooting at the messenger, Karl.

I am not making this stuff up nor am I basing it on anything other than period documentation. I am stuck on yards because I am simply telling folks what I found in several primary sources—no interpretation, no personal bias, nothing but info from the 18th century and that from several sources, not just one or two.

They all drop their ranges when the soldiers are firing under normal conditions but, even at that, they still say well over yards. The smoothbore musket generally allowed no more than yards m with any accuracy. The Crimean War — saw the first widespread use of the rifled musket for the common infantryman and by the time of the American Civil War most infantry were equipped with the rifled musket.

A rifle is a weapon with a rifled barrel, designed to fire a single projectile that is stabilized by the spin imparted by the rifling. The rifle had drawbacks.