doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Sorta OT: The power of the round ball

Not sure if I should post here or in the rifle section.

The Olympics piqued my gal's interest in air rifles which caused a pellet shortage in the household. Finally got down to simple .22 lead round balls which I had never used. I am shocked by their accuracy and hitting power. They go right through 1/2" OSB at 25 yards and my simple ballistic experiments (shooting spoiled fruits, veggies, and various gauges of steel) show the round to be way meaner than a slug or birdie style pellet. I think these simple cheap things are what you want for small game hunting and pest control with an air rifle.

This got me thinking about muzzle loaders and shotgun slugs. Maybe the round is better? Are the old bore rifles and paradox guns intended for round balls?

I hear tell they get weird at super sonic velocities. But, below that, with some spin imparted, they go where you aim and hit hard. Pretty much what you said.

Best,
Ted

Plenty of dead deer and squirrels will tell you that round balls in my .54 shoot rather well up to 2000 fps. Roundballs are fast, because they are light. Unless you are shooting them in a match at halitosis distances, chances are good they are going to be well over 1100 fps.

[quote=RyanF]

My John Manton (1825) 17b shoots a 0.648” patched roundball of 400gr. Even with a light load of 60gr BP - it still punches holes thru Whitetails.
I have another nice British rifle that’s 62 cal, shoots a 0.600” RB and it weighs 325gr. Amazing how girth (diameter) adds weight.

Pretty much before 1860’s they went larger in RB diameter to hunt big game.
Whitworth (1857) proved long elongated projectiles could do similar.
Obviously, the development of Smokless is a different game.

The Paradox I’ve seen shot a real pointed projectile.

14 bore belted ball gun, fairly stout load of 85 grains of powder, the hardened ball entered on the right shoulder and exited the left rear leg, full penetration the long way through.

We still shoot deer by depredation permits, and my grandson still sport hunts, but I quit sport hunting deer many years ago. It just got too easy. But, the last buck I shot while sport hunting was with a .54 cal. patched roundball, 237 grs. The buck was looking towards me but slightly quartering. I put the ball in his white throat patch. When we skinned him I was looking for an exit wound but couldn't see one. Finally did. It was under the right hind leg. That round ball had entered the neck area and exited under the right leg on a 200+ lb. deer. I was seriously impressed with the penetration.

As a general rule roundballs require a slow twist. M/l that are intended for slugs (elongated projectiles) have a faster twist. Some factory made rifles such as the once-very-popular Thompson Center "Hawken" had a middle of the road twist that would work okay for either short, fat slugs or patched roundballs. My rifles are all handmade and have 1 in 66" twist. The twist rate needed is also partially dependent upon the velocity.

I can safely shoot extremely heavy charges in my Leman Trade Rifle that I built in 1983, it being a .54 cal. with a 1 1/16" octagonal barrel (Green River Rifle Works barrel with 7 lands and grooves). I have shot up to 200+ grs. of Goex 2F with good accuracy, but normally used no more than 120 grs. for deer. When I competed with that rifle in NMLRA matches I used much lighter loads at 25, 50 and 100 yards ........... 50, 60 and 85 grs., respectively. Super accuracy across the board. In competition I shot home cast .537" balls with teflon coated, and slightly dampened, pillow ticking. I had to seat the ball in the muzzle with a mallet and a short starter, but the accuracy was phenomenal. I have a home=made .45 cal. "buffalo rifle" that I made for cross-sticks matches that has shot 5/8" five shot groups at 100 yards. I have the target to prove it. The accuracy potential of good roundball guns are grossly underestimated by the general shooting public.

The killing power of a roundball is hard to overstate. One Thanksgiving morning I was walking the squirrel woods with my Appalachian Po-Boy .36 cal. long rifle, looking for head shots on squirrels. It was loaded with a .350" ball, and pillow ticking patch. It was too windy for good hunting so I slipped along quietly into a new-to-me area of the woods alongside a big beaver pond. Suddenly a buck jumped up out of a grass thicket across the pond and began running laterally to me, left to right. I instinctively pulled the hammer to full cock, shouldered the rifle and swung ahead of the running buck. As I did so I quickly thought about how I had a very underpowered load for an adult deer, so I tried a head shot, leading it a couple feet at about 60 yards. At the shot the deer looked to be dropping its head to go through a hole in a big briar patch. I reloaded, eased across the beaver dam and found the buck dead on the other side in the briar patch, shot clear through the neck just a bit behind the head. I hadn't led it quite enough for a head shot, but got complete penetration of the neck with little .350 ball and a pipsqueak charge. I probably wouldn't try that again. Much luck involved there.

When I was a kid, I got myself shot with a .22 lead ball out of an air rifle. I can attest to the penetration, lol.

As a kid, we shot all sorts of ammo out of our .22s. Shorts, longs, long rifles , and CB caps. Seems like I remember round ball projectiles called BB caps as well, but I don't recall whether they were lead balls or not. They'd kill a squirrel though...Geo

It shouldn't be surprising to most riflemen that a lead round ball is an effective projectile, because they were used successfully for hundreds of years to kill game and win wars. But most of us grew up reading the writings of guys like Jack O'Connor, Warren Page, Roy Weatherby, etc., who extolled the virtues of streamlined small caliber bullets at high velocities. Just about every new and improved cartridge was a belted magnum that was supposed to be faster and better than the old outdated .30-30 or .30-06.

I started out with high power centerfires, and it was impressive to be able to shoot groundhogs at extreme ranges of 400-500 yards or more. They also worked perfectly on deer and other game, so long as you placed the shot well. But after about 10 years of that, it just seemed too easy. It was unsatisfying to wait all year for deer season, and then have it all end early on the first day by simply lining up crosshairs on an unsuspecting deer, squeeze the trigger, then gut and drag. I felt more like a sniper than a hunter, and switched to using a flintlock rifle for all of my deer hunting for many years. At first, I wasn't sure what to expect. It was more of a challenge to intentionally handicap myself with a single shot and open sights only. Then there is the uncertainty of hoping the gun would even go off. There was a learning curve involved to just be reasonably sure my flintlocks would fire in damp or rainy weather. And after years of seeing ballistics tables and being told by "experts" we needed a couple thousand foot-pounds of retained energy just to cleanly kill a deer, I had some doubts about a .45 or .50 cal. roundball at around 1900-2000 fps, because the numbers said it was anemic compared to even the lowly .30-30

I killed my first flintlock season deer with a .45 cal., and it dropped after running about 20 yards. Then I switched to the .50 cal. because the .45 roundball was only about 128 grains and the .50 cal. ball was about 50 grains heavier. So the kinetic energy numbers were better, but still quite low compared to most centerfire deer rifles. Naturally, I wanted to drive them as fast as I could while maintaining good accuracy, so I used fairly heavy charges of FFG, and always wanted to use Swiss powder since it gave better velocities than the DuPont or Goex. I even used a small wad of hornets nest material between my powder and the patched round ball, because I read that gave up to 100 fps higher velocities. I also considered getting a .54 cal flintlock to have more killing power, but the dead deer kept piling up, so I didn't bother. I kept getting these fast clean kills that seemed all out of proportion to the energy of my .50 cal. round balls. I saw other hunters often needing multiple shots with their 7 mm magnums or .300 Win. mags, and my deer were all dropping in their tracks, or running 20 yards or so before piling up. Best of all was that this was more like hunting than being a long range sniper.

Of course, I wasn't gut shooting running deer, but doing my best to get a clear shot that took out the top of the heart. Most of my shots were broadside, or nearly so, and I quickly noticed that very few of my round balls made an exit hole. Instead, I would almost always find them under the hide on the far side, flattened like a pancake. With that much expansion, they did plenty of damage. When you punch a large hole through both lungs and the top of the heart, the deer's blood pressure drops to zero right now, and that deer is dead on its' feet.

Still, I wished I had an exit wound in case I didn't make a perfect shot, so I would have a good blood trail to follow if necessary. I mentioned this to an older guy who was also a muzzleloader, and he advised me I was driving my roundball too fast, and that they would be much more likely to penetrate completely at lower velocity because they wouldn't expand so much. He was absolutely right, and it made little difference in trajectory at deer woods ranges anyway.

It is very hard to generalize with round balls. In many respects, a .25 cal. round ball weighing 24 grains is very different than a 12 bore round ball that weighs around 600 grains. Most often, round balls are pure soft lead, but sometimes they may be cast out of a harder alloy, which will naturally help with penetration. As you go up in caliber, the weight increases exponentially, and a heavier ball will carry further, retain velocity better, and penetrate deeper. Nobody in their right mind would want to use a .32 or .36 caliber squirrel rifle on a large bear, but large caliber round balls have been used to effectively kill bears, moose, buffalo, and even elephants. If I see a great deal on cast round balls at a gun show, I will press my thumb nail into one to get an idea if it was cast of relatively pure lead, or something like wheel weights or Linotype alloy. When casting round balls out of scrap lead, it can be difficult to know if it is pure lead or some unknown alloy, so that may account for different performance. For hunting, I just use Speer swaged lead round balls, because I know how they behave. Loaded correctly in a good barrel, they are extremely accurate, and they kill game clean and quick. I no longer feel handicapped when I use a flintlock for hunting. I simply feel more like a hunter than a shooter.