[Duosi Ji]

I was told that the muskets haven't really gotten more accurate from the 16th century up to the Napoleonic wars, nor more powerful. That it's only due to logistics, flintlocks, less heavy, no Swedish feather needed, that made the 19th century muskets better. What's everyone's take on this?

Also, are some types of muskets more powerful than others, like uses more gunpowder? For example, are the infantry muskets fire more powerful shots than the cavalry muskets? Or of different nations' muskets, are some of them more powerful than others? (French vs Turkish for example)

Thanks.

[George Hill]

[Duosi Ji]

[Leo Todeschini]

Again, I am chipping in because I am interested rather than an expert and there will be far better people out there to answer your questions, but I think I can be a bit helpful, but this is as an engineer rather than an expert.

You are covering a lot of ground with your questions so I will answer what I can, but much of comes down to mass production. Powder was relatively new in the medieval period and not mass produced, so it was not as well understood as by Napoleonic times nor as consistently produced so it is easy to surmise that an average load produced in 1800 would be of better quality and therefore more powerful than an average load produced in 1400 or 1500.

The same is true of the gun, the steel and the ball. In 1400 or 1500 the ball and the barrel were both cottage industry produced and so of both variable quality and of variable bore. The last thing you want is a tight ball in a dirty barrel, with bad welding and so the windage around the ball might be rather more than you would choose because of safety issues. By 1800 balls and barrels were mass produced and so of predicatable size and quality and so the windage can come down a bit because of consistency. Again you can surmise that this would allow for a more powerful package.

Any ball would be wadded in a barrel so the accuracy is not likely to be very different except that any two powder charges would be more consistent and perhaps cleaner burning leaving less residue to foul the subsequent shots, however assuming a musketeer has drawn his powder from one keg it should be all of a muchness from one keg so all his shots would be pretty consistent. In a nutshell a 1500 musketeer and a 1800's one will probably be pretty similar in accuracy but the 1800's would be up on power which of course will help against wind drift.........A longer barrel helps with accuracy, but not as much as a better made weapon, but as a rule of thumb longer barrels make for more accurate shots.

Don't forget ergonomics and indeed belief in the weapon. A 1400 musketeer would shoot knowing there was a chance of his gun bursting and it was pretty awkward to shoot, the 1800's guy has a weapon that basically didn't burst and was easier to handle. This will make a better soldier and a better soldier a more accurate one. We (the British) changed our assult rifle to the doomed SA80 about 15 years ago, it was dreadful in so many ways, jamming being one of its main activities; it has now been re-engineered and is a great gun, but every soldier hates it and is waiting for it to jam, catch fire, mag fall out, turn safety on/off at will etc etc. I bet they would be better soldiers with something else in their hands. This is not a denigration of British soldiers by the way, just of the SA80 Mk1.

Powder was made in different ways for different uses, coarser for cannon, medium for muskets and fine for priming and pistols, hard wood for cannons and muskets and soft wood, often willow, for pistols. This is to do with building pressures at different speeds and is a big subject in itself. load a cannon with a priming powder and you will have no cannon left, load a musket with priming or pistol powder and if it is a good one it would be a more powerful shot, a bad one and you have no more musket. A long time ago I ran out of coarse powder and loaded a piece with fine, possibly a half load and I can tell you I was glad it wasn't a grain more and it is something I would never do again.

Doing this would be foolhardy unless the piece is proofed for it and if it is then use that as the load anyway - bottom line don't overload/misload a proofed piece beyond what it should be. The answer is simply to use a longer barrel. If you have a saloon car and accelerate it for 1 second it goes say 10 mph, accelerate it for 10 seconds and it does 60; a longer barrel is a longer time in which to accelerate something and so a higher exit speed (simplistic I know) is acheived. Right now I am over in the States messing about with a coil gun, in early tests on about 1/20th power it is accelerating a projectile to about 3000G in about 1/2" - but this level of acceleration lasts for only about 2" . WOW that must shoot miles! No, probably straight up about 2-300yds because the acceleration distance is so short.

In a nutshell by 1800 powder was better, soldiers had more faith in their gear, equipment was better and as always has been the case, longer barrelled stuff shot further and a bit more accurately, than shorter barrelled stuff.

Tod

[Duosi Ji]

[M. Eversberg II]

[Thomas Watt]

Barrel length does have an impact on the power of the load.
A longer barrel accelerates the round longer, making for a higher kinetic energy.
Case in point... using the same cartridge load in a pistol vs. a carbine... the longer carbine barrel gets a greater performance out of the round.
And while musket balls aren't as tightly fitted to the bore as modern rifled rounds, the effect is still there: more punch from a longer barrel.

The American Civil War saw the widespread use of a conical round (Minie ball) that also added to accuracy, although this seems to be outside the range you're trying to discuss/compare.

ps. This finds its ultimate expression in naval guns, where the caliber is calculated based on a ratio of the bore vs. length (sorry, I don't know the formula)... The battleship Missouri had caliber 50 guns, 16 inches in diameter that packed a greater wallop than other battleships.

[Leo Todeschini]

1570's was still cottage industry so it stands true for 1570 as well as 1500, sorry for not reading the date.

Powder burns from the outside of the grain toward the centre, it is only the surface that burns at any moment. Take 1G of fine powder and 1G of coarse powder and the surface area available to burn at any moment is higher on a fine powder. If you light the powder the fine powder will burn quicker so the change from no pressure in the barrel to maximum pressure is quicker with a fine powder, therefore acceleration of projectile is quicker.

You may think this is great and so use it in a cannon or musket, but the mass that the gas has to move is high and so a slower burn is required to allow the projectile to start to move and so help to keep the rising gas pressure from getting high enough to burst the barrel which is why you use a powder matched to the gun. The smaller the weight of the round the finer the powder can be (rule of thumb).

Gases expand at a given rate after start of burn, except there are issues to do with higher pressures making a faster burn, so a heavier ball in a barrel will infact naturally make the powder burn faster causing a greater gas pressure to build as well as having a greater inertia due to the increased weight. But assuming they do burn in a standard way, pressure rises, it is to some extent offset by the ball moving down the barrel and allowing a higher volume in which the gas can sit but still the gas pressure rises quickly and accelerates the ball. If the gas is still expanding with great pressure after the ball leaves the barrel then energy has been wasted because the ball could have been made to go faster. If the pressure has dropped to the point where the ball is losing more energy through friction than is is gaining through pressure behind it then the barrel is too long and energy has been wasted. If the ball leaves just as it was about to start losing through friction then the barrel was just right and the ball has left with maximum velocity possible from the set up.

Just right though is a pile of tosh as the barrels on many weapons would make them too long to use and so be powerful but useless.

So for a given load, calibre, ball, a longer barrel will always be more powerful until you get past the golden length which will be particular to the whole set of variables. This is a very complex area with all sorts of variables that make it Phd material.

finer powder = faster burn
heavier projectile=faster burn
heavier projectile= slower acceleration
higher gas pressure = faster burn
lighter charcoal = faster burn
longer barrel = longer acceleration period
harder tamping= higher pressures and faster burn



"Barrel length does have an impact on the power of the load.
A longer barrel accelerates the round longer, making for a higher kinetic energy.
Case in point... using the same cartridge load in a pistol vs. a carbine... the longer carbine barrel gets a greater performance out of the round.
And while musket balls aren't as tightly fitted to the bore as modern rifled rounds, the effect is still there: more punch from a longer barrel. "

Absolutely




Tod

[George Hill]

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Gordon Frye]

One can also make note of the fact that a "Musket/Moschetto/Mosquette" of 1570 was somewhat larger and heavier, with a larger bore than the infantry musket of 1800. But the problem is in definitions.

The standard firearm for Foote in 1570 was the Caliver or Arquebus, meaning a shoulder-fired matchlock usually with a barrel of some 36-46" in length, of 20-16 bore (.62"-.66"), weighing about eight or so pounds, ten at the outside. The standard firearm for Infantry in 1800 was in most countries refered to as a "Fusil" or some variation on that word (from the French term for a light hunting flintlock of the late-17th Century, which were issued to elite infantry units. When flintlocks became the norm, everyone but the English-speakers called them "Fusils"), which was a shoulder-fired flintlock weapon usually with a barrel of some 39"-46" in length, of 16-12 bore (.66"-.75") weighing eight or nine pounds, ten at the outside.

The 1570's musket, however (i.e. the "Spanish Musket"), which had been developed in the first or second quarter of the century, was a behemoth with a heavily reinforced barrel of at least 48" in length, of 10-8 bore (~17-20mm) and weighing from 15 to 19 pounds. Sir Roger Williams suggested that they fired a powder charge weighing almost equal to the ball weight, and had to be stocked "in the Spanish style, with the butt against the shoulder" to absorb such heavy recoil. Such a weapon had tremendous smashing power, and though no more accurate than it's smaller cousin the caliver, retained much of it's lethality far beyond the normal ranges of the caliver. The images of matchlocks fired from a forked rest are these mighty weapons, and the fellows who carried them were awarded higher rates of pay than the fellows carrying calivers.

The primary reason for the introduction, and continued use of the full musket was as a counter to the fully armoured man-at-arms on his armoured horse. Where as at much over 100 yards a caliver ball might strike the armour of either and be deflected, the musket was sufficiently heavier as to still carry some punch at such ranges, so was somewhat effective in keeping the companies of gendarmes at a greater distance before they attempted their charge against the Foote. But as the 16th Century came to a close, fewer and fewer gendarmes were armouring their horses in plate armour, or themselves in cap-a-pié armour, lessening the need for such muskets. Thus such monstrosities disappeared from the battlefield as their primary targets did the same.

Since there was less need for such muskets and their smashing power, they tended to shrink, since no one wanted to haul around an ungainly beast and spend the extra money on huge powder charges, and absorb the high recoil if it wasn't needed any longer. However since it had the higher status, it kept it's name (at least in English). As the17th Century wore on, the "musket" shrank to not much more than the caliver had been a century before, though perhaps with a slightly longer barrel. The official English musket barrel in 1632 was 48" and of 10-bore, and it still required a rest. In the course of the English Civil War, muskets lightened up to the point they no longer needed rests, and with the adoption of copies of Louis XIV's "Fusils", the basic infantry weapon got even lighter. The muskets of Queen Anne were of the same basic dimentions as the earlier muskets, but lighter by far, and fitted with flintlocks. The Long Land Musket (which was of course a flintlock) of 1730's was fitted with a 46" 11-bore barrel, required no rest, and was fitted with a bayonet. The New Land Patern Musket of 1802 had a 42" barrel of 11-bore, and weighed about 9 pounds.

So saying that there were differences in power between a 1570's musket and an 1800's musket is true enough, but one must take the change of terminology, and the evolution of the weapons over the centuries into context, too.

Cheers,

Gordon

PS Thanks, Jean!

[Jesse Pointen]

there is already a thread about musket power try searching next time.

[Randall Moffett]

I'd read Bert Halls' Weapons of Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe. Best book I have read on the subject. I think that a firearm of the 15th century would be less accurate than say 18th for a few reasons, most if not all already mentioned. Leo hit two that often get overlooked. The quality of the barrel itself and powder. Poorer powder is going to effect this. Uneven and larger barrel diameter will make the ball less acurate. I have never seen indication they used wadding around them in the 15th or 16th but it would increase the accuracy as they will not bounce down the barrel. Another is the length of the barrel. If you look at Williams chart with joules of energy the change in powder multiples the joules about 4 times I believe.

In the 2nd half of the 15th the most common gun to me still seems to be the pipe/stickgun. It is not until the end of the period where the more musket looking type of handgun seems to become more common. If you look at many depictions of Charles the Bold, german or Swiss armies they often have these pipe guns. As you hold these in a much different manner accuracy must have been fairly difficult. Now that said there are arqubuses in use just not in numbers to influence battle to any great manner.

RPM

[M. Eversberg II]

[Thomas Watt]

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Lin Robinson]

Here are my thoughts on this subject:

Black powder is a mixture of charcoal, sulfur and potassium nitrate (also known as saltpeter). It is an explosive. Modern gun powder (smokeless powder) is a chemical compound and a propellant. Smokeless powder can be used as an explosive but black powder is more efficient in that role.

The major difference between black powder and smokeless powder is the burning rate. Black gun powder expends its force all at once, while smokeless burns at a measured rate. Both substances generate propellant gases to drive the projectile. Different types of smokeless powders burn at different rates and generate different pressure in the chambers of the guns in which they are fired. In the case of pistols and revolvers, the ammunition designed for them uses small charges of fast-burning powders. For rifles, the powder charge is larger and burns more slowly. The main reasons for using different burning-rate powders are the size of the cartridge being fired and the length of the firearm barrel. With black powder firearms some of this is irrelevant.

Because black powder is an explosive, the same type of powder can be interchangeable for handguns and rifles and shotguns. However, there is a caveat with that statement. As mentioned above, black powder is available in different granulations, from FFFFG (priming powder), to FFFG for handguns and most small caliber rifles, and FFG for the larger caliber rifles, shotguns and muskets. There is even FG, which can be used in muskets but is more suitable for small cannons, and cannon powder, which is even coarser than FG. The key to understanding which powder to use in which gun is the bore size. The rule of thumb used by most shooters is FFFG in all pistols and rifles under .50 caliber and FFG in rifles .50 caliber and up, shotguns and muskets. The primary consideration in picking a powder granulation is chamber pressure. Although black powder is an explosive, it does have slight differences in burning rate based on its granulation. The finer the powder, the faster it explodes and the more pressure it generates. The reason for this is because black powder is measured by volume rather than weight. Therefore a charge of 50 grains of FFFG has considerably more surface area, i.e. more granules, than 50 grains of FFG, contributing directly to the faster rate and greater pressure.

The old-timers, who had to use black powder for their firearms because there was nothing else, developed a number of ways to determine which charge was best for their gun. A common method was to place a bullet in the palm of one’s hand, then cover the bullet with powder. The amount needed to cover the ball was considered to be the best charge for the gun. This was, of course, a very unscientific way to determine this. Another method used was to fire the rifle or musket over fresh snow or any light colored surface. If black streaks from powder residue were found on the surface after firing, it was supposed to mean that too much powder was being loaded. Firing in dim light was also used to see how much powder was burned in front of the muzzle of the gun, i.e. after the bullet had left the barrel. Lots of sparks meant, again, that too much powder was being used. None of these techniques was truly efficient and the proof of whether the gun was loaded properly was really in the shooting. If the shot was accurate and/or killed the game being fired at, then the gun was properly loaded, regardless of whether it left streaks on the snow.

It was also believed in days gone by that the longer the barrel, the more efficiently the powder charge would work. Muskets frequently had barrel lengths ranging from 42 to 50 inches, although the use of the bayonet as a primary weapon also dictated the longer barrel. The American long rifle followed suit, and antique guns with barrels as long as 48 inches are not uncommon. On the opposite end of the spectrum was the German Jaeger (hunting) rifle. From very early times, Jaeger rifles were equipped with barrels from 28 inches or less to 36 inches. The shorter length did not seem to affect their range or power. When the American long hunters began to head west in the early 19th century, they quickly discovered that the longer barrels on their rifles were a hindrance when making extended trips on horseback. For that reason gun makers such as the Hawken Brothers and H. E. Leman began to offer rifles with much larger bores and shorter barrels than the Pennsylvania rifles had used earlier. These guns did not sacrifice any accuracy or power by having a shorter barrel. One thing a longer barrel did do that a short one did not, was provide a longer sighting radius. The shorter the sighting radius, the more drastic a sighting error will be. But, with black powder arms, and certainly with muskets or fowling pieces that did not have sights, this was not as important as it seems today.

From:
The Firearm in Scotland in the 17th & 18th Centuries by Lin Robinson and copyrighted 2006 by me.

A word about interchangability. I use 70 grains of FFFG in my .54 caliber mountain rifle. That is a reduced charge. It can handle up to 120 grains of FFG. I would not put that much FFFG down the barrel. FFFFG should never be used as a propellant in any firearm.[/i]

[Chad Arnow]

[Randall Moffett]

M.

Nope I mean the stick gun is more common during all the 15th all the way to the end.

Look at attacked. Illustrations first 1468 second 1499 (if not 1500)

If you mean arquebus over hackbut I guess since they are the same thing from what I have read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arquebus

RPM

[Elnathan Barnett]

Ok. Been looking around through my books tring to find the British Army Penetration tests from the Napoleonic Wars, but can't seem to find them. However, here is some similar information:

British Short Land Musket, India Pattern
Bore: .75
Optimum effect at 30 yards: Penetrate 3/8" Iron or 5 inches of seasoned oak.
Red Coats and Grey Jackets: The Battle of Chippewa 5 July, 1814, Donald Graves, p.168.

In numbers, I believe that a Brown Bess is supposed to generate 1200 fps and 1400 footpounds of energy with a standard service cartridge. I believe this was calculated with an earlier period musket with a longer barrel than the 39" of the India Pattern.

Lin,
I am going to have to disagree with you on some points. Gunpowder improved markedly around the turn of the 19th century. That is why barrels started getting shorter and heavier - heavier because because metallurgy did not keep up with the improvements in gunpowder and barrel makers had to add bulk to compensate, shorter because the powder burnt more efficiently and because thicker barrel walls demanded shorter barrels to keep to a manageable weight. Back in the 18th century longer barrels were required to burn the slower burning powder efficiently - There seems to have been an idea among German and to a lesser extent American smiths that rifling had to be one turn in the length of the barrel, which meant that twists of 1-30" were common in the short German pieces, which in turn necessitated comparitively small charges of powder. A longer barrel also is more consistent with erratic powder, which may have meant better performance in the boondocks. Also, the short barrels being used out west is something of a myth - they did get shorter but not as much as people tend to think - early Hawkens have 38-37" barrels, I believe - and later than is thought - only at the end of the Mountain Man period. Prior to that the "Kentucky" rifle was alive and well out west. Incidently, horses were a major part of Eastern frontier culture - one observer wrote that a "Virginian" would would walk two miles to catch a horse in order to ride one mile! In other words, if a long barrel was not a problem riding around in the Eastern forests it probably was not much more of a problem out west.

As far as I can tell, muskets did improve during the period 1570 to 1815, but the changes were aimed towards increased tactical flexibility, rate of fire, and better design. Quite apart from lock, a flintlock musket is a great deal more sophisticated in construction - screws instead of nails, more brass or iron trim, etc.