At this point, I hope my long-time readers understand that Mick is nothing like me. He’s pretty much the opposite of Jay in the old FLEM series. If I had to say there’s an I-guy in this, it’s Omar. More on that in a bit.
Yes, I may have said this kind of thing to myself when I was younger.
God, I wish I had a high-speed camera and tons of disposable income:
I got to watch 10-pounder Parrott rifle vs Piano, back about 20 years ago. It rammed a foot-wide chunk of the cast-iron harp into the backstop, at which point the string tension collapsed the harp. A pity that video wasn’t around.
BTW, historical nitpick on his “flintlock” comment: The Continental Army didn’t use rifles. They used the same smoothbore muskets that the Brits did. Rifle + round ball = 1-1/2 minutes or so to load. Brown Bess with a qualified operator = 4 shots a minute. Joe Rifleman may be able to pot one Brit at 200 yards or so. Before he can reload, 500 of that Brit’s closest friends will have charged, and rammed bayonets up his ass.
Modern-day roundball shooter nitpick: I’m fairly slow at loading my .45 muzzleloader, and even I can get off four shots in five minutes during the rendezvous “fort shoot”…and the time I did that I dropped the damn pouch once and had to scrabble around on the ground finding it in the leaf litter.
I’ve seen skilled flinter advocates get off a shot every thirty to forty seconds. You have to get to know your rifle up close and personal like, try all the different thicknesses of patching and combinations of lube, etc.
Point. I’ve never bothered to get fast with roundball rifles, since I got spoiled by Minie’ bullets… I still don’t use roundballs in my .45 flinter. After I bought it, I Googled up a projectile called a Buffalo Ball-et. They work fine, but unfortunately they seem to be out of production at the moment :-b.
*still giggling*