Just a heads up, Utreon's CEO has said they are fine with ammunition construction. So if you ever need a backup site! They also allow people to donate just like Patreon.

Like your safety feature with the covering of your frizzen.

Love these “ How To “ videos...! This information is priceless

As a former active duty Marine, I know from studying our history that the Continental Marines used buck & ball both on land and aboard ship. This makes sense to me, as a buck & ball load would certainly seem to be of great effect by sharpshooters in the rigging repelling boarders.

Great job! I really enjoyed this video. Attention to detail about the buck shot was good to know. Thanks for doing these how to videos.

Good job Mike! See you at Ft Loudoun Market Faire at the end of June.

Your period outfit is really cool. You forgot to link the patreon in this vid description. Always great vids

I totally get the perspective of modern riflemen , and of Reenacting of scouts and rangers in wilderness environments engaging individual targets one on one . But in the context of smoothbore millitary era of large engagements , and rudimentary marksmanship training ( not loading drill , but aim and squeeze accuracy ) , Buck & Ball would have greatly increased hit probability .

The formula for what size buckshot seats by 3’s in any smooth bore is: bore diameter divided by 2.19...for instance, my .54 cal / 2.19 = 0.246575342465753, round it to .24 cal (#4 buck) sets very nicely by 3’s and stacks awesome too.

I love buck and ball in my Pedersoli 20 gauge double barrel Howdah. Great video thank you.

One of my favorite channels

Mike, I love your historical how-to videos, as well as the range videos. Great video!

Thanks for the info. Looking forward to seeing the results of your test. I've a few muskets I'd like to try similar loads in.

Thanks Mike I always enjoy your content!

I really enjoy your videos, the help to keep me motivated!

Thanks for doing this series of videos.

Thank you for showing us this information and what you do!

Thanks for posting information on the buck and ball loads. I read about them years ago and they have always intrigued me.

Thank you Mike. I appreciate your content and know a host of others do too.

Good video, Mike. The reason I don't like buck & ball is that it is an embuggerance to load them. I do either buck, or ball. Much easier to deal with.

Thanks Mike! I really like military flintlock smoothbore content, I can't wait for next week's video!

Great video! I can’t wait to see them put to the test!

Mike, you are TOP SHELF! Doing these tests must be quite the effort!

Really great. I've had an interest in Buck 'n Ball ever since learning of its devastating effects during the civil war.

Great video, always enjoy your content.

As always, enjoyed your video

Mike - great video!!! I have enjoyed everything around the brown bess - just got mine last week. Will be shooting next week as all the stuff comes in!!! Will be making cartridges.

Excellent video. Excellent technique on making 18th century buck and ball cartridge

I really like the how to videos , I know it's a lot of effort.. Thanks for all the information.

Wow great video, a perfect explanation step by step on how an why of all of the procedures in the process.

a very popular topic for smoothbore enthusiasts. other nations may have used buck and ball, but "buck n ball" is a part of american heritage. cant wait to see the downrange effects

This is cool and it's going to help me with my book, thank you for the video and please don't give up you and others like you have help me a lot.

Acho lindo a paixão pelo antigo, uma maneira perfeita de preservar o passado...lindo..parabéns ❤

A couple points for you to consider about smoothbore muskets firing buck and ball cartridges. The Civil War saw extensive use of smoothbore muskets. The Springfield 1842 musket from the Mexican war was widely used in the Civil War. The 1842 Springfield was one of the first muskets with completely interchangeable parts. However, many other early smoothbore muskets from the War of 1812 and Indian conflicts were converted to percussion caps. These older smoothbore musket conversions were in the many tens of thousands in each state armories in both the North and South. The big revolutionary change was the percussion cap that made the muzzle loading firearm much more reliable in terms of consistent firing. The United States was a poor country in the 1850's, with Enfield and Springfield rifled muskets with the MInie ball only starting to come into limited federal use at the start of the Civil War. It took a good 24 months for supplies of rifled muskets and Mine balls to catch up with demand during the Civil War. The other important aspect to consider was black powder weapons fired in regimental volleys, including smoothbore muzzle loading cannon, produced enormous amounts of thick smoke. Skirmishers might have some open field visibility to utilize the potential of their rifled muskets with the estimation of range and aiming point essential for the parabolic "rainbow" trajectory of the Minie ball. At about 150 yards, the Minie ball rose upwards from level line of sight well above a human target. Poor marksmanship was a problem with the rifled musket with the rising trajectory of the Minie ball. The reality was most Civil War soldiers were poorly trained for estimating range, finding the correct aiming point to accommodate the parabolic trajectory of the rifled musket and Minie ball. Most Civil War battles were fought at 100 meters or less. The ability of the soldiers in the double ranks to see their opposing enemies in double ranks was extremely difficult with the foogy clouds of thick black powder smoke. The smoothbore musket with buck and ball fired in regimental volleys was an "idiot proof" system of "point and shoot." Again, most soldiers in the double ranks couldn't see much more than 50 to 60 meters in front of them after regimental volleys of black powder rifles and smoothbore cannon fired away at each other during a battle. The point here is both sides at the battle of Shiloh used predominantly ancient smoothbore muskets, quite a few Brown Bess muskets and shotguns. The battle of Shiloh saw each side shooting at each other at 50 meters or sometimes 25 meters or less in the undulating terrain, forests, and thick brush around Shiloh. The battle of Shiloh was a buck and ball/buckshot soldiers fight at close quarters with the thick brush causing disorganization and loss of command/control on both sides. Yet, the battle of Shiloh had 25, 000 casualties over two days of vicious close quarters fighting. The battles in the first two years of the Civil War were much like Shiloh. The Union side and the Confederate side at Antietam also had many regiments entirely equipped with smoothbore muskets loaded with buck and ball in what was the worst day of casualties for one day about 25,000 plus casualties. Most battles in the Civil War had a mixture of smoothbore muskets with buck and ball rounds in the double ranks and the skirmishers in open order with rifled muskets with the Minie ball until well into mid-1863 when the rifled musket/Minie ball became the predominant weapon most soldiers carried.the However, even with the rifled musket most engagement ranges between the Union and Confederates was about 100 meters or less. Most of the time officers told their men to hold their fire until their enemies were a 100 meters or less then aim low firing at their belt buckles. It was quite usual for Union and Confederate troops in regimental double lines to hold their fire until they were within 50 meters of each other. The heavy black powder smoke made it almost impossible for anyone to see anything beyond 50 meters or so during a large battle. Napoleonic battles were often fought at 80 meters or less. So the rifled musket with the Minie ball was an evolutionary change to military science. The muzzle loading weapons with black powder were nothing but dense smoke producing machines. The wisdom of regimental volleys of soldiers firing smoothbore muskets with buck and ball rounds became apparent because Civil War battles were hardly much different than Napoleonic battles or battles from the Seven Years War or American Revolutionary war.

Great work sir!!!!! Gonna try these in my 1816 Asa Waters .69 smoothie

I have been waiting for this video and it was even better than I hope for, very interesting and informative Mike so now I have to get my self a brown bess

Thanks for making these videos shore do appreciate it!

Great video, keep them coming!

First video of yours I watched and learned something new

Pleasant video

Great video Mike. Makes me jealous at all the different guns you get to shoot

Great video Mike

Great stuff!

Great video.

Sure!

I really like this video very well done.

Great info!

Good combination of technique and history.

I think it's about time you did a collab w/ Taofledermaus and loaded up some 12ga buck'n'balls for him to test... 😁 PS: I guess we've seen the last of the Enchanted Forest for the next 6 months? 😋

In Australia people loaded smoothbore pistols with buck and ball or just buck shot as essentially made your pistol more effective at close range. Which was perfect for street use and inside of houses and on horseback.

Great video

Well done, thank you.

Interesting video Mike little bit of History lesson included, saw your preview video you posted , looking forward to the regular video thanks

Good video as always

Can't wait to see how it does!

I really like your channel

Great video. Thanks.

When I first saw the movie Northwest Passage in a scene just before the Rangers attack the Native American town Spencer Tracy’s character tells his men to load “buck & ball”. As a 7 or 8 year old in the late 1950s I had no idea what that meant. Since then I have educated myself to the concept, but have really seen any evidence of how effective these loads would have been. So, greatly looking forward to these videos. If you remember in the movie the Rangers were attacking a sleeping town so the battle did not involve lines of soldiers across an open battlefield, but your test should shed some light on this decades old question for me. Thank you for doing these videos.

Thanks for the video.

Perfect timing actually

I love the buck and ball load!! It just makes soooo much sense!! But what do i know, lol? This man is the expert. I just thought those Irish Regiments kept it for a reason?? But from what i can see, when u compare the literature of the time, to that of today there's a lot thats been 'changed'... It's why it's best to trust the opinion of those who know the weapons best today.

I'm late to the party but buck and ball was used en masse by entire companies of musket-armed infantry. You don't have the means to get twenty musket-armed friends to blast away at a similar-sized unit. Even with that limitation, thanks for an informative and educational video.

Great video!

Good video !

Nice video

neat you found the 1850 officers ordnance manual online. I may have a look at it too

I just watched this after searching it and putting the link into the comments of the test video where you seem to have forgotten it in the description. Great video, very informative. I would like to encourage you to further consider and document your ideal test using the gel torsos, and to shop the concept around to perhaps The History Channel or The Smithsonian Institute etc. seeking funding.. I think it would be worth the production costs. I would even consider contributing to it if you were to crowd fund such an exercise, and to volunteer time to assist in the production if needed and/or desired, as I am fairly local to you and could make myself available most weekends for prep-work.

Im gonna have to make a few for my lemat on the shotgun and see how it performs

Looking forward to the results.

Nice its out finally thank you

Great content as always! The fellas at Fort Dobbs were loaded with a ball and seven buckshot. I did a video testing out that load. Pretty deadly stuff! :)

Wondered where you went as i hadn’t seen you for a while. Had to resubscribe.

Thanks ,always wondered about if your buck overlapped and wasn’t flat...

I can't wait. I've always wondered how effective a buck and ball load would be for my 50 cal trapper pistol. Probably poor accuracy but it sure would be a heavy load.

Hey Mike, couldn't find the link to this video in the description of the range review of the buck and ball...in case you wanted to know. Searched recent videos and this one was between intro & range test...missed this one somehow....thanks again for all you do to provide great videos and informative and entertaining ideas & content

Enjoyed!

Awesome thank you!

I gotta try that.

We've had some good weather this week for shootin mike I look forward to the next video.

Like the content,verry educational .David Back Menifee county Kentucky

What a great video, Mike, thank you very much. I really like the military shooting videos best of all, and this is a very good one. I am quite looking forward to the shooting video, and have been ever since I watched the teaser you did for it. It's a terrible shame KZfaq is filled with such mincing little communist pajama boys, but I really appreciate that you put these videos up even though you can't monetize them.

It’s ridiculous that YT would object to this type of content.

I saw this out of sequence . DAMN THE ALGORITHMS , FULL SPEED AHEAD !

Always wondered if you loaded the buckshot part under or over the ball. Thanks for showing that part.

Good Video

Idea for testing buck and ball: use a plastic or cloth wrapping material used by supermarkets to wrap pallets of goods and line the material up on the range like a man height curtain. Then shoot at desired distance and document the spread. I think this method was used by the Prussian military to test the effectiveness of firing lines.

Great video. Why not set the powder measure to 70gr, so you don’t have to change it every time.

I enjoy your videos very much I only have two black powder guns but maybe I'll get more because of videos like you make .not much fun if I don't know what I'm doing . lol

I’m just getting into black powder shooting. Looking forward to the opening of Fort Shenandoah this year. I’m about 10 miles from there.

Great video. Also never heard about Archive.org. Thank you.

Mike every time I see your vids my wallet cries! Recently I bought a Howell cylinder for a Uberti Walker in 45ACP (I had a ton of spare 45acp brass and cast some lead and loaded them black powder; given the cost/availability of cowboy loads in 45LC it made sense). This time it was a copy of that book: The British Gunner. Amazon was sold out, an original is in the thousands, but a local bookstore had a used copy of the edition you showed. Still was not cheap but.... Thanks keep it up. even if my credit card weeps :)

Have a Brown Bess and pondering making a Buck and Ball

Excellent video thanks Mike. I thought Buck & Ball used a smaller musket ball then 69.

Parabéns Gostei Muito Abraço Amigo 👏

Cliff hanger. Hahaha looking foward to shooting this thanks Mike. Joe Security.

Good stuff !! Any news on those paper targets ???

Halt the advance of those red coats! :)

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Mike...you need a loading bench. Makes things so much easier

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