It’s a great pleasure to see you reenacting in British uniforms. Ah the glorious Brown Bess!

It takes a brave man to shoot a Bess through a chronograph!

Fantastic video as always!

A modern rule of thumb with muzzleloaders is to use a powder charge in grains similar to the caliber of the bullet. 50 grains for a .50 caliber muzzleloader, 58 grains for a .577, 75 grains for a big .75 (actually .69 or so), etc. When practicing, I usually use light loads of 30 to 60 grains, others just use 20 grains especially with black powder revolvers. But 164 grains for a thin-barreled Brown Bess as a standard service charge? Blimey! From britishmilitariaforums: In the second half of the 18th Century the Bess loads were up to 8 drams (220 grains) but this included priming and the use of balls around .680-.690. The important point of this was that the Ordnance was insisting on the same powder grain size for both muskets and cannons. This resulted in the need to manufacture special powder for rifles. Congreve's improvements in powder making (a subject in itself) resulted in the flint Bess charge falling to six drams (165 grains) in the 19th Century for a .685 ball and to include the priming as all flintlocks including pistols were ALWAYS primed before loading at this time. With the coming of the Percussion Bess the charge fell to 4.5 drams (124 grains) all of which went down the bore; the ball remaining at .685. www.tapatalk.com/groups/britishmilitariaforums/official-brown-bess-powder-charges-t11330.html

120gr out of a .75 percussion gun is thrilling enough... 160 looks like even more fun.

I'd like to see you guys do an episode on a walkthrough of making black powder sometime. I have done alot of the research myself but have been curious on your method, as there is not alot of people that have videos on that. The equipment, the safety considerations, etc.

Very very well done! Thank you!

Now this is more like it!. Now we can compare a flintlock smoothbore vs. percussion cap, rifle musket.

Bayonet charge should take care of the rest of those balloons. Interesting to see this and watch an Enfield 1853 vid back to back. The evolution is pretty amazing.

When the British figured out compressing the powder made it more dense, their powder charges were reduced significantly.

160 grains! looking forward to it.

You really showed Calvet the old what for!

@ 8:43 I'm really looking forward to that video! Me and a friend have been doing a lot of work trying to figure it out, and it looks to me like the muzzle velocity was ~400 m/s (if not more). Did you come up with a similar value? Or was it different? The last part is hard to tell since I don't know the charge you used that time. (we used a variety of powder types, and we went with the range data given from the 18th century--inaccurate as it might be. We were able to ~400 m/s with 6 drams of Swiss 1.5 F powder).

Now that was a "blast!"

"Those red balloons came on in the same old way and we saw them off in the same old way ..."

Do we know how the burning characteristics of 18th century powder compares to modern black powder?

Should make the cartridge out of laffy taffy, it would be an extra treat to load!

I have a replica Short Land Pattern, theory from watching home made black powder videos is period powder is not as powerful as modern commercial made.

This is fascinating as I just saw a video from someone who utterly dismissed the notion that British soldiers looked away as they fired Bess, but right there it is in the accounts of the time.

Are you using 1f, 1.5f, or 2f for this cartridge? I'm sorry if you mentioned it and I missed it.

I am honestly surprised that the British kept the large caliber and enormous powder charge for such a long period of time, when everyone else on the continent went for smaller bullets and less propellant. Its not like a 400 grain ball would kill a man or horse less dead than a 500 grain one, not to mention the enormous saving of lead, powder and the men's shoulders not being pounded by recoil. Might that it has to do with the supposed British "stiff upper lip"?

Oh, my bad. I was loading to 115 grains in my paper cartridges.

Who made that Bess reproduction? Is it a New Land Pattern?

The musket* The original assault rifle. Easier to load than a rifled bore. Three a minute . Higher rate of fire than a rifled barrel and at 70 yards just as accurate. The founding fathers ment to protect assault weapons with 2 A

My initial thought at the opening: "why turn away?" Lol. 160 gr. charge...a bit more than 70gr from my .50 flinter!

My understanding is that the black powder of to day is a bit more power full then powder of that time

What books are y’all showing the pages from? Very interested

Does this mean we can finally start a Napoleonic wars unit in Socal

Whatever became of Part II to this video?

Love me a Brown Bess.

I have a question Isn’t the same amount of powder poured in the frizzen no matter the charge poured down the barrel , Why would the flash be greater then ?

A larger flinch than Mel Gibson on the firing range i Lethal Weapon 1

I thought you said DRAGOONS

First. Also I was just thinking about getting one of these.

Looks like you all had a great time. Is it best to aim the Brown Bess like it were a shotgun?

Another question: why wasn't buck and ball not the standard load for smoothbores? From what I am reading it was effective out to 200 yards and increased the number of hits, even against rifled muskets at the same range. (see attached paragraph). if i remember my history right, smoothbore engagements mostly were within 100 yards. The only reason I can think of is that buck and ball cartridges are more time-consuming to manufacture. "Claud E. Fuller, in his book The Rifled Musket, shows tests of a rifled musket firing Minié ball, and a smoothbore musket firing round ball and buck rounds at various ranges against a 10 by 10 inches (25 cm × 25 cm) target. The firers consisted of several men in line shooting in volley. At ranges of 200 yards (180 m) and under, the buck and ball from the smoothbore musket, while less accurate than the rifled musket, produces a greater number of hits due to the greater number of projectiles. At 100 yards (91 m), 50 shots by smoothbore buck and ball against the 10 x 10 target result in 79 buckshot hits and 37 ball strikes, as opposed to 48 Minié ball hits in 50 shots. At 200 yards, 37 of 50 Minié bullets struck the target, vs. 18 of 50 smoothbore balls and 31 of 50 buckshot, for a total of 49 hits in 50 shots."

As you noted before, wasn't the service charge based on the uncompressed black powder, thus you needed more of it?

Merde!

Hey, your brown best isn't brown

Quality of Gunpowder made in Britain was poor compared to French made Powder. With that being said, the British probably needed a 164 Grains of Powder to get a decent charge lol... just saying!