Chewed balls, who's tried 'em?

Painkillers

Painkillers

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Several lead balls salvaged from the battle of Ridgeway have surfaced, a healthy mix of American and Canadian projectiles and some of them (I suspect American) appear to be chewed.

Have any of your guys experimented with this type of distressed ball in your smooth bores and noticed a difference?
 
Can’t say I’d chew a lead projectile these days. Using your mouth as a magazine for your pellet gun as a kid is quite enough.

I would think chewed lead balls would be the level of field first aid back then when patients went through amputations.

YMMV

Happy holidays everyone
 
There was a famous colonial backwoodsman who while fighting on the run use to keep lead balls in his mouth for a fast reload.They say that he had eventually ended up of symptoms of insanity from lead poisoning
 
Slightly off the track, but... Rather than 'chewing' them in your mouth, roll them around under a rasp. Does the same thing, and is a lot less likely to make you sick :)

I've haven't shot any like that. Yet. But intend to try it someday and see how it goes.
 
I can not imagine some up here are thinking only one second that someone could chew a .75 or even a .54 caliber ball with their own teeth instead of using a tool. Please come back on earth guys... damn...
 
Several years ago on this forum this same topic came up and a few people, including yours truly, tried the idea of rolling a ball under a wood rasp to simulate the chewing idea for shooting unpatched RBs in a smoothbore. IIRC the results were inconclusive as to accuracy and precision, possibly because of small sample sizes. The single advantage I can imagine is that if rough enough to just fit the bore, then the ball would not roll out on its own when the muzzle was pointed down, as when shooting a running bison from horseback, for example. As for carrying RBs in the mouth, lots of shooters did it in tense situations, including mounted buffalo hunters chasing bison and shooting them from horseback with NW Trade Guns and the like.
 
BlackPowderBurner said:
Chewed balls are usually found on battle sites which saw use later on as pasture for pigs or have wild pig populations. Supposed human chewed balls rarely if ever can be attributed to human teeth.
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What brought the topic to light for me was the discovery of battle field finds from the battle of Ridgeway. There have never been any pigs anywhere near this area and they most certainly aren't any feral pigs...some of the American (Fenian) balls were chewed.

Two schools of thought, 1) a chewed ball increases its accuracy. 2) (I believe this to be the case in a military application) Chewing the ball negates the need for a patch, making loading faster.

A third factor could be ammo provided doesn't necessarily fit every Fenian firearm. It's possible the chew was just to make the ball fit an oversized barrel that isn't in the same caliber as the projectile?
 
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Chewed balls were generally from field hospitals where they have patients clamp down on lead balls supposedly to prevent a patient from biting down on his tongue as well as it opened the mouth for air during a surgical procedure most likely with out an anesthetic.(chloroform). Sticks and rolled cloth were used as well. Balls were also used in the trenches or behind the walls when soldiers tried to help their comrades. Chewed balls can be found in most CW museums and private collections.

A number of years ago some I know tried a chewed ball but ended up using a farriers file to dimple the ball so not to digest lead. The results were one that the pursuit was not carried on further. IIRC some one said the texture was too rough and not smooth like a golf ball.
 
I will not try to chew round balls for my .690 cal Charleville or .75 cal Brown Bess.....for sure.
I once tried to "chew" balls with a coarse wood rasp.....absolutely boring and useless.
The purpose of chewing is to tighten the ball in the bore so its diameter unchewed must be very close to it.
To replace patching ? the ridges of the chewed ball have to be big a lot.
 
Could it be that the roughened surface acts like the dimples on a golf ball? Would uniform dimpling on a round ball be worth trying?
 
MC One Shot said:
Chewed balls were generally from field hospitals where they have patients clamp down on lead balls supposedly to prevent a patient from biting down on his tongue as well as it opened the mouth for air during a surgical procedure most likely with out an anesthetic.(chloroform). Sticks and rolled cloth were used as well. Balls were also used in the trenches or behind the walls when soldiers tried to help their comrades. Chewed balls can be found in most CW museums and private collections.

A number of years ago some I know tried a chewed ball but ended up using a farriers file to dimple the ball so not to digest lead. The results were one that the pursuit was not carried on further. IIRC some one said the texture was too rough and not smooth like a golf ball.
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Many museums and private collections get it wrong. Especially American civil war museums and collections. I have seen many publicly displayed examples attributed to field hospitals with indents too deep or wide for human teeth. Has anyone besides me ITT tried chewing a musket ball? If you tried to mimic the so called chewed balls as displayed, you would need jaw surgery regardless of the fact your surgeon was in the process of sawing you leg off. I'm not saying it's impossible or never happened but the "common knowledge" doesn't match practical reality.
 
Painkillers said:
What brought the topic to light for me was the discovery of battle field finds from the battle of Ridgeway. There have never been any pigs anywhere near this area and they most certainly aren't any feral pigs...some of the American (Fenian) balls were chewed.

Two schools of thought, 1) a chewed ball increases its accuracy. 2) (I believe this to be the case in a military application) Chewing the ball negates the need for a patch, making loading faster.

A third factor could be ammo provided doesn't necessarily fit every Fenian firearm. It's possible the chew was just to make the ball fit an oversized barrel that isn't in the same caliber as the projectile?
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There are issues there, what roundball shooting firearm were the Fenians using in numbers at Ridgeway? As far as I've read, they had procured at that time mostly surplus Civil War used American .58 rifles and British Enfield P53s, both using premade .58cal cartridges that had Pritchett or Minié/Burton bullets. The Canadians were using P53 Enfields exclusively with premade Pritchett ammunition and a single unit was armed with Spencer rifles firing .56 Spencer actual rimfire cartridges, not a roundball.

No unit in the western world was issuing undersized balls en masse and ordering their men to chew them to fit. The 1860's were also not the time period of issuing regular infantry Fenian or otherwise loose roundball and powder horns. Ammunition was premade in paper cartridges to spec in large contracts. This included roundball ammunition for smoothbores like single ball and buck and ball cartridges. Even known problems during the Civil War like the Potsdam muskets or Lorenz rifles that did verifiably actually get issued with incorrectly sized ammunition did not entertain chewing as a solution locally or officially. Chewing balls for accuracy is as far as I have read and researched mainly a "mountain man" type activity rather than anything military. Happy to be proven wrong.

Chewing a ball enough to expand it suitably evenly to gas seal a smooth bore in place of a patch is also absurd. Try it, I have.
 
tiriaq said:
Could it be that the roughened surface acts like the dimples on a golf ball? Would uniform dimpling on a round ball be worth trying?
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Absolutely not.
Anyway, how would you proceed to obtain uniform dimpling ? besides the time you will spend.
There is a lot of folklore in any kind of shooting.
In France, they pass each ball in a device called a "zang" , metal box with a hole to let the shaft of a polishing disc through and connected to a drill.
Pedersoli sells a ball rounder.
I see no use for any of them except if you like shiny balls and in that case, you will regret to send them down range.
I cast my bullets, cut the stem and file it roughly.
I never read that anybody shoot a better score with a perfect shiny round ball.
Well, may be if you compete at world level and that routine adds to your confidence....
 
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