Jezail 3: Return of the Not-Quite-So-Killer Jezail

RDGAC · 17th September 2012, 07:57 PM

Right, maybe a pointless or silly question ahoy.

As I always do, when I got this musket I had a prod down the bore with a long dowel (the ramrod being absent), and theorised that the process of spiking/stopping the barrel up had left a blockage which resulted in the dowel stopping around 1in short of where it probably should, based on the position of the spoked touch-hole/channel hole.

However, further checks have made me more cautious; I now suspect that there may be a charge and/or projectile remaining in the barrel. With that in mind, I wondered if anyone knows roughly how long a fairly typical load for a .50in musket such as this would be, i.e., how much of the bore's volume would it fill? A charge with a "length" of one inch - or, if there's a 0.5in projectile atop it, 0.5in - seems fairly small to me, but I've very little experience to go from. My first jezail (c. 1870, 20 bore/0.6in) was loaded with a charge with a length of around 1.5-1.75in, as I recall; that's about all I have to go on.

17th September 2012, 07:57 PM	#3
RDGAC Member Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: York, UK Posts: 167	Typical charges Right, maybe a pointless or silly question ahoy. As I always do, when I got this musket I had a prod down the bore with a long dowel (the ramrod being absent), and theorised that the process of spiking/stopping the barrel up had left a blockage which resulted in the dowel stopping around 1in short of where it probably should, based on the position of the spoked touch-hole/channel hole. However, further checks have made me more cautious; I now suspect that there may be a charge and/or projectile remaining in the barrel. With that in mind, I wondered if anyone knows roughly how long a fairly typical load for a .50in musket such as this would be, i.e., how much of the bore's volume would it fill? A charge with a "length" of one inch - or, if there's a 0.5in projectile atop it, 0.5in - seems fairly small to me, but I've very little experience to go from. My first jezail (c. 1870, 20 bore/0.6in) was loaded with a charge with a length of around 1.5-1.75in, as I recall; that's about all I have to go on.