Can Minie Balls be fired from Flintlock rifles?

[Som910]

Lead has a low melting point and was routinely melted over campfires and poured into the molds. Standardized manufacturing do not exist ,that is why every firearm came with its own mold to produce its own ammunition.
Manufacturing your own ammunition was not common it was the norm.

That's interesting. I guess there would have been a lot of accidents during it?

I can imagine a scene where a bunch of troops are melting lead over a fire and a night raid happens, and suddenly, there is molten metal flying in the air.

And any idea if they also carried massive amounts of gunpowder as well or it was parceled out before a fight?

 

[A Repentant Heretic]

Well, one is a bullet and the other is a firing mechanism, so yes.

The 19th century Koreans, for example, were known to have replaced the caplock mechanism of imported rifled muskets with locally made matchlock mechanism.

 

[marathag]

That's interesting. I guess there would have been a lot of accidents during it?

I can imagine a scene where a bunch of troops are melting lead over a fire and a night raid happens, and suddenly, there is molten metal flying in the air.

And any idea if they also carried massive amounts of gunpowder as well or it was parceled out before a fight?

India? not sure how thwey did it, but western armies would use smaller wooden kegs, 6 to 50 pounds, and would then get transferred to horns or flasks

Cossack and Caucasians would use smaller tubes, Gaziri to hold powder

Typical lead pot and dipper for bullet molds

Brass round ball Mold

Notice no wood handles, and no built in sprue cutter plate ontop, as in the modern mold I posted upthread.

Dangerous, yeah.
Long time before people would be worried about safety, After pouring the molten Lead in with the dipper, it would start to solidify, would have to wipe off the excess lead while soft, otherwise once solid, would have to use a knife to cut the sprue from the ball

 

[Dave Howery]

Probably, but im not sure many flintlocks were actually rifled.

military, not so many until Napoleonic days. Civilian, quite a few.

 

[Georgepatton]

Lead has a low melting point and was routinely melted over campfires and poured into the molds. Standardized manufacturing do not exist ,that is why every firearm came with its own mold to produce its own ammunition.
Manufacturing your own ammunition was not common it was the norm.

This was considered in the advantages of the above-mentioned Kentucky long rifles - because they typically fired a smaller-diameter bullet, lead was conserved relative to a larger-caliber musket ball.

 

[pjmidd]

Lead has a low melting point and was routinely melted over campfires and poured into the molds. Standardized manufacturing do not exist ,that is why every firearm came with its own mold to produce its own ammunition.
Manufacturing your own ammunition was not common it was the norm.

Only for hunters , armies were supplied mainly by the use of shot towers to mass produce balls. Basically molten lead is poured through a sieve and falls a couple of 100 feet into water. Surface tension makes the drops spherical and the distance allows the lead to cool enough to be solid enough not to deform on hitting the water.

A still standing example, that was actually used to supply Napoleonic armies, is

Chester Shot Tower - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[RamscoopRaider]

Only for hunters , armies were supplied mainly by the use of shot towers to mass produce balls. Basically molten lead is poured through a sieve and falls a couple of 100 feet into water. Surface tension makes the drops spherical and the distance allows the lead to cool enough to be solid enough not to deform on hitting the water.

A still standing example, that was actually used to supply Napoleonic armies, is

Chester Shot Tower - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The issue is that it works for shot, not musket balls. A 40 meter drop is needed to make #6 shot at 2.4mm diameter, an 80 meter drop is needed to produce #2 shot, which is 3.8mm in diameter, typical British musket ball was something like 17.5mm, not making that with a practical height of tower. Shot towers were not used for Musket balls, they were made in molds, the excess trimmed off, then tumbled to smooth out. Later on the swage method was used, where lead bars were fed into a machine that compressed and cut them to size, fed into a die with excess removed by hand, but that is post Napoleon AFAIK

 

[bpbruce]

By the time Minie balls were invented, Percussion Lock mechanism was already popular. So I am unsure how apt Minie balls are for flintlock rifles. Anyone could shed some light on this?

It's odd no one used a conical bullet before the Minie. They tried everything- an Elizabethan account mentions a harquebus using a x-shaped cross section slug slid down a suitably cross-sectioned barrel. 'Baker's Remarks on the Rifle' in 1805 got really passionate about 'filth left in the barrel' and different types of bullet molds. If anyone could come up with this and spread it, the man who made the British issue Baker Rifle could have. But nobody I know of tried it.

 

[Dave Howery]

But nobody I know of tried it.

it seems to be one of those things that 'nobody thought of.' It was certainly within the capability of the technology of the time (unlike caplocks)...