I may have misunderstood what the Colonial Williamsburg guy said in the Armory, being a little fuzzy on the colonial period, but my understanding was that except for the Crown-issued arms in the Armory, ammunition was not interchangeable among militiamen (if you brought your gun from over the fireplace, for example) and that one reason you had to show up with a gun, a knife, and however many pounds of balls to fit your gun was that they wouldn’t fit anybody else’s gun and the enemy wasn’t going to wait around for you to make some more balls. And I get that you’d have your little ball mold and make your own.
So, uh, how did you know how big to make them? Were there standard sizes, just not one standard size? (Like railway gauges before standardization?) When you bought your musket, would it just come with a ball mold that would make balls to fit it? What up with that?
Um, you tended to get the ball mold in a specific size. Musket barrels were drilled out for the most part, though there were a certain number of one off forged damascus barrels. Honestly, it is not that hard to carve a soapstone ball mold or even in a pinch a wooden ball mold.
If you also watched the firing demonstrations, the way you load is to dump a measure of powder in the barrel, then shove in a ball in a cloth wad, the cloth wad being the gasket to sort of seal the ball into the barrel. I am sure that a black powder enthusiast will be along shortly=)
Many years ago I took a tour of Williamsburg. They hand-make rifles and muskets for sale (with a 5-year waiting list), and I remember thinking how clever the rifling mechanism was. It consisted of two twisted wires, and a cutter that fit the barrel and rode on the wires. I didn’t see them using it, but I assume they would heat the barrel until it was soft, and then place the wires into the barrel, and force the cutter down the barrel, where it would twist as it followed the wires, cutting groves as it went.
The term “musket” usually refers simply to any muzzle-loading longarm, but it can also be used to refer to an unusually long cartridge rifle, especially some of the Winchester repeating rifles.
Pre-Civil war barrels were hammered over a iron rod and (formed if you will). When the Government inspector would inspect barrels ordered for military contracts, he would fill them with water. Those that held water would get his stamp. Many barrels that didn’t pass would be sold on the civilian market.
The barrel would not have required heating to machine it. In fact as slow as those old rifling jigs cut, there probably wasn’t even much heat generated in the process.
Almost every rifle made on the frontier came with its own bullet mold. I would bet that many patches were used to hold a bullet into the barrel were used before it became a general practice to use a patched ball.
When a rifle shoot was held prizes were usually parts of a butchered steer or pig, but the log used as a target backstop was also awarded as a prize for the lead in it.
Don’t forget that if you’re patch-loading you can afford for your lead ball to be a rather loose fit - it’s the patch that gets driven down the barrel, pushing the ball before it.
The tolerance goes in the other direction, as well. With some bore butter (ball lube [teehee]) and some elbow grease, you can jam a slightly oversized lead ball into a barrel. You’ll shave off a little of the edges, and it takes some work, but it can be done. Back when I was playing with black powder stuff and making my own balls, I made one batch a little too large. That led to a lot of cursing, eventually a broken ramrod, and many little circles of lead removed from the ball.