Flintlocks

[House of Usher]

Wikipedia reckons bullets, from the French 'boulette,' which means little ball. So bullets/balls interchangeably. The article even refers to ammunition hurled from a sling as bullets.

They were also called rounds. Because they were round.

[Proudhuff]

Balls.

I see the tourettes isn't improving

[TordelBack]

T'aint.

[Peter Wolf]

This may be a seriously stupid question, but I thought I'd ask: do muskets/flintlocks fire bullets? Meaning, would they have been called bullets - or balls or whatever? Was the term "bullet" used at the time? Thanks in advance.

The balls/rounds were always made of lead and usually your gun would have its own mould for casting your own ammunition out of molten lead.

I have got a late 18th cent Flintlock pistol which is a standard issue govt pistol from the Tower armoury but i have never attempted to load it and fire it.

[Delingpole]

To the Doctor Alt 8: Thanks. Were you at Tewkesbury or Kelmarsh this year? Our paths may have crossed. I was (incongruously in the case of Tewkesbury) in Napoleonic redcoat kit for both.

To locust of death: That is far from a silly question. To be honest, I don't know if they referred to the rounds as bullets during the time of flintlocks. I think it was just balls. It was musket ball, cannon ball.

The shot was indeed an often poorly cast lead ball which would come rattling out of the smooth bore of the musket or pistol. When rifling (the spiral grooves in the barrel) was introduced, most notably with the Baker Rifle used by the 95th Rifles (yes, Sharpe and his boys), the spherical ball was wrapped in a leather pad and pretty much forced down the barrel, sometimes even hammered, so it sat snugly in the grooves and came out in a reliable way. This reduced the rate of fire from up to 4 rounds a minute from a musket to as slow as one round a minute from a rifleman, but the accuracy the rifle gave the 95th enabled them to pick off French Officers at 200 yards, while the musket would be lucky to hit it's target at 50.

By the time the three-band Enfield came in, the round, I believe, was bullet-shaped and didn't require a leather jacket, but would still have been muzzle-loaded.

I've had a go at live firing all these, including a flintlock pistol, at a black powder day at a shooting range. And it was awesome. Especially the pistol.

[The Doctor Alt 8]

To the Doctor Alt 8: Thanks. Were you at Tewkesbury or Kelmarsh this year? Our paths may have crossed. I was (incongruously in the case of Tewkesbury) in Napoleonic redcoat kit for both.

Sorry Delingpole we couldn't make Tewsbury this year. We had a paid local event instead.  This turned out to be a "bleassing in disguse" when you concider what  happened to our trailler.

(partly our fault it WAS overloaded) but that sneeky pot hole did not help!)