Rifled musket shot loads

[David Lapell]

I was wondering if anyone ever had experience loading rifled muskets with shot charges. I was thinking of maybe working up some shot loads with #8 shot that I have lying around. the musket is .58 caliber.

[ead]

Of course you could fire shot out of your rifled musket , but in my experience the rifling in the bore seems to spread the shot out in a somewhat unacceptable manner except at very close range.

[John Holland]

In addition to the very wide pattern it will also lead the bore.

All of this stuff was figured out way back in the late 18th Century. Hence the PA/KY Long Rifles with straight rifling and others with rifle sights and smooth bores known as "Smooth Rifles". The straight rifling was short lived, but the Smooth Rifles had a long life span due to their ability to obtain very acceptable accuracy with a patched round ball, buck 'n' ball, and just plain shot loads.

JDH
KRA
CLA

[dml1296]

Since I retired (15 years ago) I have worked for a gunsmith who's core business is tactical shotguns. I have learned quite a bit about how shot works.
The comment about straight rifling caught me attention. Not very long ago straight rifling was tried in trap guns. It worked very well, but other methods
worked just as well. One of the reasons that shot loads expand after leaving the muzzle is that even in a smoothbore, the shot load spins. There have
been various devices designed to reduce that spin.

Of course, the reason shot does not work well in rifled barrels is because of the spin imparted to the shot load.