Can anyone tell me about muskets....

Try these sites


http://www.elverumske.no/esc_english/weapon_eng.htm

http://www.jaegerkorps.org/neumanNRA.html

http://www.kismeta.com/diGrasse/PolishFirearms.htm

If you would like...

to have less mechanical details try watching 'Sharpe's Eagle', a TV drama now on DVD, based on one of Bernard Cornwall's books about a soldier who makes his way through the ranks to officer, thanks to Wellington and the Napoleonic Wars. (19thC) There's a good passage where he is instructing the new soldiers on how to use their muskets.

You need to see how a musket works to understand the noise, the smoke, the powder on your face and up your nose, your dry mouth from ripping open each cartridge with your teeth to get the powder for the pan and the bullet to force down the muzzle with those awkward ramrods.

If you can get to a 'black powder' group (I think you call them that in the US) there will be some kind enthusiast only too happy to demonstrate or even let you have a go. It's amazing to see a group firing and see the smoke like thick fog, and smell that smell!

And then there are the flintlocks ... for which you have two powders and an unbelievable delay between the time the powder in the pan burns and the powder in the barrel finally ignites and the ball leaves the muzzle. Puma

Those were the days!

Ah yes, and the powder in the pan caked and the flints chipped...
The joys of muskets.

A long bow really was more efficient but it took so long to train an archer.

Best hands on would be a black powder group as has been mentioned. About a decade ago, for a WIP, I got my bro-in-law to let me load and shoot a musket.
Watching them on film is okay but actually using one offers much more experience!

this might be common sense, but you also had to keep the gun powder dry. it was generally rolled in random pieces of paper. apparently it also takes forever to load one.

There are reenactor groups around who host events on the anniversary of actual battles. Interesting thing is, these days the reenactors outnumber the original participants in certain battles (like Gettysburg). Show up for one of those and you can learn all kinds of things about muskets, period clothing, and possibly even speech & language.

Harry Turtledove describes later muskets well in his "Guns of the South" in an interesting comparison.

American Civil War muskets were a bit different to those of 1750. The 1750 musket was a flintlock weapon which caused a hammer mounted flint to strike a grooved piece of metal to cause the sparks to ignite the power in the pan and then the barrel.

The American Civil War muskets used a hammer to hit a percussion cap filled with fulidimide (incorrect spelling) of mercury which would then explode the charge of power in the barrel.

A good non-fiction text for 1750 would probably be Richard Holmes' Redcoat. Bernard Cornwell's book of the same name will have Brown Bess pattern muskets in (although it is about the American war of independence).

Lloyd, I've read Turtledove's books on the second and third American civil Wars but not Guns of the South. What is it like?

It rocks. I thought the coolness of AK-47-armed Rebels would be enough to carry the story, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that Turtledove is an exceptional storyteller, too. Which you already know if you've read other works. He really captures the personality of Lincoln, Mark Twain, and others well.

Check out -

http://science.howstuffworks.com/flintlock2.htm

funidream