Attic - The Henry Whitfield State Museum

18th Century Musket Exhibit

These three muskets are typical of the Revolutionary and Federal periods.

It took about 30 seconds to load a musket. The cartridges consisted of a 0.7 in. lead ball and a substantial amount of gunpowder rolled together in a piece of paper (civilians used powder horns instead). The soldier tore the cartridge open and poured some of the powder into the priming pan. After covering the pan with the frizzen, he poured the remaining powder into the muzzle and rammed the ball with its wadded-up paper down the barrel.

When the trigger was pulled, a spring within the gun drove the hammer down. The flint, clamped onto the hammer, struck and pushed back the frizzen, uncovering the priming pan and sending a shower of sparks into it. The priming charge ignited with a whoosh, and flame and smoke went in all directions. Some flame passed through the flash hole, igniting the main charge a fraction of a second after the trigger was pulled.
The charge propelled the ball up the barrel and, incidentally, sent a jet of flame flaring out from the touchhole. Because it burned slowly and inefficiently, about half the gunpowder was ejected from the muzzle as a dense cloud (musket barrels are twice as long as modern rifle barrels because the charge took longer to burn). The ball fit loosely within the barrel, so it did not attain a high velocity and was only accurate to about 100 yards.