Back a couple of years ago I had an idea as a Civil War Reenactor (Co. A 3rd Maine) of combining pb with reenacting. Authenticity would have to be compromised a little on account of safety equipment, but I don't see that as a major hurdle. We would be doing this for fun, not for public "living history" reenactments where we use real muskets firing black powder blanks.
Here is my replica M-1842 Springfield .69 cal. smoothbore musket:
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It takes a paintball quite handily and with a squib charge of about 5 grains of FFG and a good thick wad of toilet paper it will put out a paint ball... sometimes intact, even!
I splatted my old shed with a couple. Of course by the time decent velocity is approached they come out as a cloud of smoke and spray!
Of course we would never use anything powder propelled at live opponents.
There is also a CO2 charged "discharger" device for clearing obstructions (like a ball loaded without powder) from a muzzle loader. It occured to me that if such a rig could be activated by the fall of the hammer it would make a dandy PB launcher, and those pesky Rebels who keep yelling that we missed 'em would know for SURE!
In the CW they used to line up shoulder to shoulder by the thousands on the battlefield and volley away at each other. With the advent of the rifled musket those old Napoleonic tactics proved to be horrendously costly in terms of casualties.
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Replicating such an encounter even on a small scale with paintball would surely be instructive as to what those old Veterans endured.
The original 1842 was loaded with a 1-oz. lead ball along with 3 .32 cal. buck shot; "Buck & Ball" over 95 grains of black powder. Now you want to hang on tight when you touch one of those off!
The Irish were particularly fond of it. Not all that accurate, but devastating at close range, as the Rebs in the Sunken Road at Antietam found out. The Micks were fond of bayonet and buttstock close up and personal as well.
I put away my drawings and parts when we moved a couple of years ago and I have yet to dig it back out, as I really don't know enough about PB tech... yet.
But if I can team up with someone who does and has an interest in history, who knows were it could go?
By the way; the '42 is essentially a copy of a French musket that was a slightly modified version of the Charleville,
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which was used by a lot of Colonial Minutemen during the American Revolution. Substitute the percussion lock with a flintlock, and you could do splatball RevWar, too!
That might make a reenactment of Lexington or Concord somewhat more interesting!
