Not enough Mayhem! We needed a barfight or a poll (I settled for a poll)

[Mako]

Okay... Still not enough effort here.

Get out of your strato-loungers and add to our reservoir (no matter how shallow) of knowledge.

Haven't you always wondered about this?  Believe it or not there really is an answer, but most of you won't like it.  It goes against the mystic arts of the way of the Black.

I wish we still had cookies to offer...

~Mako

PS  you get one vote, but cry hard enough I can go back and check the "Allow users to change vote"

[Professor Marvel]

All of the above excpet for the fairy part.

I shall fall back upon my trademarked reply "it depends" (tm)

Upon which I will expound further, at a later time, after I atend to Mrs. marvels meal

She took care of making sure I ate, and ate well, all thru my career as a computer weeenies, especially when I was on the phone and remoetely connected to a hot customer solving their problems ... she made sure I stopped and ate! So, now it is my turn to reciprocate!

In the meantime, I am entranced by the weight of fairy tears.
We, in the IT business are well acquanted with pixie dust since IBM introduced it in the mid '80s.

https://youtu.be/3nbEeU2dRBg?si=bS1oiA3wPileXUzi

Yhs
Prof marbles

[45 Dragoon]

  Well, it's not for lack of trying !! I flat out told a feller his JB Weld "plug" fix for the short arbor  needed to be scraped and replaced with real steel  .  .  .  noda peep since!!! I reckon there's just not enough feathers to ruffle!!

Mike

  Sorry for the "thread drift", carry on .  .  .

Thuther Mike

[Mogorilla]

Not familiar with fairy tears either.  Never made one cry.  Made. Few giggle, but those stories are not for this board.  Other boards maybe but not this family friendly one.        I am aware of fairy pee.  It is also called Sherry in some more gentile countries.   Give me whisky and beer. 

[Professor Marvel]

Got a bit of time.

Dont have acces to my documentation, the library is still in boxes and the main archived computer docs on the "raid disk array"
Are not yet connected. So, relying on memory:

Originally gunpowder had two uses: rockets and cannon. Since the gunpowder formulas were handled by Alchemists, and
All ingrediants were measured by weight, the resultant charges (which were large ish ) were also measured By Weight.

Fast forward to shoulder mounted arms - "hand cannon" and  matchlock musket charges were pre-measured By Weight and placed in a
cartridge bottle or Cartouche. When one ran out of cartridges, one was forced to use a powder scoop or volumetric measure.
I do not recall documentation , but can surmise that the ones in charge of loading the wooden cartouche bandeliers would
Measure either way, by valume or weight, whichever was most convenient. Bear in mind that reasonably precise powder scoops
Were far more available than accurate balance scales.

Fast forward and we find military paper and linen cartridges that were made in factories, often by woman, using scoops to measure the powder.

And again, in the field, individuals relied on powder scoop or powder measures after any factory made paper cartridges were used up.
There are historuc examples of powder flasks that have measures attached.

PenultimTely, since powder scoops are generally only accurate to +/- 5% , the modern long range shooters regularly weigh their charges, and additianlly use various methods to achieve consistant volume and compression.

Lastly, in the filed, under duress, with a flintlock rifle or musket, individuals actually fighting and having to reload rapidly, would use the magic server pixie dust method of dumping a random hopefully correct  amount of powder directly out of the powder horn or flask down the barrel and cram a loose ball ( no patch) as fast as possible in order to get off the next shot asap.

[Professor Marvel]

Oh and the unit of measure was originally drams, and later became grains

One grain is 1/7000 of an avoirdupois pound, or 0.065 gram

Difference between apothocary/chemistry measurement and jewler/gunmakers

I cannot recall if there is any documentation confirming or denying that the "grain" was baed on the weight of any sort of Seed.

Yhs
Prf mumbles

[Hair Trigger Jim]

Oh and the unit of measure was originally drams, and later became grains

One grain is 1/7000 of an avoirdupois pound, or 0.065 gram

Difference between apothocary/chemistry measurement and jewler/gunmakers

I cannot recall if there is any documentation confirming or denying that the "grain" was baed on the weight of any sort of Seed.

Yhs
Prf mumbles

"Grain" is sometimes said to be wheat, but I got no documentation here at the breakfast table.

[Froogal]

"Grain" is sometimes said to be wheat, but I got no documentation here at the breakfast table.

I need to check with my LEE reloading manual again, but I'm pretty sure that it defines a "grain" as being equal to a grain of barley.

[Coffinmaker]

Well 
If the origin is indeed a "grain" of Barley, tiz indeed a noble denomination.  As you must concede, Barley is usually converted to Beer.  In a similar situational analysis, Caffeine is normally converted to Code.  SO:

Has always been my position (Soft Recliner) that measuring Gun Powder has always started with an initial "weight" which was then converted to a "Volume" resulting in some form of simple scoop to dispense a volume equivalent in weight of Gonne Powder.  The beauty of which is an error, plus or minus a few "grains" or "ounces" in cannon speak, is mostly inconsequential, so long as there is no bore obstruction.

This discussion can also, in some realms, be compared to "The Chicken or The Egg".  Since nobody ever documented Which of that came first, and we have documentation the early ballisticians (didn't know they were ballistitions) began with a specific weight of Gonne Powder, well there you have it.  Mostly.  Almost.  Sort of.  Burma Shave

[Mako]

Coffin Maker,
I think you misheard (misread) or intentionally misunderstood the question.  We were not talking about beer, yet your mind immediately went there.

~Mako

[Professor Marvel]

Original manufacturors of gunpowder, being alchamists, measured all liquids by volume, using somewhat primitive gauduated flasks,
Graduated glass(ish) columns , or graduated or measured "droppers", or if small amounts , liquids were dispensed by "drops".

Drops, btw can be surprisingly accurate, since they are more dependant upon liquid density and surface tension than anything else.

all solids or dry particulate matter were measured by What they termed as "weight", using balance beam scaled and (supposedly) standardized weights. Of course "standards" varied by local, and era. That there is a whole another fascinating rabbit hole to dive down into.

We can go as far back as the "cubit" ....and b@tch about how innaccurate the ancients were ...
But instead i will quote the wiki article about the accuracy of ancient standards excavated from the indus valley:

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization

Snip quote.................

Early examples
Standard weights and measures were developed by the Indus Valley civilization.[4] The centralized weight and measure system served the commercial interest of Indus merchants as smaller weight measures were used to measure luxury goods while larger weights were employed for buying bulkier items, such as food grains etc.[5] Weights existed in multiples of a standard weight and in categories.[5] Technical standardisation enabled gauging devices to be effectively used in angular measurement and measurement for construction.[6] Uniform units of length were used in the planning of towns such as Lothal, Surkotada, Kalibangan, Dolavira, Harappa, and Mohenjo-daro.[4] The weights and measures of the Indus civilization also reached Persia and Central Asia, where they were further modified.[7] Shigeo Iwata describes the excavated weights unearthed from the Indus civilization:
A total of 558 weights were excavated from Mohenjodaro, Harappa, and Chanhu-daro, not including defective weights. They did not find statistically significant differences between weights that were excavated from five different layers, each measuring about 1.5 m in depth. This was evidence that strong control existed for at least a 500-year period. The 13.7-g weight seems to be one of the units used in the Indus valley. The notation was based on the binary and decimal systems. 83% of the weights which were excavated from the above three cities were cubic, and 68% were made of chert.

Endsnip quote.....

At one time various communities that had a large(ish) population of scientifical typoids (ie university towns) had publicly accesible standards thingies for the sake of "enabling uniform commerce and trade" .

Some folks attempted to use coins as a standard unit of wieght/mass but common handling wear and coin edge shaving resulted in a less than harmonious outcome. Edge shaving btw is why many coins ended up with "milled edges" or serated edges.

Another unique but laborious method of measure was to use "the volume of so many drops of distilled water, as measure from a pipette ending in a hole the size of  xyz ... ". Whereupon we end up with trying to duplicated the hole size, accurately marking the volume, the container material, where the water meniscus is measured, the temperature, humidty, barometric pressure, time of day, season of thr year, phase of the moon, position of the sun, and where the measuror held his/her tongue .....

One readily uniformish method was by using the "gauge" ie number of pure lead balls to the pound.

IF one had acess to an accurate balance beam scale and an accurate one pound weight/mass one could make sure that 20 of the 20 ga balls
One had for ones musket/fowler did indeed make up one pound, one can then use a single ball to measure the equal amount of powder, then pour that into a paper/ wooden/ whatever cartridge.... And/or use that volume to manufacture a container of duplicate volume,
(henceforth called a "powder measure" and/or "powder scoop" ) which can then be used in the field for a reasonabley close approximation of the appropriate volume, based upon the prior measure weight/mass ... +/- between 1-5 % depending upon the skill of the user and probably worse depending upon the distractions at the time ....   

[Professor Marvel]

Oh and I nearly forgot about the old hivernaughts measurement method.... (aka dementia ridden elderly grumps)  based
On baseless stories
of "put the ball in the palm of your hand and pour enough powder over it to cover the ball..."

Which WILL work , to some extent,  but leads to consistancy of +/ 50 % and also depends on
what is (or was) in ones hand contaminating the powder....

And they probably kept half a dozen balls in their mouth, spitting them down the barrel, on the run from thousands of hostiles....

"I killed over a dozen that way!
But  then they finally caught up with me!"

And what happened then grandpa?

"Wellllll .... They kilt me o' course"




Your Humble Servant
Back to Babbling incessantly
On ANY topic

Prof Marvel

[River City John]

I personally feel a grain of intelligence is what's called for when loading things that can go bang.

And as to the need for starting mayhem because the forum is too polite for your tastes . . .
I get enough of other's spleen in social media sites, don't relish the thought having to invite it in to play. 

[Professor Marvel]

Ah My Dear RCJ

It js all in good fun, after all.

Prf mumbles

[Coffinmaker]

Awrightie Then 

Sorry.  I immediately brought Beer into the equation.  Should have been the original result, which was Ale.  Using the measure as applies to Ale is most Nobler,  anyhow.  So There 

[Reverend P. Babcock Chase]

Howdy Dark Siders,

I normally don't participate here as I promised myself I would never shoot (more accurately clean) another black powder gun again in my life after years of working as a demonstrator for a Connecticut based company. That said:for some more mayhem, are all those old "dash" cartridges really "dash" or are they "slash"? And, let's not even start the whole .45 Colt deal again (for the hundredth time). Full disclosure: I'm a "slash" guy.

Rev. Chase

[DeaconKC]

What about using "henways" for a unit of measure?

[Mako]

Howdy Dark Siders,

I normally don't participate here as I promised myself I would never shoot (more accurately clean) another black powder gun again in my life after years of working as a demonstrator for a Connecticut based company. That said:for some more mayhem, are all those old "dash" cartridges really "dash" or are they "slash"? And, let's not even start the whole .45 Colt deal again (for the hundredth time). Full disclosure: I'm a "slash" guy.

Rev. Chase

Hey Rev,
My understanding is that the "Dashes" started with companies other than Winchester not wanting to put .44 WCF on their rifles or revolvers.  Then Winchester did something even goofier later that I'll put in another post.  Have you ever wondered why there is a 6mm Remington cartridge?  They actually called it a .244 for a short time when it wouldn't sell to Americans not knowing what a 6mm was. Winchester had the .243 Win and Remington didn't want to stamp that on their rifle barrels, very, very little difference between the two.  If you look at firearms all through the 20th century there are a lot of of designations intentionally marked to avoid giving the other company credit.  In fact it was years before Remington would even put the .264 Win in their catalog.

~Mako

[45 Dragoon]

What about using "henways" for a unit of measure?

  Hey Deacon !!!!  What's a "henway" ??

[Froogal]

  Hey Deacon !!!!  What's a "henway" ??

About 3 pounds.