.72 Caliber Matchlock Musket

our whole people oh wow put the smackdown on it well guys welcome back this is Eric here with Iraq veteran 8888 today we're going to be talking about a very unique and special firearm the matchlock musket join me today we're going to have a look at this very interesting part of military history I'm going to bring my buddy Kevin along for the ride he's a big black-powder enthusiast such as myself we're going to talk a little bit about this gun shoot it some more shade loading procedure generally really fun gun to have out the range let's see if we can shoot some more stuff with it alright well Kevin and I are going to briefly talk about matchlock musket here matchlock muskets have a really really interesting history one of the first firearms that was even conceived by anybody was basically nothing more than just a tube tied to a stick with black powder and a ball stuffed in the end and he just took a match or whatever lit it and it just shot it towards the enemy and I think that the effect that those early crude weapons had was more psychological than physical I think that a lot of those weapons just scared people that weren't used to hearing them being fired but I think it's people really got to know more about the effectiveness of them as a direct weapon then they developed the match lock as a response to that make it a little bit more pointable and shootable won right a little more user friendly and yeah they were definitely demoralizing I mean just imagine all you're used to hearing is just the sounds of screaming so it's all sudden you hear boom you know yeah it's got to be a scary thing also and a pretty much rendered armor useless until the world wars yeah you know we didn't we weren't able to wear protective armor until then because of firearms and absolutely pretty pretty random so one of the interesting things about matchlock and why I wanted to do a video on a matchlock in general is because it was really one of the first firearms that came along with us to the new world when we when we first became a very early fledgling nation of miscreants and and nobody's right you know the mean light was really early on and this was one of the first firearms that would have saw use in the new world early on we're talking in mid 1600s or so the English used these in a very long and bloody civil war you know back then so a lot of really interesting things the match lock essentially what I'm holding here is a piece of slow match basically what would happen is you'd have a couple of Musketeers on line let's just say in the days of Musketeers when we think of match locks that's what we think of you generally have an officer an NCO back behind the line and he would have a big Lantern or whatever and he would make sure that all the soldiers are keeping their match lid if they went out and everything like that each musketeer would have about six or seven pikemen on the line protecting him during his reloading sequence because a good musketeer maybe one two shots every two minutes typical musketeer only carried about twelve rounds of ammunition on him in these things called apostles and the Apostles were just bottles pre-charged with everything they needed hanging off of them so each guy basically had like twelve hand grenades hanging off the garment right they've got from the Twelve Apostles right exactly so it's kind of scary to think that you know if you're on the line you've got a burning piece of match cord in your hand at both ends yeah at both ends usually they would light both ends black-powder bombs basically hanging off your body and I'm sure in the duress of combat there is quite a few people that would likely have set off charged at the wrong time or had you know the gun go off in their face or something like we grabbing the bottle with the left gives a mattress in your left hand so grabbing your bottle your left hand blowing yourself up but that really the it kind of made drills very very important to them because everything was such a long drawn-out procedure that drilling was a big big thing with them so they made sure that everything was in order now to put that into perspective I mean right now I'm holding a piece of burning match cord yes there's black powder on the table I'm very well aware of that I've got my match cord well separated from my black-powder a soldier in combat back then might not have had that opportunity generally the way that they would load the gun and we're going to go over loading procedure in a minute so I won't get you know bore you guys too much with that but basically there was a very complicated of drill movement dictated how they did it in order to facilitate the loading of the gun not only safely but in a quick manner I mean drill movements muscle memory even back then they understood that doing the same thing every time would yield the speed with practice now one of the interesting thing about matchlock is it turned any guy into a Archer figure if Archer back then required a lot of training to be able to shoot well a matchlock guy you could put could be armed with a matchlock musket can be trained in a few days right and be generally in good enough shape to be able to sling the ball on this thing ready to do it it was purposed for absolutely and so to put it in perspective this is a 72 caliber smoothbore matchlock musket does not contain rifling anywhere in it it's got a long barrel it looks ungainly but it's actually quite elegant and simple to point believe it or not this shape of stock is very common for what you would have experienced back then in various types this is a later style of matchlock musket that uses more of a sear style okay this serpentine these jaws hold the match and the match is lowered into the pan the pan contains a pan powder which sets off the main charge and expels the ball out the barrel very crude very simple earlier guns were what was known as a serpentine matchlock the serpentine was one giant piece that had no spring attached to it and when you squeeze that rod it would just lower the serpentine down into the pan this actually has a return spring and a sear arrangement this is a much later style of match lock so they're always fun to play with they are in the it's been pretty cool this is my first time shooting one yeah yeah they're not very common hey they have a friend that has one fortunately I'm fortunate enough to have that absolutely yeah it's it's beyond cool I mean it's definitely it gives you an appreciation for for where firearms now and yeah the evolution of it well the main point that I always want to drive home with these videos one is to teach a little bit about the history the guns that were using to to promote musketry I think that a lot of in a lot of circles and shooting circles black-powder a dying art yes and people you know this is an art form shooting these guns it really caters more into the art form than it does I mean there are guys that hunt with these things go out and try to kill deer with them and stuff but generally this is more of a heritage type thing like you know honoring military heritage honoring early heritage of early Americans and everything like that so we're going to shoot the gun some this particular gun I bought from a guy at a place called veteran Arms his name is Charles over there really good guy and one of the odd things that I'll just elaborate quickly on in this market per se these guns are kind of hard to locate it's not like you're really just going to find them laying around this is actually a entry level musket these this is not an expensive musket there's like 650 bucks they're not terribly expensive but these cans these can get up to two three drinks Oh easy you know you get some well-known gun maker who's well known for making these period-correct guns I mean they charge arm and leg for the guy and how many people are making them not meaning this video who knows how to make it yeah so this is definitely what you'd consider an entry-level gun it's not a fancy gun I'm going to be loading the gun from this possible pouch right here this is a really neat pouch that I picked up through track of the wolf I believe is where I got this one and it's from a place called the Leatherman black-powder bag calm it's made out of elk leather so it's got a ball starter spot for it right there I've got my patches in here my round balls and I got a little spot to put my pen powder flask which he has down here safely on the other side of the table this contains four F pen powder and then we're going to be charging individually to F powder charges put them down barrels so enough talking let's load the gun go over the loading procedure have a little fun so to load the gun first we're going to start out by charging the pan with some pan powder now this is not period-correct flask here this is actually for a revolver but you know what that's okay I'm drawing everything from my little Possible's bag I showed you guys earlier close the close the flash hole cover shake or blow off the excess powder take your charge which of course if we were doing this by the numbers the charge wiII be dispensed from an apostle contained on the shooter's bandolier pour it down the barrel lost a little bit of my powder that's okay not a big deal okay what you want to do is use some type of wadding material now sometimes they would use like a paper cartridge that's completely fine if you're using a paper cartridge dispense the powder into the muzzle grab the paper or wadding or whatever you going to use and scour at home I'm just going to start by starting the patches with my finger roughly I'm using for butter soap shooting patches now many of you guys are going to ask why we're not actually patching the ball that's not really the prescribed method for loading one of these if you patch the ball it's going to be a real bear to get down the muzzle take your scouring stick this is not a ramrod this is a scouring stick scour your charge and you're wanting home make sure it's nice and tight pull out your scouring stick grab your 72 caliber round ball placing it sprue down of course in the heat of combat wouldn't really matter you just grab it however you want stuff it in there but for my purposes I put it down sprue facing down scouring stick make sure the ball is seated against the charge and the patch material replace your scouring stick you don't want to shoot your scouring stick out of the end of the gun then you don't have a way to reload the gun right check your your pan to make sure your charge hasn't jumped around too much close the pan blow or shake off the excess tend to your match cord this is called tending the match grab the match cord give it a blow make sure you got a good ember otherwise the guns not going to go off you'll place the match cord into the serpentine jewels with careful consideration to the angle of the match in relation to the flash pan test to make sure it's in the proper location which it is give it one last blow open the pan you're ready to fire pretty easy let's see if we can hit that gone alright we shot our going we connected at this point you'll open up the serpentine remove the match 10 the match you'll place the match in your left hands musketeer would always load is musket holding the match in his left hand the entire time now for the purposes of the demonstration today obviously we're going to make sure the match is well away from the charge and a well away from the loading procedure typically they would have the match held in their left hand out of the way sometimes they would have a little hook on the end of their shooting stick that they could place the match on safely out of the way while they loaded the gun despite all of the drill procedures and the safety procedures and the drill movements plenty of accidents still occurred with this gun it's pretty crazy we're going to let Kevin have a shot see how he fares whoo that thing sure does wallop you know the invention of this really changed warfare like I was saying earlier this really just goes right through any kind of armor they would have had and punches right through it arrows crossbows you know all that stuff could have been reflected this just didn't another thing about this versus modern projectiles modern projectiles do a real good job of slicing and cutting their way in that's really just punched a hole in so when you're talking about an unsurvivable wound especially with their medicine I mean you got whacked with this you know you got whacked with something you know and like I said the effectiveness of these they weren't really a primary role it was everything everything at once so you still had your foot soldiers you still had your pikemen you had all these things this was definitely a supplemental thing especially when it was made but the English did a did a heck of a job with these things they're in their Civil War but I guess I'll let Eric get another one of these shots off and see we keep going here we can take another shot here I've got it setup we've been kind of going in real-time one thing I want to mention about this you notice how when kevin was tending the match the other end of the match got lit just from an ember hitting the end of the match so you can see where there'd be a lot of accidental discharges with these things you've got to really be careful when you're shooting them let's take a shot shall we tell you what we're going to try 100 yards put it on out there but I missed him about looks like about a foot or two to the left all right you notice that this burning match cord is consuming itself pretty quick slow match is much more than just a piece of rope on fire it's actually a treated rope that allows itself to have a controlled amount of burn for a specific amount of time now this match is one that I made out of nothing more than just some hemp rope soaked in a little bit of melted black powder I took some hot water and black powder melted it down soaked the Rope allowed it to sit and dry it's an effective slow match it does work but it's probably not a historically correct slow match you can see we're having a burning match cord burning on both ends would pose a safety risk for a soldier especially when you got these explosive bottles hanging from you all day I mean I imagine that a lot of accidents were pretty common also a soldier running guard duty in those days would consume about a mile of slow match because think about it you're walking around with this burning match cord okay you've got to be able to be ready to fire your musket at any time if you're pulling guard duty you can't just go in and light up a match to get ready you've got to be able to fire at an assailant immediately so sentries on guard duty each one would go through a mile of slow match even if they didn't fire a single shot on guard duty the entire year they still went through a mile of slow match so the interesting thing to note is that flintlocks are what what kind of this gave way to so we went from match lock to flintlock you're going to see a video coming from us soon where we're going to go through the entire history of firearms technology from around the middle of the sixteenth century to the current day make sure you stay tuned for that that's going to be a fun video but for now I'm going to let I don't have much low-mass left we're going to let Kevin have another couple of shots here have a little fun but usually a soldier would like both ends of the match cord that way if the concussion or whatever made that one end go out he could simply swap to the other end itting have a freshly lit in pretty cool whoo one thing about shooting this for sure versus all the other black powders I shot this thing Wallops you I mean the way this thing sits up here it really whacks you in the cheekbone it's like getting punched by Knight Mike Tyson every time you shoot the gun it's beyond fun as you can see it probably wasn't three minutes since Eric shot then me shooting and the match is already this low it's burning pretty quickly so there's a lot of things that you have to consider when trying to shoot one of these things against the enemy I mean I couldn't imagine the logistics of it just just as a soldier trying to do it it'd be very difficult I bet they were pretty happy to see the wheel locks come up although I did require a special tool to turn the wheel and all that it would have been a lot better than having to deal with these matches anyway I guess we'll let Eric shoot one more we appreciate it all right we're going to see if we can take out a watermelon here we haven't been doing a terribly high volume amount of shooting in this video because quite frankly we've had quite a few problems these things can be pretty temperamental to film we're going to try our best though we're not very far away hopefully I can connect with our melon here like Kevin said in the last statement he made there these things have devastating wounds pushing bone out of the back of the wound and everything they're really really crazy we've done some ballistics gel testing with these things you probably saw from earlier I mean they're they're pretty wicked guns devastating wounds but let's a have a shot on our evil watermelon here pretty decent ember hopefully she'll go off might work alright see if we tag our watermelon ha well I think we hit it we hit it with so much force we bout knocked his buddy off his feet there that was a pretty ridiculous amount of power you really can't argue with that big ol round ball slapping you they go heavy pure LED round ball 72 caliber I have a smoothbore matchlock musket it doesn't really get any better than that I hope you found this video informative and fun you know it's kind of hard when you're talking about two minutes per shot but it's definitely a ton of fun to work with a matchlock if you ever have an opportunity to fire one I strongly suggest taking the opportunity to shoot one maybe not really for everybody this is kind of one of those niche kind of things that maybe only a select few are going to really go through the motions to even worry about something like this in terms of shooting but we hope you enjoy the video thank you for watching special thanks to Kevin there at most palm for coming out and having some fun with us today much more on the way more black-powder more mill SERPs all kinds of fun stuff more gunsmithing reloading and if you haven't make sure you sign up for our email list go to iraq veteran comm you'll see a little box that asks you to sign up we're going to start doing a newsletter about every two weeks with all kind of cool behind-the-scenes stuff things that you won't want to miss trust me sign up for it that way you can also make sure you stand on top of mankind announcements as well thanks for watching catch you next time you

Channel: Iraqveteran8888

Views: 576,080

Rating: 4.9270015 out of 5

Keywords: matchlock, mathc lock, blackpowder, flintlock, musket, rifle, slow match, shooting a matchlock, reproduction, blackpowder rifle, blackpowder musket, iraqveteran8888, iv8888, eric and kevin, eric & kevin, veteran arms, veteran arms llc, reproduction matchlock, blackpowder reenactment

Id: Bk1oWUjS3UQ

Length: 19min 52sec (1192 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 22 2016