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A muzzleloader is any firearm in which the user loads the projectile and the propellant charge into the muzzle end of the gun (i.e., from the forward, open end of the gun's barrel). This is distinct from the modern designs of breech-loading firearms, in which user loads the ammunition into the breech end of the barrel. The term "muzzleloader ...
The most common applications of paper cartridges were in muzzleloading firearms. While these may be loaded with loose powder and balls or bullets, a paper cartridge combines a pre-measured amount of powder with the ball in a sealed unit. This eliminated the operation of measuring the powder during loading.
For example, because Pyrodex, a common black powder substitute, is less dense than black powder, a measurement by weight on a scale of 60 grains of mass of Pyrodex would be near a 30 percent overload. Volume equivalence is a benefit in loading muzzleloading firearms, traditionally loaded using volumetric measures.
Projectile (early on with shot and then later on with shells) and powder charge are loaded via the muzzle and rammed down the barrel, and then fired at the target. Muzzle-loading artillery came in smoothbore and rifled form, the rifled guns increasingly taking over from the smoothbores as time past and technology improved.
By the 1840s, buck and ball was issued in prepared paper cartridges that combined the projectiles with the black powder propellant charge to facilitate rapid loading of the weapon. Like any other paper cartridge, the rear of the cartridge would be torn open to expose the powder, which would be loaded, and the remaining paper, ball, and buckshot ...
In early black powder guns such as muzzleloaders, the primer was essentially the same chemical as the main propellant (albeit usually in a finer-powdered form), but poured into an external flash pan, where it could be ignited by an ignition source such as a slow match or a flintlock, though some muzzleloaders have primers like cap gun caps ...
A muzzle-loading rifle is a muzzle-loaded small arm that has a rifled barrel rather than a smoothbore, and is loaded from the muzzle of the barrel rather than the breech. Historically they were developed when rifled barrels were introduced by the 1740ies, which offered higher accuracy than the earlier smoothbores.
A plug-shaped breechblock was screw-threaded so that rotating the handle underneath would lower and raise it for loading with ball and loose powder; the flintlock action still required conventional priming. The Hall rifle: First U.S. cavalry breechloader, originally made in flint but later made-in and converted to percussion in 1830s–1840s ...