Ball Bags

A practical ball bag can reduce your loading time. I first saw this design used by Mark Baker in one of his videos. It's simple, compact, and allows the user to easily extract a single ball with only one hand.  They are easily made using scraps of leather and no more than an awl, some saddle stitching needles, and some waxed linen thread. 

For the longest time we bought ball bags shaped like turtles that included a wooden plug to keep the ball within. I found that when a leather thong we used to carry the bag, it started to hurt. If we put the bag inside our possible bag, it became difficult to remove due to its size, and still required two hands to remove a ball. I believe everybody started out carrying their balls with this style of bag, I purchased this bag at a rendezvous somewhere, and decided that because the two colors of leather would make it easier to explain how it was made. As you can see in this side view of the bag the main body of the bag is made from beige-colored suede, while the neck of the bag is reinforced with pieces of dark brown saddle leather. Notice that there are horizontal and vertical lines of stitching which I'll refer to later..

When viewed from the edge, you can see the sandwich effect created by the leather layers. What is not visible is that the vertical stitching on the neck goes through all four layers, while the horizontal stitching only attaches the brown saddle leather reinforcement with the beige inner bag. Now if I were creating this ball bag from scratch, I would start by cutting two identical suede bodies, and two pieces of brown saddle leather to reinforce the neck. See the top photo at the top of this post.  Next glue a brown "neck" piece to a suede pouch body for side #1, and repeat for side #2. Now use a saddle stich on the horizontal stich lines to secure the neck reinforcements. Now repeat with the other side of the pouch. Leave some clearance for the circumferential stitching that will follow. Once this is done, the neck reinforcement will be firmly attached to the neck of the bag. Now align the two halves of your pouch and stich to two halves together. 

When complete, you can squeeze the neck and the two halves will open just wide enough to allow a single ball to pass through the opening. This particular bag works well with the .490" round balls I normally use, but if I were to make on for .610" trade gun balls I might need to make another ball bag with a wider neck. With a little practice you'll be able to extract the pouch from your bag, and squeeze the neck to drop a single ball. It may take some practice, but once mastered, it is so much faster than trying to pull out the stopper for a turtle ball bag.

Accoutrement Upgrades - Short Starters

As I mentioned in my last related post, I've relied on Mark A. Baker to give me insights into the life of a colonial long hunter of the mid eighteenth century.  As my persona evolved over the years, I followed his lead on my dress, my equipment, and my shooting technique. At some point I remember reading that he had not found any first-person documentation of a woodsman using a short starter. At our club's last rendezvous, I overheard a conversation to that effect. However, today nearly every shooter uses one. To use, or not to use, that is the conundrum. 

My ready response to that is this: What would you say if you saw an eighteenth century reenactor using chopsticks? Certainly stripping the bark from two sturdy twigs would not have been beyond the technology of the day. Is it likely that some frontiersman could develop the technique to use them effectively? That I cannot say, but it is not impossible. True, disproof of something's absence is not the same as proof of its existence. But certainly somebody could have made one, or had one made using the tools and materials available at the time. But I digress.

I must have owned a dozen short starters over the years. Unlike most shooters, I had a possibles bag for every caliber I owned. They were even color coded with a string of glass beads; red indicated .45, white for .50, and blue for .54.  Everything contained in the bag was caliber appropriate, so I was essentially equipping myself in triplicate. When I acquired a trade gun I added a fourth. Currently I have only one bag and one short starter, and only change a leather ball bag and the can of pre-cut ball patches suitable for .50 and .54 round balls. In a small tin box I keep cleaning patch jags for all three calibers, along with some other bits. But I carry only one short starter, and the one I chose may surprise some shooters. It is actually a pistol cleaning rod with a non-removable, 8/32 threaded .45 jag.

This proved to be a very practical solution because when loading a pistol, the process of changing from a short starter to a ramrod simply wastes time. Combining both functions into one tool is more efficient.  The integral .45 cleaning jag allows me to easily clean any .45 pistol I shoot, and can convert if to a .50 or  54 cleaning rod by simply threading on a different caliber jag. There is another advantage that is not so obvious; the increased length of the rod allows the short starter to hang from a loop more securely. It slips easily into a leather loop I attached to the side of my possibles bag. Easy in, easy out.

I further customized the short starter by sanding a flat spot opposite to the short starting plug. It hurts less to pound on a flat surface than to engage the rounded contour of the unmodified ball. I filed a groove in the side of the ball to prevent bumping into the ramrod if it isn't fully seated in the stock. There's a photo at the end of this post.

If this approach appeals to you, this loading rod is still available through Track Of The Wolf. Honestly, their website is far better for ordering newly manufactured items, while the perennial favorite, Dixie Gun Works, carries a much wider variety of parts, even stocking some original parts for popular  flint and percussion actions. A third option is the Gun Works in Springfield Oregon, which is still a personal favorite because of their incredible customer service.

In my next post I'll be talking about possibles bags and powder horns. I also want to give a shout out to the late Ron Griffin, a local shooter who was the first to encourage me to practice "loading from the pouch", since all rendezvous shooting would be done from the standing position and without a bench to work from.

Here's a photo of my flattened short starter ball. The short starter plug is on the opposite side of the flat. Much less ouch.