Jim Taylor
Friday Trivia
Friday, November 15, 2019, 07:07

One of the earliest ways to designate the size of the bore of a gun was to figure how many bullets for it could be made from a pound of lead. Since at that time all bullets were roundballs of lead, this made a good standard. In time this designation of 'balls to the pound' became synonymous with gauge, so that what our forefathers called '28 to the pound', we now call '28 gauge'. The British commonly used the term 'bore' for 'gauge', so their '28 bore' is the same as '28 gauge' or '28 balls to the pound'.

Knowing that there are 7000 grains in a pound, we can simply divide 7000 by 28 and see that 28 gauge balls weigh 250 grains each. If we measure one of those balls, we see that it is .550 inches in diameter. In modern usage that is the same as '.55 caliber'. The same relationship holds true for any size bore, of course.

An interesting observation is that there is an inverse (opposite) relationship between weights and gauges. In other words, as the gauge number goes down, say from 20 gauge to 10 gauge, the size and the weight of the ball goes up. A 20 gauge ball weighs 350 grains, and a 10 gauge ball weighs exactly twice that, 700 grains. Or, going the other direction, a 14 gauge ball weighs 500 grains, so a 28 gauge ball, twice the gauge number, weighs half as much, 250 grains.