>>64277851
>The ball is affixed to the wad to form a cartridge, remember?
The ball is enclosed in paper but beside easier loading it was only really needed to keep the ball from falling out.
When the powders explode, the shockwave is only resisted by the ball itself and the gas seal effect is minimal.
In the first place you wouldn't want paper that resist to the point of influencing the trajectory or stay stuck in the barrel.
The mistake of the author (beside the ram ends) was to draw it as an even older type of musket, forgetting the cartridge.

>>64277653
Where did YOUR knowledge come from? It better not be from those book.
A bullet that squish would make a poor projectile, the paper friction is what's keeping it from sliding down.
Saying the slightest obstacle can cause failure is kinda making my point, the hardest obstacle is the bullet itself, you don't want it to get stuck, while paper is, well, paper.

I'll only concede is that it doesn't really matter if there's extra paper between the powder & the bullet, so long as the bullet is kept from falling out.

https://youtu.be/xCrscZljkwc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh8gaYDtZMs