Minie Ball

zebra26

zebra26

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First off I don't know a lot about BP shooting.

The new in line guns look OK but the rounds look to be a bit expensive.

So what about the more traditional rifles. Anyone making and shooting their own minie ball ammo as opposed to round ball lead ammo?

If so, what gun can shoot this type of round?

I figure the minie is more accurate than the round ?
 
Minnies are meant to be fired out of a musket. Muskets are military rifles and are large caliber (usually .58 ) and are comparatively long and heavy compared to most black powder rifles with the exception of the carbines like the Musketoon. If you like the look of traditional muzzle loaders welcome aboard. Now....a patched round ball in a gun designed for one is very accurate. What that means is you should look for a gun with a slow twist such as 1 in 62 or more. You can get a gun with a compromise twist such as 1 in 48 but you will be restricted to the load that will work best and stick to it. I have had guns that had 1 in 48 twist and it took a little trial and error to find which load they preferred. Don't underestimate the effectiveness of a patched round ball. There is a recent thread on it in this forum.

Cheers. Steve.
 
I'm not the best person to give advice on this topic, but I'm going to anways :p

Lots of people cast their own ammo - a lee melting pot is something like $50-$70 and a lee aluminium mold is usually around $25. Just plug it in and go. For minie balls you might need pure lead to get better expansion of the skirt.

The Pattern 1853 enfields made by parker hale in the 1970's are really good minie rifles, but there are lots of others out there. From what I can tell, historically most minie rifles were military guns and so tended to be big and long.

As has been said, round ball can be pretty effective accuracy wise, so don't limit yourself by only what shoots minie balls.

Probably your best bet is to find a blackpowder club or shooter in your vicinity and go shooting - you'll have a lot better idea of things once you've shot a few different black powder guns.
 
If you are shooting 100 yards of less, I would go with patched roundball. Buy new fabric, 100% cotton and buy it with a micrometer. You will have to experiment a bit with patches scrounged off friends to find what thickness of patch your gun likes.

There were two distinct types of minis in the mid 1800s (broadly speaking). The british appeared to use one with a thick skirt about .1" thick and I think with a cavity that tapered to a flat top. By the cartridge era, these had evolved through wooden plugs, sheet metal plugs and finally to a mixture of clay and bees wax so that in the final form used in Sniders, the cavity was only about .1" deep, the rest filled with the clay and bees wax. The americans used a mini with a cone shaped cavity that ended at the bottom with a thin edge. I think that the bottom of such skirts were prone to distortion with heavy charges. Light charges with either type did not expand the slug and would also give poor accuracy.

I have played around varying the skirt thickness and depth of cavity and bullet diameter with limited success and my best results so far have been with a solid based very short and oversized bullet made by a now retired gunsmith. Since you will probably be shooting modern guns, I would expect that diameter should not be a problem for you but I would recommend the thick skirted type of mini

I think that shooting minis often takes a lot of fiddling around with various changes to the load and I think that you would find that starting out, the patched round ball will probably do everything you want it to with a lot less hassle

cheers mooncoon
 
The service load for the British and therefore the US Union Pattern 53 rifled musket - AKA the Enfiled - was 2.5drams of fine rifle powder. This equates to 68gr of FFg.

Here in yUK we shoot this load under a 535gr deep-skirted Minié out to 800 yards in competition run by the MLAGB. AAMII, the habit of using base plugs died away very quickly, mainly because in the rough and tumble of the cartridge box, they tended to detach too easily, and the average soldier really had other things on his mind than picking the plug up and putting it back in.

I have a 58cal Musketoon - the carbine of the day - made by Parker-Hale, and cast my own 495gr Minié bullets and shoot them over 55gr of FFg with a high degree of accuracy - groups of ten hover around four inches at 100m if I'm careful. You can see me shooting mine on youtube - go for tacs trains shooting the musketoon - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvCsmZPBUPY.

Down in the lower 48 a comparatively large number of BP hunters use the Musketoon - it's a really handy brush-busting piece and has a lot of authority at reasonable ranges - 80-100 yards is maximum though due to the self-imposed limitations of good sportsmanship. However, even at that range, with ~65gr loads, you will see the effectiveness of that big end-of thumb sized lump of lead.

Minié bullets work best in slow twist barrels -around 1:48 or so, and are thumb-loaded directly over the charge.

I do not recommend a Minié bullet in an in-line. The charges used in these modern-style contraptions will blow the skirts right out, prolly leaving it in the bore.

tac
P-H Musketoon #1361
 
I cast them sometimes for my .54 cal Lyman GPR which has a 1 in 60 twist. A .54 minie is 415 gr. While the twist is basically for RB the accuracy is good with minies. Running out of lead so just casting RB's now.
 
tacfoley said:
, the habit of using base plugs died away very quickly, mainly because in the rough and tumble of the cartridge box, they tended to detach too easily, and the average soldier really had other things on his mind than picking the plug up and putting it back in.
Click to expand...

While the base plugs may have been dropped during muzzle loading days, it seems to have been re instituted with the snider rifle. I have two slugs that I picked up in Victoria, out of a berm that used to exist at Clover Point. The cavity is filled to within .1" of the bottom with a brick like material and which I assume to be the clay and bees wax mixture. Most of the bullets I found at that time were 303 bullets and I think that the range may have remained active until the WWII but that is a guess.

cheers mooncoon
 
The Musketoon is an excellent choice for hunting. Not only is it short and light but it will shoot a patched round ball very nicely. I did not have much success shooting minnies out of mine until I started using the Lyman mold that is designed for the Parker Hale muskets. Don't recall the number but it has a "PH" in it....Also I could not get it to shoot well until I used 3F but that's my experience....I honestly think that you could kill any game animal in North America with it! They show up on the EE occasionally. I recall a friend found one in a local sporting goods store that was being sold on consignment. It came with the mold, sergeants tool, and had never been fired. I think he should have bought a lottery ticket as well that day.....

Cheers, Steve.
 
You can cast your own 'minnie' ammo in 50 cal for an inline. You don't HAVE TO load an inline with saboted copper jacketed balistic tipped bullets.
Cast purifyed wheel weights in a 25$ lee mould. And then hand lubed, sized & lubed or pan lubed will work just fine in an inline.
 
Well my targets (deer) should not be farther than 100 yards.
The minnie experience looks to be more involved than regular round ball.
Are there good moulds to my own round balls?
As far as the gun is concerned, traditional style, percussion cap, like the lyman but something easy for clean up, a removeable barrel plug.
Any suggestions?
 
You can get a Lee round ball mold for around $30 and you can melt lead with white gas or propane camp stove. Maybe look around for a good book on traditional black powder shooting. Find one that has a chapter on casting and you should be on your way.

Cheers. Steve.
 
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