60g of any brand of 2f will shoot 58 cal minies accurately , is it magic?

[Steel Guitar]

Hello all,
I have a 3 band and mississippi and both will shoot minies accurately with any brand of 2f as long as it's a 60g load. Is this magic or why? I've never seen this happen before.

 

[Steel Guitar]

Ohh, I forgot to say that the point of impact is different with different 2f brands but accuracy is good (1 1/2" @ 50 yd)

 

[bang]

There was a reason most standard military loads are 60 gns. They found it works. Now a days the only issue is how thick the skirt wall is. I've found 65 gns works well for the monies I cast.

 

[Old Hawkeye]

Charges much larger than 60 grains can cause the bullet skirt to over expend when they leave the muzzle & hinder accuracy with the old style Minies. In the rifles of those times 60 grains was a determined to give the best combo of accuracy, recoil, trajectory & lethality by the military. Some of the newer molds will throw a thicker skirt and actually require a stiffer charge for rifling engagement & I hear some guys like them for hunting that requires more "smack". The gun you have was designed for the Minie with 60 grains of powder by people that understood things better than we think. No wonder it shoots them good!

 

[ZUG]

I also use a 60 gr charge of 2F GOEX in my 3 different rifled muskets and find that I get very acceptable accuracy up to 75 yards. I use 75 yards as max as my eyesight does not allow me to shoot accurately beyond that distance.

 

[Steel Guitar]

Yall, what I'm saying is it don't matter which brand of 2f :Goex, Shutzen, ect, 60g will shoot good in both of my rifles.

 

[PastorB]

Exactly as it was designed to do. Arms and weapons developers of the 19th century were not ignorant, and they didn't come to conclusions haphazardly. My original rifled muskets all shoot very well with 60 grains, except I use Goex FFFG. The Colt Special Musket, mfg. 1862, shoots cloverleafs at 100 yards. I use traditional styled Minies, cast by Pat Kaboskey, AKA "Civil War Bullet Man", sized to .580 and lubed with whatever he uses. My go- to deer rifle. I got that rifle "cheap" because the previous owner said it wouldn't shoot worth a dang. He used generic .575 minies from who knows where, and it wouldn't group on a ten-gallon hat at 25 yards with those. Going to .580 turned it into a sniper rifle! Just for info 60 grains of FFg goes 940fps, and FFFg gets 1030fps. Standard 40" barrel lengths.

 

[PastorB]

Also, 60 grains FFFG also seems to he the cat's meow in my .45, .50, and .54 caliber PRB rifles. Gets about 1700fps in. 45, 1600fps in .50, and 1550fps in .54, with little kick and great accuracy. The deer die just as if they were shot with 100 grains of powder. 60 grains just seems to be a great load in all my muzzleloaders, from. 45 to .58.

 

[Throwdown58]

Yall, what I'm saying is it don't matter which brand of 2f :Goex, Shutzen, ect, 60g will shoot good in both of my rifles.

If you use a powder drop with Goex it shoots as good as Swiss with compressed loads. What is a muzzleloader but a powder drop. Then you ram it and compress the powder.

 

[LME]

There was a reason most standard military loads are 60 gns. They found it works. Now a days the only issue is how thick the skirt wall is. I've found 65 gns works well for the monies I cast.

I remember reading that during the "War Of Northern Agression" that the powder charge was 40 grains? I wish I could recall where I read this but it escapes me at the present time.I use to load for the distance I was shooting 80 grains for 100 yards 60 grains for 50yards. I was shooting a .54 cal. with a .535 ball. I also shot a large doe once with 60 grains straight in the chest at 35 yards the ball was found half way the carcass when we dressed it out.I was surprised by how deep the ball was when we found it.

 

[Dave Fox]

Regulation U.S. load for a .58 rifle-musket in 1861 was 60 grains of what is close to modern 2F. During the war this was bumped-up to 65 grains.

 

[hanshi]

Some 50 years ago I still owned a .58 Zouave that liked both my home-cast minies as well as prb. I used the 60 grain load with either Dupont 3F and 2F, depending on what was available. Back then I'd read many times that 60 grains was the standard load and that's what I used. I no longer own that Zouave but have a beautiful "Mississippi" rifle in the original .54 that I acquired near 20 years ago. My velocities in that good rifle as well as the .45 and .50 are about what PastorB posted.

In the above mentioned .54 US 1841 a .530 ball and ticking patch easily manage consistent 1-1/2" (+ or -) six shot groups at 60 yards with 60 grains. That rifle has killed deer, but at 10.5 lbs is a might weighty for carrying around all day. On a good day it prints near an inch, but on bad ones a bit closer to 2". Never even tried minies in it; with such great prb accuracy I figure there's no need.

 

[Stantheman86]

From what I read the powder used in the 1860s was somewhere between a 1.5f and a 2f , depending on when it was made, by who, etc

The British apparently used coarser powder than the US.

The .58 Rifle-Muskets were not designed to drop Elephants, they were designed to kill men out to 1000 yards with volley fire and to hit point targets to 300 yards.

60 grains gave a good balance of velocity and keeping bore fouling down so at least a cartridge box full of Minies could be fired. Plus like was said the Minies were designed for this charge.

 

[Dave Fox]

60 grains was standard load for rifled .69 calibre muskets, too. Trust me: touching-off just 60 grains behind a 730 grain .685 lead minie isn't something you want to do repeatedly from the bench. Here's an M.1822 H&P conversion whopping the old guy....

 

[Dave Fox]

60 grains was standard load for rifled .69 calibre muskets, too. Trust me: touching-off just 60 grains behind a 730 grain .685 lead minie isn't something you want to do repeatedly from the bench. Here's an M.1822 H&P conversion whopping the old guy....

I lied. .69 rifled musket standard load was 70 grains of powder.

 

[Stantheman86]

60 grains was standard load for rifled .69 calibre muskets, too. Trust me: touching-off just 60 grains behind a 730 grain .685 lead minie isn't something you want to do repeatedly from the bench. Here's an M.1822 H&P conversion whopping the old guy....

I love .69 Conversions

One of my favorite historical tidbits with muzzleloading is that The US Army Ordnance Dept really liked the rifled .69 as a "standard" caliber, found it more accurate than .58 but decided the weight of 50 .69 cartridges wasn't worth the tradeoff of lighter but slightly less accurate .58

 

[Dave Fox]

Ammunition weight was a chief factor. It not only afflicted the soldier but supply cartage, too. Also recoil, which is significant. Against that, the government had many, many thousands of M.1822, 1835/40, and 1842 .69 calibre never-issued smoothbores crying to be rifled. As stated, I shoot an H&P rifled conversion of an M.1822 and have just recently acquired an M.1835/40 with long range rear sight, a crisp rifled bore, and (regrettably), a Belgian cone-in-barrel conversion. Shall try it with lighter loads and truncated minies....

 

[dave951]

Historically the service charge is 60g 2f. Now the rub, is the powder we're using now the same granulation, the same formula, and the same energy "yield" per grain as that used over 150yrs ago? If not, all comparisons of modern powder to historic service charge are not valid.

Now back to your results, a change in POI is to be expected when switching brands all other factors held equal. Swiss and Old E are more energetic than standard Goex so a lower powder charge is in order with Swiss to achieve the same results as Goex. The next question is- what do you consider accurate? And since minies are sensitive to other things like lube, size and alloy, what are the rest of the specs on your load?

 

[Stantheman86]

Brett at Papercartridges told me to use 1.5f in his Pritchett Cartridges as that was the closest powder to the 1850s-60s British "Musket Powder "

There is no way to figure out what exact powder was used in the US Pattern Minie cartridges because the US Ordnance Dept used several sources . I can't remember if DuPont was in the South or the North.

2f has always worked well for me, whether it's Goex, Wano, etc . If I'm motivated I'll roll up 50 paper cartridges the day before a range trip and use 60 grains of whatever 2f. I've even used 3f without any real difference.

The size of the Minie varied too. I believe the original US Ordnance Dept testing was with a .577 or .576 Minie but later .575 was settled on as a happy medium for easier loading in a fouled bore. There was the Burton Ball and some others too. There is no "standard ", ammunition was always changing or differed depending on the source. Remington cast Minies were different than another contractor, the South used countless different kinds of bullets.

 

[Stantheman86]

Ammunition weight was a chief factor. It not only afflicted the soldier but supply cartage, too. Also recoil, which is significant. Against that, the government had many, many thousands of M.1822, 1835/40, and 1842 .69 calibre never-issued smoothbores crying to be rifled. As stated, I shoot an H&P rifled conversion of an M.1822 and have just recently acquired an M.1835/40 with long range rear sight, a crisp rifled bore, and (regrettably), a Belgian cone-in-barrel conversion. Shall try it with lighter loads and truncated minies....

I turned my Pedersoli 1816 percussion conversion into a "fake" H&P conversion by soldering a Harper's Ferry long range sight on the barrel. It is obviously not rifled but I read an article saying some of the dozens of subcontractors who did the contract Ordnance Dept conversions of flintlock .69's in the 1850s didn't have rifling fixtures , but were shipped boxes full of Harpers Ferry sights.

So they did Drum conversions to Percussion, soldered rear sights on and called it good, the Govt paid them and the muskets were serviceable so no one cared.

I got way too into this last summer and read all about the .69 percussion conversions. There were muskets that received rifling but no rear sight. Vice Versa. Some were converted and left smoothbore with no rear sight. Entire companies that had .69 Smoothbores were issued .69 Minie cartridges. Typical US Govt activity , nothing has changed