Conicals ina smoothy

[PreglerD]

Has anybody expirience about using conicals in a smoothy? Is this possible at all and if, how is accuracy and maximum range? How must it be loaded with wad ?

Hope the question is not to stupid. I'm not a newby.

 

[wszumera]

I don't think it will work at all. Conicals need spin which is imparted by rifling to be stable.

Better stick to a round ball. If you have a hankering to try this out. Start at close ranges to a berm and move back progressively. Depending on where you shoot and what is behind it, a shot from longer distances may miss the berm entirely.

Clutch

 

[marty_01]

i'm a smoothie newbie -- that is if you don't count a 120mm main gun on an Abrams. rifling and spin stabilization are required to keep a conventional bullet -- conical with ogival nose if that's what you mean -- from tumbling while inflight.

I suppose you could fire sabot rounds in which the projectile is fin stabilized to prevent tumble. but even fin stabilized projectiles rely upon a lazy roll rate for inflight stability. low rate roll prevents lift forces developing on the fin assembly.

 

[rabjr]

:hmm: Anyone ever try the old Foster type slugs in a smoothy?

 

[Many Klatch]

I've shot ball bearings, but never a conical. Ball bearings really zing to the target.

Many Klatch

 

[MSW]

i don't know if conicals would work. i should think that, without anything to stabilize their flight, they would start to tumble end over end pretty soon after they cleared the muzzle.

how about a shotgun style 'rifled slug?' i remember seening pictures of something Brenneke put out some years ago which had fins moulded into the front part of the slug. i was said to be pretty effective on deer as far out as 80 yards (which is, as a practical matter, about the average range you'll take whitetail) i can't remember if this was available in a mould, or if you have to buy them from Brenneke at a zillion dollars a round, but now you have piqued my curiousity, so i'm off to the 'net...

 

[Blizzard of '93]

Yeah, there has been a post in the past. Somebody posted a reference to a mould from some company (LYMAN maybe) for a slug that shot well. My next BP buy is gonna be a smoothie. I'm gonna try that slug.

 

[Slamfire]

Now that you've brought it up, I'm thinkin' Minie balls might work. :hmm:

 

[Wes/Tex]

The only time I've tried it was with the typical .69 Minie bullet originally designed for the M.1842 U.S. musket. Obviously, the rifled version would provide accuracy within a coouple hundred yards though the trajectory would be rather high for a heavy slug at a low speed. This same round was used in the smoothbored versions of the same musket during the Civil War and I suppose they worked O.K. at the more typical combat ranges of that war. My attempts were with a M.1809/39 Potsdam smoothbored musket. That musket has a cast-in rear sight and a front sight that is a shaped projection on the front barrel band. In the 50 to 75 yard range, the musket was reasonably accurate enough if I remembered to push the front band to the same position for each shot. The Minie type bullet doesn't tumble due to the weight being forward and the base hollow. Turned upside down the slug is quite innacurate except at close range. You wouldn't believe the mess that reversed Minie did to a wood stake! :haha:

 

[silverfox]

Don't say a minnie won't tumble. They tumble out of my Enfield if I use to light of a load to upset the skirt. They also won't stay on a 4' target when they start keyholeing.
Fox :thumbsup:

 

[paulvallandigham]

HOllow based conicals like the minie ball, and the foster style slugs are heavy Badminton birdies in flight. You can expect acceptable accuracy out to 75-80 yds. but then accuracy drops off. A 12 gauge slug, or minie out of a .58 cal smoothie will still kill at many times that distance, but hitting a target becomes more a function of chance, than any effort to aim the gun at the right place. The Brenneke worked at further distances because it uses a screwed on wad to shift the weight of the slug back to the base of the slug, rather than the nose, and of course, that long screw and the wads add to the over all weight of the projectile. The brenneke slug is actually quite long, and stabilizes in the air because of its length, rather than any spin that occurs because of the " fins" cast in the nose of the slug. In fact, time lapse photograph shows that there is no spinnning occurring even with those slugs. These are " knuckle balls " in the world of projectiles. Without rotation, the slugs loose the battle quickly with air resistance, and drop fast.

 

[arcticap]

Here's 2 posts about how well the Lyman Shocker slug will shoot out of a smoothbore:
[url] http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showpost.php?post/271219/[/url]
[url] http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/fusionbb/showpost.php?post/270798/[/url]

 

[PreglerD]

So I will have I try first with minie balls. In the german egun I saw so called "new minie", has a zylindric form, no round nose and a hollow bottom.Perhaps this will work to. Don't want to shoot very far only 20-30 meters.

 

[ResearchPress]

The French Nessler bullet was used in smooth-bores in the Crimean War (1856-56). It was also copied and used by the Sardinians and Russians.

The Nessler bullet is like a short smooth sided round nosed Minie, however the base cavity included a projecting cone like point.

They were reportedly superior to the spherical bullet. Russian trials noted in "The War Correspondent" (journal of the Crimean War Research Socity) reported hit percentages of 44% on company sized targets at 350 meters and 20% at 500 meters. For the spherical bullet only 3 to 4% hits at more than 300 metres and no useful accuracy or power beyond 400 metres is noted.

Contemporary testing suggests that some of the results may have been over-stated.

There is also some reference to testing of a (presumed) similar design bullet by W.B. Chace in the US. The range when the Chace bullet was fired from a musket and when compared to a round-ball cartridge from the same musket was increased by a third. See Joe Bilby's "Civil War Firearms".

The Nessler bullet was not used in Britain and despite some testing in the US was not adopted.

David

 

[Blizzard of '93]

Thanks for the info, If memory serves you posted the info for the Lyman mould on a similar post.
I haven't got my smoothie yet, but plan on getting a mould for this slug when I do.
I shot a slug shaped like it out of my 12ga. H&R, I have a rear sight on it, and accuracy was inpressive at 50 yds. (all I had time to try) and I shot it into various backstops including a bucket of sand, what a cloud of sand shot up on impact! Much more than a .44 magnum. And bust a cinder block to pieces. Knocked my pine log chunk off my backstop stand, my '06 won't do that.

 

[faw3]

I put a order in for the 20g "foster type" slug last week, will let you know how it shots when it gets here. Fred :hatsoff:

 

[paulvallandigham]

Meister: Remember that with any conical, you have to fit the bullet to the actual diameter of the barrel to get accuracy. With a round ball, you can patch the difference, in most cases, and get acceptable accuracy. Any slug will shoot well enough out to 30 yds, and usually out to 50 yds. to hit a deer sized target. I wanted to see just how accurate a smoothbore Deer gun shooting slugs ( foster style) I could make, and my barrel will put 5 slugs into one large hole, off-hand, and a very much smaller hole off a rest, at 50 yds. After 80 yds, when the slug comes down through the sound barrier, groups begin to open, and I was obvserving " flyers " at 100 yds. 4 shots would group fairly well in a 4 inch circle, but one shot would be off by as much as 10 inches, in each 5 shot group. I even had other shooters shoot the gun, thinking I might be developing a flinch, and I had other shooters watch me to see if I was flinching, but nothing changed. The flyers were in the ammo, and not the shooter. I found the same thing, BTW, shooting Brenneke slugs. I consulted a friend about this and he noted, pulling a couple out of his long held collection, that occasionally the screw that holds the wads to the base of the brenneke slug get drilled a little off center, and he showed me a couple of them. I don't spend my money on expensive slugs anymore. As for my Foster style slugs, from Winchester, my friend showed me that there are often nicks in the skirts of the hollow base, that either allow a piece of the base to break off, or which send the slug out of hte group at the longer ranges after the slug gets buffed by air currents as it comes down through the sound barrier. He designed his own slug, and it shoots very nice groups, even at 100 yds. He's killed deer at 175 yds with it.

 

deleted
:hatsoff:

 

[PreglerD]

That would be very nice. Please tell me where you ordered it.

 

[Tumblernotch]

Amen, Brother! I was just messing around with my Charleville one day and decided to shoot some 685 gr. Original Style Minies from an Ideal mold in it. I could barely hit the target backer at 25 yds. Keyholed and tumbled like crazy and this was with a charge strong enough to easily expand the skirt. And yes, they will tumble from a rifled musket just as bad if the skirt dosen't expand enough.

I was hoping that I would be lucky and get at least modest accuracy at 50 yds., but alas, I was disappointed!