long bullets for smooth-bore

[birdaug]

I have a 58 cal souave smooth bore and would like to know if I can shoot any kind of long bullet in it? If I can't, I would like to know why.
I would also like to know if rifling can be cut in this barrel?
Please stay on topics.
Thank You,
birdaug

 

[MercerLake]

:v The short answer is you can shoot about anything you can stuff down the barrel, but hitting anything is another matter.
Seriously, there was an article this past summer in the "Back Woodsman" magazine detailing how to do what you are asking.
Basically, the author of the article attached by glueing a bore-sized wad made of compressed paper to the base of bullet. The wad tends to act as a tail on a kite or fletching on an arrow keeping the projectile flying point-on.
Some shotgun slugs are stabilized this way also.
How well it might work, I don't know. But, I do have it on my list of to do's for this winter.
Goodluck and have fun! :v

 

[renovato]

You can shoot it but what's gonna stabilize it? They don't cut the rifling to make the bore look pretty! :rotf:

Seriously though, there are other methods of stabilizing a slug, such as the hollow Forster type shotgun slugs. Don't let the rifling on the slug fool you, they fly straight because their weight is so far forward that they are stabilized like a badminton shuttlecock. The rifling on the slug contributes little, if any, spin. The blunt nose of the slug pushes the air so far to the side that very little is in contact with the rifling on the slug. Even if the air did spin the slug, it wouldn't spin up until it was well downrange, and it would end up pointing whatever direction it was pointing when it reached stabilizing RPM. I've yet to see a Forster type slug that had much in the way of accuracy.

The Brenneke type slugs use a wad column behind the slug to contribute drag and keep the weight of the slug pointing forward. This system is a lot more accurate but it also loses velocity faster. Keeping velocity longer for a flatter trajectory is one of the main reasons for using a bullet in the first place.

There are also finned slugs. These haven't become popular because the fins are easily damaged upon firing. This causes a drastic loss of accuracy.

So to shoot a slug or bullet in a smoothbore is going to require some outside force to stabilize it. Even if you could find a slug with an adequately sized hollow base, or fins or something, you'd still need to find some form of wad or sabot (ugh) to protect the base from the pressure of firing.

A short bullet with some form of wad column attached at the base is the only thing I can think of that's even remotely feasible.

Well, that or shooting the bullet from a rifled barrel. You may be able to get rifling cut into your barrel. You'd need to ask around some of the barrel makers who offer barrel freshening services. They would know whether it's feasible or not.

 

[Trench]

If you try a conical, also try some PRB if you haven't already. I'd be interested to hear back from you on accuracy.

 

[CoyoteJoe]

I'm sure you could find someone to rifle your barrel but then you'd probably have to get a custom ball mould made to fit the oversize bore. If this is a standard Zouave it would be quicker, easier and cheaper to buy another Zouave barrel.
The purpose of rifling is to spin the projectile so as to impart gyroscopic stability, keeping it flying straight and nose first. The longer the projectile, the faster it must spin to remain stable in flight. A round ball is the easiest of all bullets to stabilize because it really doesn't have a "nose". You could fire the common .58 minie balls from your Zouave but they would likely tumble end over end and give poor accuracy, though perhaps no worse than a ball.
The alternative to gyroscopic stability is aerodynamic stability. Examples would be a badminton shuttlecock or a blowgun dart which fly nose first because of air drag at the rear. The downside to that is the increased drag slows the projectile. Modern tank guns are smoothbore and fire an exceptionally long projectile with incredible accuracy and range. Those projectiles are fin stabilized like an arrow.
The most advanced medieval crossbow bolts used a short iron point on a wooden bolt some 4-6" long with the wooden shaft turned to a highly sophisticated "coke bottle" shape. Precisely the right length and shape made those bolts highly accurate with little drag. Some shotgun slugs have employed a similar shape and provide good accuracy from some shotguns.
If you have access to a wood lathe you might try turning wooden dowels to various shapes and lengths and gluing them into the hollow base of a minie ball. That could be interesting, one of those experiments I've been meaning to try when I get "aroundtuit". :grin:

 

[paulvallandigham]

Are you sure that the barrel is Smoothbored? Have you cleaned it with a good brush, and lead solvent? I say this because we see a lot of older replicas that were never properly cleaned, but used year after year to fire Minie balls. ( Hollow based conicals.) Slowly, over years of shooting, the shallow rifling has been filled with lead until the bore looks " shot out ". All it needs is a good thorough cleaning!

Most of the replica Zouave rifles in .58 caliber were made overseas, for early companies like Navy Arms, and Dixie Gun Works, who sold these by the thousands. They were designed with shallow rifling, like the originals, to facilitate shooting the minie ball. They tend to shoot a PRB more accurate, and with less recoil, than the minie balls. However, I saw a lot of very accurate shooting with minie balls that had been properly sized to the bore diameter of a particular gun, and that is still the best way to get accuracy shooting minies today.

Please check that bore once more. A " smoothbore " Zouave just doesn't sound normal. It would cost you less to buy a new barrel for the rifle, than to try to find any conical that could be accurately( beyond 80 yards) fired out of a smoothbore anything!

I once got a .22 rifle given to me to re-blue, and the man thought it was a smoothbore for shooting .22 shot cartridges. I put a patch down the barrel liberally soaked in lead solvent, and set the gun aside over nite. The next day, I ran a brush down the barrel, and lots of lead came out. LOTS! It took a couple of days of soaking, and re-soaking the bore with lead solvent, but the barrel cleaned up very nicely, showing all the orginal rifling. Better yet, when I finished bluing the barrel, we fired the gun over a rest to see how well it shot. It was tops. The only evidence of its age was some gase blowback in the chamber that left a soot line on the casing. It turned out the owner had been shooting .22 shot shells through it for years- killing English Sparrows-- without cleaning the gun.

 

[birdaug]

Thanks alot Guys as you have been very informative. Not sure what I'll do now, but everyone has given a lot of food for thought.
Thanks again for your much needed imput,
birdaug :thumbsup:

 

[J.D.]

Like Paul, I would be surprised to see a smooth Zouave barrel. The riflings in those barrels can sometimes be VERY shallow, so look closely. Clean well with a good lead remover and mic the bore to find the true bore dia. Minies about .003 smaller than land to land diameter seem to shoot best with easy loading.

Some of those guns shoot PBR well, some don't seem to like them. However, it's worth the effort to find out what that barrel likes.

If, indeed, you do have a smooth bore barrel with rifle sights. Rifle accuracy can be achieved to at least 50 yards with a properly patched RB and the proper powder charge.

Smoothbores can be finicky about the most accurate load, but they can shoot very well, if that is, indeed, what you have.

 

[bingo1952]

Groove depth on these guns runs about .003 for the three groove barrels. It doesn,t take many un-lubed minie bullets or neglecting to clean the gun to completely fill the grooves with fouling and lead and it will have the appearance of a smoothbore. Give that thing a good scrubbing before you do anything further.

 

[roundball]

I would also like to know if rifling can be cut in this barrel?

If it turns out there is no rifling, yes, rifling can be cut into smoothbore barrels.
I bought a Green Mountain .62cal smoothbore and sent it to Ed Rayl in West Va. to add .012" x 1:72" rifling...$65 bucks and it's extremely accurate.

NOTE just as an FYI:
You may have one of those old MLs which had such shallow 1:48" rifling that when PRBs were pushed real fast they were inaccurate...the thinking was that the PRB was skipping over the very shallow rifling.

And...unfortunately, the fact that the barley non-existent rifling was the culprit got lost, and we ended up with decades of misinformation being propagated that "full power PRBs were not accurate in a 1:48" twist as they would skip the rifling".

Horse Hockey of course...the problem was not / is not the twist rate...PRBs are very accurate in 1:48" twists.

 

[Britsmoothy]

I had a smooth one of them by Zoli and it shot a patched ball very well in deed. Good enough to shoot rabbits to 60odd yards or so, a deer would be no problem, fast to! :hatsoff:

britsmoothy.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Birdaug: Nominal Bore Diameter on those .58 caliber guns should be .579, the same as a 24 gauge shotgun. You might measure the bore, after cleaning, to see what you have. If Zoli did make smoothbore barrels, you might want to keep the one you have, and simply order another barrel that is rifled for those purposes. I doubt seriously that there are a lot of smoothbore .58 Zouva guns around, so the smoothbore you bought might actually have some value as a collectible.

Bobbie Hoyt, and others, can rifle that barrel easily enough, but it might be cheaper to just find a rifled barrel with breechplug and tang all ready installed, that will just drop into your stock.