Has anyone experimented with a minie ball in a smoothbore? Is it accurate? Or do they tumble or keyhole?
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Minie ball in a Smoothbore
- Thread starter acavdragoon
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Like a football kicked for a field goal.
LD
LD
There's nothing to get it spinning along its axis to give it longitudinal stability, so with drag from the air in front and with thrust from the charge at its base, without that stability, once it exits the muzzle it's going to begin flipping end for end pretty much right away.
Sam squanch
69 Cal.
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I tried it- don’t bother.
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I tried them years ago. Accuracy was mediocre at best, worse than round ball. Nothing--playing with diameter (matching it to bore diameter), etc--did nothing to improve accuracy. Since I was winning matches with round ball, I gave up on minies in the 24 gauge.
Then I got a wild hair and thought maybe accuracy would be better in a larger bore. It was, but not by much. In the .69 caliber musket I tried I used an original mould that had more of the weight concentrated in the nose. Shifting the center of gravity forward appeared to make it perform like a shuttlecock rather than a book thrown across the room. . . but accuracy from a patched round ball was much better.
Then I got a wild hair and thought maybe accuracy would be better in a larger bore. It was, but not by much. In the .69 caliber musket I tried I used an original mould that had more of the weight concentrated in the nose. Shifting the center of gravity forward appeared to make it perform like a shuttlecock rather than a book thrown across the room. . . but accuracy from a patched round ball was much better.
