Minie ball in a Smoothbore

[acavdragoon]

Has anyone experimented with a minie ball in a smoothbore? Is it accurate? Or do they tumble or keyhole?

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Like a football kicked for a field goal.

LD

 

[wiscoaster]

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.

 

[Trot]

Even in a rifled barrel if the bullet is a little too small to grip the rifling they tumble.

 

[Sam squanch]

I tried it- don’t bother.

 

[LongWalker]

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.

 

[LSLibelo]

Two years ago I picked up a LEE .50 caliber improved Minnie mold.

For accuracy I found it to be equal to RB and tow from a smoothbore TC Hawken flintlock to 50 yards.

 

[Whiteoak15]

I tried a .58 Minie solid base in a rifled musket some years ago. The Ball was undersized and didn't fill out into the rifling. Couldn't hit for beans BUT at my 150 yard range, you could hear what sounded like a huge zipper buzzing through the air at each shot. Don't waste your time!

 

[nkbj]

Has there ever been a long bullet designed for a smoothbore muzzleloader?
Obviously it could be made to work but there has to be a purpose, a desired end result for the engineering to reach towards, to be fulfilled.

 

[Clark Badgett]

I tried a .58 Minie solid base in a rifled musket some years ago. The Ball was undersized and didn't fill out into the rifling. Couldn't hit for beans BUT at my 150 yard range, you could hear what sounded like a huge zipper buzzing through the air at each shot. Don't waste your time!

Minies aren’t solid base. Minies have to be hollow base just as Col. Minie designed them or they are just regular solid RN bullets.

 

[nkbj]

And then there's minie molds with plugs modified to provide solid bases but they too require one have some rifling of suitable type.

 

[Colonial Boy]

I tried 20 gauge shotgun slugs in my flint trade gun and they performed OK but not as well as round ball, of course they are not a minie, being mostly hollow which means they are front heavy and so stabilise better.

 

[Conrad von Hotzendorf]

Has there ever been a long bullet designed for a smoothbore muzzleloader?
Obviously it could be made to work but there has to be a purpose, a desired end result for the engineering to reach towards, to be fulfilled.

That's what the Nessler Ball is, from the 1850s. It's kind of like a short minie for smoothbores.