Minnies in a Zouave ???

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Ok...my Zouave rifled musket arrived. I bought the recommended #575213 Lyman Minnie mold and made 20 or so Minnies... I started to insert a Minnie into the bore
to check the size and it inserts really[url] easily.....in[/url] fact it will slide all the way down the bore.
My question is : what holds these Minnies in the bore so they wont slide out? I see no mention anywhere of using a over shot card or anything...
ARE YA SUPPOSED TO ram them down hard enough to expand the skirt or does the compression against the powder hold the slug in ???? Can somebody explain to me???

*** WV SCROUNGER ***

 

[musketman]

in fact it will slide all the way down the bore.

What size do the minie-balls mic out at?

The minie-ball expands when shot, filling the grooves and sealing the bore...

With a clean barrel, it will seem like it slides down freely...

However, you need to lube the minie-ball's side bands, this will help hold it in place until the shot...

Also, once you fire it, the fouling will also help hold the next minie-ball snug against the powder...

 

[BigCity]

However, you need to lube the minie-ball's side bands, this will help hold it in place until the shot...

MM, do you recommend filling the skirt with lube also or just the side bands?

 

[[email protected]]

Musketman...minnies are mic ing out at .575.
I forgot that the groves need lubed... It just "FEELS"
funny to have the minnie slide down the barrel....
it had me worried..... I thought the zoo was shot out...
Those darned Minnies sure are hard to cast! I get alot with deformed skirts.....I throw em back in the pot and try again.
Took me 2 hours to get 22 good ones.....whew! I will probably end up shootin more PBRs thru it..huh?

*** WV SCROUNGER ***

 

[musketman]

MM, do you recommend filling the skirt with lube also or just the side bands?

No, I don't recommend it, some people do fill it up, but that is a lot of lube to leech into your powder charge...

The side bands are enough...

 

[[email protected]]

Yep.....I just lubed the grooves on a Minnie and tried it in the bore.....Yep ...sure fits better now..
Guess I am perty dumb about muskets....But ya gotta learn somehow I guess...

*** WV SCROUNGER ***

 

[musketman]

Those darned Minnies sure are hard to cast! I get alot with deformed skirts.....I throw em back in the pot and try again.
Took me 2 hours to get 22 good ones.....whew!

The more you case minies, the better you will get at it...

 

[Gary]

Like any other mold, the first casted are generally unusable since the mold is too cold. It takes practice to get use to the mold, its heat retention, cooling off period and how fast you can pour and produce your bullets.

BTW, like Musketman says, don't bother lubing the base. Just the sides is good enough. Lubing the base wastes the lube and on hot days, can cause it to ruin the powder.

 

[Rat]

I also cast my vote for NOT filling the base with lube...

You may find that a harder, stiffer lube, more wax-like will work better on a minnie and give it more resistance in the bore.

You may find that a MINIMUM of lube on the minnie will let it shoot best. Just don't get sucked into the mentality that if lube is good, more lube is better. I have a minnie that shoots best with only the bottom lube groove lightly lubed.

Minnies being so undersized can be a problem as far as getting good accuracy. The purpose of a .575" slug in a .580+ bore is so that you can soot the musket all day in a pitched battle without cleaning the bore. For hunters and recreational shooters, it only results in inaccuracy. It's really a shame that the mould makers are not/have not increased the size of these moulds to .578-.580". Or perhaps the rifle makers should decrease the bore size to .575"...? Anyhow it's kind of an ongoing problem.

Part of becoming a rifle-musket shooter and getting good results often involves buying more than one mould, to find a good one. I have four moulds for my two .58" minnie rifles.

If you are going to use the musket for hunting and want to shoot some heavier loads, try out the 440 grain REAL mould that Lee makes. (My REAL bullets actually cast out to 456 grains) They are inexpensive and well worth the cost. The REAL is not load sensitive and will shoot well from reasonalby light loads (75 grains) up to whatever your shoulder will take. Mine fits nice and tight in the bore, in fact I short-start it, and it shoots into 2.15" at 75 yards over a wonder-wad and 100 grains of Goex fffg. (yes, need to switch to ffg)

If you search around there are other moulds that throw minnies closer to .580", but none as cheap as the REAL.

If you are just going to shoot powder-puff "service" loads at paper, the minnie you got may work o.k. There will probably be a "zone" where it works best, somewhere between 60 and 75 grains.

Kind of sounds like your mould or your lead is not getting hot enough. By the third or fourth slug they should start coming out ok. Turn up the heat on your pot, or whatever your heat source is, (I use the kitchen stove and a small cast-iron fry pan) and leave the minnie in the mould, after filling it, for a longer period before dropping the slug. Maybe count to 20 before dropping the slug.

Good luck, have fun, don't be dissapointed if your first results are not good.

Rat

 

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Rat,
I also have a lee minnie mold commin in the mail,
aint sure what diameter it is though,`... ebay called it a .58
I melt my lead in a Lee pot turned up to high....
I have been leavin the slug in the mold quite along time.
I threw 1/2 a box of .32 hornady balls in the pot on top of some pure lead... They just floated there for at least 4 minutes untill they melted.....I thought that odd....
All the other pure lead I added melted immediately....
Been keeping the ladle in the lead to keep it hot too.
I think the ragged skirt has something to do with how fast I pour the lead.

... WV SCROUNGER ...

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

I use a .575 Minie in my .577 Enfield. The tight fit definitely improves accuracy. The looser fit (.575 in a .58
bore) allowed for rapid loading under combat conditions. For
our purposes, the tight fit gives great accuracy for target work and hunting and really shows what these guns are capable of. Using a thicker skirt allows use of stiffer charges, but generally you can get close to .45-70 ballistics from one of these rifles, making them excellent
hunting companions. I would just lube the grooves, but if you want to fill up the base, use an over powder wad to keep the lube from contaminating the charge. Either way, you'll have a very useful firearm.

 

[jdstrang]

WVS:

I cast about 2,000 minies a year for use in N-SSA competitions, where guys with rifles much like yours get excellent performance.

First, the most basic rule for minies: Use only pure, soft lead. The beauty of a soft lead minie is that, even as much as 5/1000 under bore size, a soft lead minie will still deliver excellent accuracy because the skirt expands to fit the bore. Any hardness in the lead will prevent that optimal expansion, and you will have nothing resembling a group.

Second, about casting. As someone above said, the first several minies are worthless. Your mold has to get real hot before the quality balls fall out. I pitch my first 10 back into the pot. I cast from a Lyman .575213 Old Style at a rate of 2 to 3 minies a minute, and have a reject rate of less than 10% for reasons of voids in the base, bad skirts, etc. With a hot mold and a good lead flow (I use a bottom-pour Lee 20-pound pot), such problems are rare. Just keep it going, and when you pause, set the mold on the pot to keep it hot.

Third, the question of lube. There is GREAT debate amongst those who regularly shoot CW-style minie guns as to the proper lube and its proper application. Some excellent shooters fill only the base with white lithium; some excellent shooters use a 50-50 mix of Crisco and beeswax in both the base and the grooves. Some excellent shooters use a combination of synthetic motor oil and beeswax for only the grooves. The short observation here is that there are many acceptable ways to lube a minie. Personally, I use a plunger-pump device offered by North East Trade Co., (570)546-2061. Comes with MCM lube in a little metal can, two inches high, three across, that I heat up on the stove until the lube is melted, then just push the minie base-down into the plunger and it squirts a little bit up in the base while coating the rings. If you want to tune in the debate on lube, check out the N-SSA bulletin board at http://www.n-ssa.org/bb/index.php and check the "general posts" for Lube strings. They're plentiful.

Lastly, about your Zouave. I just bought a nice old Navy Arms Zouave from a friend for my son, who is starting to skirmish this year. Loaded it with 37 grains of 3f under the aforesaid minie with MCM lube: First three shots off the bench on Saturday past cut a cloverleaf at 9 o'clock in the 9-ring of a standard N-SSA 50-yard target, an inch-and-a-half out of the x-ring. That ain't bad. Given the right (read soft) minie and powder charge, I'd bet yours will shoot well too. :m2c:

 

[Rat]

Looks like P-Bear is doing good with the 575213 so that's a good sign. Pure dead soft lead, I concur...why didn't I mention that?

:curse:

Since he mentions that many excellent shooters do not put goop in the base, I can't imagine a reason to put goop in the base to shoot excellently.

:hmm:

At any rate I'm not sure what's going on with your lead...maybe try another batch..??

Good luck again. My Zouave has been cut down into a half stock rifle, sort of a home made "Bufflo Hunter"...wish it had been left stock, but I enjoyed it for many years and it was my first BP rifle. (still have it, I call it "Crooked Dog" because the conversion to half-stock wasn't exactly done by an expert gunsmith) Now I have a 1861 Springfield (Armisport) which I am really in love with...it's the only thing that keeps me from going totally flint. But rifle muskets are great...everything is BIG. Big hammers, big bores, big nipples! Yeah baby!!

rat

 

[rmg]

I just picked up a Navy Arms Zouave the other week, shot it yesterday for the first time. I was given some 575 minies with the gun, so I loaded it up...first shot keyholed about 2 feet off the target, at 50 yards. Moved up to 25 yards and shot 2 more rounds, no keyhole but still about a foot off the paper, nothing resembling a group. Yes the minie was real loose. I was at the Baltimore gun show today and bought some 577 and 580 Minies to try. Even the 580 slides down real easy, but doesn't seem loose, I'm hoping the 580 will do the trick. I don't want buy a mold till I find the size I need.
This is my first attempt with any kind of a percussion gun, been shooting flintlocks with round balls for a while though.
Have fun, the Zouave is a nice looking gun
Rich G

 

[Rat]

Don't forget to use real black powder...groups in my 1861 went from over eight inches at 100 yards with 777 to 2.15" at 75 yards with black powder. !!!

Rat

 

[jdstrang]

Rich:

I don't have to tell you there's something seriously amiss with being off the paper at 25 yards :curse:

First thing I'd suspect is the minies. Real hard lead tends to do what you describe, as would faulty skirts (perhaps a seam from being poured too cool?) that allow gas to leak in that last millisecond at the muzzle and send the ball tumbling off-line. :hmm:

You didn't mention the powder charge: What was that?

I know lots of folks prone to roundballing prefer them in the Zouave, but the rifle was designed for the minie ball and, when all things are right (soft lead, properly sized bullet about 1 or 2 thousandths under bore, proper powder charge) they'll group with the best of the spheres. :imo:

Of course, grouping isn't the same as shooting to where the factory sights are set. Lots o' repros shoot way off center, even if they're making one ragged hole. You may well have to "adjust" the sights once you start making those ragged holes. But that's a whole different post... :winking:

 

[Tumblernotch]

Scrounger, not only do you need to get your mould hot, you need to keep your lead as hot as possible. I was told for years that if your bullets come out frosty looking that the lead was too hot. I've discovered that that was a bunch of hooey. Even if you mould is hot, it takes much more time to fill it when pouring Minies than round ball, and as you're pouring it is trying to cool down and that can leave seams. My biggest problem is keeping the base cavity insert hot enough. If it is cooler than the rest, air bubbles can form in the body of the bullet above the cavity. So I keep my lead as HOT AS POSSIBLE, and if I have to stop for even a minute, I keep the last bullet poured in the mould to help retain heat in it. An 8/1 mixture of Beeswax/Crisco makes a good lube (grooves only). Push it through a sizer and it makes a neat bullet with no mess. The original lube in the CW was 8/1 Beeswax/Tallow. If you're just punching paper at 50 yds like our military musket matches, you can experiment with light loads if the skirt is thin enough. I have gone as light as 30-35 grs. of 3F and get great groups at 50. The service charge for a .58 rifle musket was 60 grs. The specified load for a rifle (2 band like Zouave) was 70 grs. The muzzle velocity for a rifle musket is SLOW, about 960 fps. with 2F. You have to keep that in mind when shooting them. My first ML was a cheap Zouave bought a a Heck's Department Store. It liked roundball better than Minies,never figured that out. These guns are a hoot to shoot. Once you get the hang of them you'll have a ball. (No pun intended).
:m2c: :thumbsup:

 

[rmg]

Papa Bear
Understood, my thoughts exactly about the minie's. The skirts look kinda thick and not very even, very poor casting in my opinion. Like I said, they came with the gun, I think the fellow that had it before shot round balls out of it.
I used 50 grain 2f Goex to start. Sounds a little stiff according to what I've read on this thread, but I'm looking to take it hunting.
Rich G

 

[Rat]

Safety-wise, the replica muskets such as the Zouave will take very heavy hunting loads. Did you mean to say that 50 grains was a stiff load? Maybe I read that/am reading it wrong. For hunting I prefer loads in the 80-100 grain range. The powder-puff 60 grain service load will indeed kill a deer well, or even Elk, but it seems more resonable to me to use at least a "58-70" load for a little extra insurance, and 70 grains should still not blow out the skirt.

However, as y'all know, again, really heavy loads will blow out the skirts and kill your accuracy, making it more safe for the deer, elk, bear or whatever...that there is the "safety issue"!!

I have a very heavy skirted minnie (I turned the base plug down) that ONLY shoots good when the charge gets up to around 100 grains. But, being a 600+ grain minnie, recoil is stout, and it's really far more power than needed down here in the lower states, so I rarely use it anymore. It's now my "grizz minnie", in case I someday get to hunt Alaska. !!

Again, I really like the LEE REAL, because it is not powder charge sensitive, and being somewhat on the light side (mine cast out to 456) recoil is still manageable with heavy loads. It can be a really accurate slug in guns that don't seem to shoot a minnie well, or will at least cut down the amount of experimentation to get the rifle to shoot well. And it's especially suited to VERY heavy loads, as there is no skirt to blow out. The mould it's self is cheap, so I really reccomend that people try it out, especially if you are having trouble getting a minnie to shoot.

Rat

 

[Russ T Frizzen]

And once you start shooting these heavy loads, the old Minie rifle becomes a very serious piece of hardware. Serious enough for Val Forgett to use on dangerous game in Africa years ago. That cut down Zouave he used accounted for a lot of game and stood up to some very heavy charges. I
wonder how many buffalo fell to these guns at the hands of folks who just could not afford a Sharps.