Traded Into a Zouave Today

[Gamechaser]

I love mine, won't trade it for anything. Plan on using it for deer in PA as well

 

[EN]

I shot it today with .562 and .570 PRBs, and a few .575 Minies. Just some offhand shooting from about 35 yards. The first three shots were on top of 50 grains of Goex FFg but after those I bumped it up to 60 grains. For ignition I used Scheutzen musket caps.

The .562 load easily with a .020" patch while the .570s are a tight fit with the same, but once started seat easily on the powder. The .570s were noticeably easier to load with 0.018" pillow ticking patches.

I lubed the patches with Hoppe's No. Plus and the Minies with Bumblin Bear Grease that I smeared on with my fingers. I didn't need to wipe the bore until after I was done.

I'm used to shooting rifles with set triggers so the military trigger of the Zouave took some getting used to, but overall I'm really happy with the gun. Offhand accuracy was good but of course I'll both bench it and shoot it offhand at 50 yards to see what it's really capable of. But it's looking promising for use during the early antlerless deer season here in PA.

I have a Euroarms Zouave and love it. Since I use it more for competition than hunting I found that this gun really likes 50 grains of Fg powder and either a wadcutter minie or old style union minie and a .562 ball with .020 patch. Didn't seem to be picky about lube. Make sure you set the minie or ball down tight on the charge. Shoots better that way in all the rifled muskets I have used. The above load worked incredibly well at 25 and 50 yards and very consistent. I would shoot 2 shots before swabbing sometimes just one. Your gun might shoot high. Anyway you did well and enjoy that beauty!

 

[dave951]

That's what I figured.

Upon closer inspection is also looks like the tang is bedded, so whoever owned it previously must have been a serious shooter.

Bedding the tang is another accuracy trick. The barrel can have pressure from the bands or an incorrectly bedded tang leading to accuracy issues that can't be resolved any other way. That's why I don't take my barrels out but once a year for cleaning and rewaxing. Then they go back and the tang screw put back with the same torque.

One way to check tang bedding on military arms is to place the barrel in the channel with no bands. Then install the tang screw and see if the front of the barrel lifts from the channel. Any lift shows incorrect tang bedding. When glass bedding a military repop, the bedding material is most often in the breech/tang area to eliminate this.

 

[springfield art]

Today I took another trip up to Dixon's and wound up trading my Pedersoli Brown Bess carbine for a Euroarms Remington 1863 Contract Rifle, AKA Zouave. Although about 12,000 of these were made by Remington during the Civil War, it's unlikely that any of them saw service. They are called Zouaves nowadays because somewhere along the line someone thought they were made for Union Zouave units. Regardless of whether they were ever used in service, they are a relatively handy example of a rifle musket.

It goes perfectly with the Zouave flask I just picked up.

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This one bears a date code of AP, which translates to 1986. The stock shows some dings but the metal is in great shape and the bore is excellent. It's a .58 caliber and was intended to shoot Minie balls on top of 60 grains of powder. Back in the 1970s my father had a Zoli Zouave and got best accuracy with patched round balls. From what I can find, the Euroarms Zouaves have a 1:66 twist so I suspect that it, too will shoot better with a PRB. In any case, I have a couple of suitable ball sizes and some Minies to try.

The front sight appears to be a taller replacement intended for competition use. It'll give me plenty of metal in case I need to file it down to raise the POI.

Something I thought was interesting is that it lists a maximum powder charge on the barrel, but it's in drams. 3-1/2 to be exact. That translates to 95.7 grains, probably more than I'll ever shoot.

View attachment 205166

The nipple unscrewed easily but the flash hole looks a bit enlarged. I put in an order with Track of the Wolf for 2 spares and few other odds and ends.

The ramrod is made from brass and has male threads on the end. Along with the gun I got a Treso adapter that allows me to use standard 10-32 accessories. Naturally, I found that I already had one when I got home; I'd bought it to use with the Bess I traded in today. Oh well, 2 is 1 and 1 is none.

The stock is one of the blandest pieces of wood I've seen on a gun. I may strip it, stain it darker, and finish it with BLO. I think it has some kind of polyurethane on it now.

Assuming it shoots well it's a definite candidate to use during PA's early muzzleloader antlerless deer season, which allows caplocks. (We have a flintlock-only season after Christmas.) A .562 or .570 patched round ball should be very effective on Pennsylvania whitetail.

Tomorrow I'll be shooting a woods walk and using my plains rifle, so I won't get to shoot this rifle until next week at the earliest.

I've had about 4 of these. I strip and stain the light wood stock dark & oil finish. BTW, I examined recently a real, un-issued (as they all were) "Zouave", and the materials, wood and metal work are all many levels above the replicas. A marketer in the early Centennial days, maybe Navy Arms, slapped the moniker "Zouave" on them in order to add some marketing pizzaz. Every black powder fan should have at least one of these! Good luck!

 

[griffiga]

I just picked up two of these from a guy that was selling them for his dad. I gave him $400 for a (looks new) Armi Sport and the other is an Italian off brand that I can't remember the maker. I think they sold out to Investarms or something like that. Anyway, already having a Euroarms 3 band musket, I have the minie mold of .575, which fits nicely in the Armi Sport, but won't quite go into the other one. I don't know of a maker of a .58 minie that is smaller than .575, but I may just have to resort to patched .570 round balls.

 

[reddogge]

I had a Zoli in the early 70s and couldn't get it to shoot well so I sold it to a friend for a song. He put some work into it and won tons of medals with it with the NSSA.