Wild Inaccuracy with Pedersoli P53 Enfield.

[TFoley]

Couple that with the fact that minies back then were swaged...

Interesting that you should say that. I have a couple of genuine battlefield pickups that show clear signs of having been made in a two-piece, curling-tong-type mould.

 

[Enfieldguy]

The only swaged Pritchett bullet available commercially are the .568" and .550" from Brett at papercartridges.com. I shoot his .550's. They work extremely well as long as I'm careful in rolling the cartridge. He also offers 'just add powder' Pritchett' cartridges in both sizes. His recent publication 'The Destroying Angel' is an excellent read for anyone interested in the development of the muzzleloading rifled musket including the development of the P53. Filling the base defeats how the minie-type bullet was intended to operate. The base plug doesn't fill but a small portion of the cavity. By not giving it space to be driven into the cavity it will not expand.

 

[Britsmoothy]

The only swaged Pritchett bullet available commercially are the .568" and .550" from Brett at papercartridges.com. I shoot his .550's. They work extremely well as long as I'm careful in rolling the cartridge. He also offers 'just add powder' Pritchett' cartridges in both sizes. His recent publication 'The Destroying Angel' is an excellent read for anyone interested in the development of the muzzleloading rifled musket including the development of the P53. Filling the base defeats how the minie-type bullet was intended to operate. The base plug doesn't fill but a small portion of the cavity. By not giving it space to be driven into the cavity it will not expand.

Once again. No one, me included is recommending filling the base.
However the op said he was getting strange noises and terrible results.
He also indicated his bullet has a very deep cavity and possibly a thin skirt.

I merely suggested as he is stuck with his choice of bullet to go through a process of elimination by first altering his bullet and noting any slight improvement. Not to vindicate base filling but to expose the bullet choice as wanting!
Is that ok? Does that make sense? Or should I just shut up?
Yeah think I'll shut up. Yes OP, go and change out everything, nipple, buy four types of powder, stand on one leg during loading, don't forget to swab the barrel with road film remover or what ever was not available a couple hundred years ago blah blah blah....

 

[Stantheman86]

Minies were cast , back in the "period". Pritchetts were swage pressed.

A good many millions of .575 Burton style (Minie) Balls were fired through .577 Enfield Rifle-Muskets from 1861-1865 and there were few variations to the Burton Ball cartridge.

I'd just relax, get back to basics, and use what went down the pipe originally and go from there. You probably just got a junk batch of bullets.

A little light reading......but this book , available off Amazon for like 10 bucks, will tell you all kinds of info about what went into testing .58 Rifled- Muskets.

 

[bisleyjohn]

What accuracy do you expect? The .577 musket will never consistently hit a 5” V bull at 1000x. It was never a requirement. The gun and it’s projectiles were designed and required only to hit an opponent at about 100x. That’s why they shot volley fire. If you want target accuracy, get a Whitworth or something else designed for target rifle shooting. And, as has been suggested, measure, heck, maintain consistency and change only one aspect/component at a time and only after confirming results. A whistling bullet is not an unknown phenomenon, weather, split skirt, tumbling...... getting the best accuracy available isn’t down to just luck. You have to work at it. Rant over

 

[gemmer]

Smokestack,

I suggest that you post your problem on the N-SSA bulletin board. www.n-ssa.net. There are plenty of enfield shooters there. I'm betting that besides talking about your loading components, responders will focus on bore condition, bore size, tang screw tension, barrel band fit and glass bedding. You may also be asked if you have issues with the stock comb. A lot of shooters prefer the Springfield because the Enfield's high, straight comb does not fit them well.

 

[Britsmoothy]

Smokestack,

I suggest that you post your problem on the N-SSA bulletin board. www.n-ssa.net. There are plenty of enfield shooters there. I'm betting that besides talking about your loading components, responders will focus on bore condition, bore size, tang screw tension, barrel band fit and glass bedding. You may also be asked if you have issues with the stock comb. A lot of shooters prefer the Springfield because the Enfield's high, straight comb does not fit them well.

Glass bedding! sacré bleu.....
I ain't used that junk on a modern rifle!
Canvass or wood veneers and animal glues.

 

[dave951]

Glass bedding! sacré bleu.....
I ain't used that junk on a modern rifle!
Canvass or wood veneers and animal glues.

I shoot NSSA and shoot a Birmingham PH in musket competition. It's a sub 2moa gun. It isn't glass bedded but I'm not opposed to doing it when needed. My PH doesn't, but my Colt did. So, go figure, if you want accuracy, there are things to try.

 

[Stantheman86]

It's a conundrum.....people buy a military rifled-musket reproduction to shoot "the way they did historically " but no one ever seems to think a .575 Burton ball lubed with 50/50 Tallow /Beeswax (or similar like SPG lube) with 60gr of 2f is accurate enough.....

and then , in an effort to shoot your weapon accurately they are told they must do everything that wasn't done historically, such as using oddly sized bullets, home brew lube with odd ingredients, glass bedding , etc.

In 1864 , if you were issued an Enfield rifle as a US soldier (we'll take the difficult Pritchett cartridge out of the equation ) you would have gotten , likely , a P53 that came in from England , that saw use in Crimea and along with it 5 bundles of cartridges containing .575 Burton balls....and you would have made it work. You wouldn't have been testing powder charges, sizing bullets, using bondo, etc.

I rolled up 50 .575 Burton (Minie) balls lubed with SPG lube.... with 60 gr of 2f, into 1863 pattern cartridges and took my CS Richmond shooting , and it did just fine. Could it have done a little better with some odd bullet size? Maybe I don't know.

Just get good bullets and head back to the range.

 

[springfield art]

It was interesting to read all of the input on this subject. There's lots of knowledge out there about these 19th C. guns.

 

[Stantheman86]

This man makes good Minies

 

[bisleyjohn]

This guy has written some interesting stuff, you may all know already but I found this useful.

http://4thla.weebly.com/uploads/3/7/9/6/37969349/pattern_1853_enfield_ammunition_-_brett_gibbons.pdf

And here, even better: - http://www.researchpress.co.uk/inde...ilitary-longarms/enfield/managing-the-enfield

 

[Enfieldguy]

It's a conundrum.....people buy a military rifled-musket reproduction to shoot "the way they did historically " but no one ever seems to think a .575 Burton ball lubed with 50/50 Tallow /Beeswax (or similar like SPG lube) with 60gr of 2f is accurate enough.....

and then , in an effort to shoot your weapon accurately they are told they must do everything that wasn't done historically, such as using oddly sized bullets, home brew lube with odd ingredients, glass bedding , etc.

In 1864 , if you were issued an Enfield rifle as a US soldier (we'll take the difficult Pritchett cartridge out of the equation ) you would have gotten , likely , a P53 that came in from England , that saw use in Crimea and along with it 5 bundles of cartridges containing .575 Burton balls....and you would have made it work. You wouldn't have been testing powder charges, sizing bullets, using bondo, etc.

I rolled up 50 .575 Burton (Minie) balls lubed with SPG lube.... with 60 gr of 2f, into 1863 pattern cartridges and took my CS Richmond shooting , and it did just fine. Could it have done a little better with some odd bullet size? Maybe I don't know.

Just get good bullets and head back to the range.

What is so difficult about the Pritchett cartridge? True it requires care and attention to detail to assemble, but it is the high-water mark in military muzzleloading cartridge technology. People forget that the P53 was not designed as a target rifle. The weapon was designed to use it's Pritchett cartridge to put large quantities of lead on target at long ranges and do it indefinitely. With the .550" cartridge it can be loaded and fired far past where a rifle using the Burton bullet would be too fouled to load. The cartridges imported from England were not Burton-type bullets. The Burton is an American invention. The Confederates greatly preferred the British cartridges to where they attempted (unsuccessfully due to the Union blockade) to import 3 bullet swaging machines. It was even ordered that a domestically produced (cast bullet) copy of the Pritchett be adopted as the sole issue cartridge for Confederate forces. Ammunition shortages plagued both sides and rifle practice was extremely limited. Commanders on both sides failed to grasp the potential and abilities of the P53 system that were demonstrated in the Crimea. One wonders what would have happened is the British had committed military intervention on the behalf of the Confederacy and opened up a new front from Canada? The Union Army wasn't ready for the fire tactics the Brits has polished to perfection. But that's for another thread.

 

[Stantheman86]

The Pritchett cartridge is very hard to make and it's much , much easier to roll up 1863 Pattern cartridges with a .575 or .577 Burton ball , just for range shooting.

I don't have access to 20 workers to roll Pritchett cartridges using the various thickness paper and complex process, I have to sit down and do it myself.

The idea that you can't shoot Burton balls all day without wiping the bore is a "gun show lore urban legend" propagated by hunters and people who don't know any better "they had to pound Minie balls down with a rock and you had to wipe the bore after like 10 shots " is complete BS. I've put 100 .575 properly lubed Burton balls through my Parker Hale Musketoons without any thought of wiping and all of them went right down the pipe with normal effort.

Pritchett cartridges are faster but Burton balls are more accurate. There's a video on YouTube by BritishMuzzleloaders showing two guys shooting both side by side.

Vast numbers of 1855, 1861 and 1863 pattern cartridges with .575 Burton balls were used with Union issued P53 Enfield rifles. Every round that went down the pipe of every Enfield rifle-musket wasn't a Pritchett. The US bought lots of P53's. The US Ordnance Dept also paid close attention to what Great Britain did militarily as they were the best Army in the world. It's not coincidence that we went with a .58 1855 Springfield rifle that just happens to be able to share ammo with a P53 Enfield.

 

[dave951]

The idea that you can't shoot Burton balls all day without wiping the bore is a "gun show lore urban legend" propagated by hunters and people who don't know any better "they had to pound Minie balls down with a rock and you had to wipe the bore after like 10 shots " is complete BS.

This^^

In our summer instruction project, we ran muskets 40+ straight a number of times without wiping or loss of accuracy. Balance the powder charge to the lube and no issues, just keep loading and shooting.

Anybody who says it can't be done is wrong. Plain and simple.

 

[Enfieldguy]

The Pritchett cartridge is very hard to make and it's much , much easier to roll up 1863 Pattern cartridges with a .575 or .577 Burton ball , just for range shooting.

I don't have access to 20 workers to roll Pritchett cartridges using the various thickness paper and complex process, I have to sit down and do it myself.

The idea that you can't shoot Burton balls all day without wiping the bore is a "gun show lore urban legend" propagated by hunters and people who don't know any better "they had to pound Minie balls down with a rock and you had to wipe the bore after like 10 shots " is complete BS. I've put 100 .575 properly lubed Burton balls through my Parker Hale Musketoons without any thought of wiping and all of them went right down the pipe with normal effort.

Pritchett cartridges are faster but Burton balls are more accurate. There's a video on YouTube by BritishMuzzleloaders showing two guys shooting both side by side.

Vast numbers of 1855, 1861 and 1863 pattern cartridges with .575 Burton balls were used with Union issued P53 Enfield rifles. Every round that went down the pipe of every Enfield rifle-musket wasn't a Pritchett. The US bought lots of P53's. The US Ordnance Dept also paid close attention to what Great Britain did militarily as they were the best Army in the world. It's not coincidence that we went with a .58 1855 Springfield rifle that just happens to be able to share ammo with a P53 Enfield.

That's interesting. My experience has been just the opposite with the Burton. Now I'm not shooting the awesome Parker Hale Enfield with the original progressive-depth rifling, but a 30 year old Armisport. With a .575" Lyman lubed with the original(as per period Ordnance manuals)beeswax/beef tallow blend the bore fouled badly past 15-20 rounds where it was increasingly difficult to load the following round. After researching and discovering the .550" Pritchett I can shoot 80+ rounds with no fouling problems and round #80 loaded just as easy as round #1. The Burton does have an edge in accuracy but the Pritchett was not designed as a target round. It's purpose was to achieve fire superiority at long ranges, as the Russians learned at Balaclava. I'd be interested to learn what you came up with that differed from the original Burton cartridge to control the fouling. With the Pritchett the paper-patch with it's beeswax coating controls the build-up. Yes, the Pritchett is labor-intensive and material-sensitive to produce a historically-correct cartridge that functions as designed. But I'm shooting a military arm and I prefer shooting it with as close to issue rounds as possible. In this context, I find the Pritchett superior. Your experience may vary.

 

[Enfieldguy]

This^^

In our summer instruction project, we ran muskets 40+ straight a number of times without wiping or loss of accuracy. Balance the powder charge to the lube and no issues, just keep loading and shooting.

Anybody who says it can't be done is wrong. Plain and simple.

So you are varying from the issue ammunition? Powder charge? Lube?

 

[dave951]

So you are varying from the issue ammunition? Powder charge? Lube?

Yup. We don't shoot issue ammo in the NSSA as we are a competition shooting organization. We will take the time to tweak the load for optimum accuracy.

Load we used for instruction at summer Scout camp- 579 RCBS Hogdon, 45g 3f Schutzen, Schutzen caps, beeswax/lard 60/40. On one day, we ran a Zouave over 50 rounds with no accuracy loss and no wiping. A couple of the kids were shooting the chains holding up the gongs with it at 50yds.

If you want to shoot issue ammo, go ahead, but be honest and don't come back here complaining about accuracy when you've done nothing to improve it.

 

[gemmer]

I think the debate about Burtons vs Pritchetts gets away fro the premise of the original post. Personally I've come to the conclusion that there may well be something fundamentally wrong with the musket. SMOKESTACK. Did you buy your musket new or second hand? Do you actually know the condition of the bore? There are two people that I can recommend who can look at your barrel and determine its condition and make recommendations. Bob Hoyt and Dan Whitacre. Bob does not have email or a website. You can call him at 717-642-6696. Try him early in the morning or just before 5:00 PM. You'll find Dan's contact info at www.whitacresmachineshop.com. Both of them are closely connected with the N-SSA and countless shooters. They know muskets in and out.

 

[Enfieldguy]

Yup. We don't shoot issue ammo in the NSSA as we are a competition shooting organization. We will take the time to tweak the load for optimum accuracy.

Load we used for instruction at summer Scout camp- 579 RCBS Hogdon, 45g 3f Schutzen, Schutzen caps, beeswax/lard 60/40. On one day, we ran a Zouave over 50 rounds with no accuracy loss and no wiping. A couple of the kids were shooting the chains holding up the gongs with it at 50yds.

If you want to shoot issue ammo, go ahead, but be honest and don't come back here complaining about accuracy when you've done nothing to improve it.

There's a big difference in shooting strictly for bullseye and shooting for the historical effect. Maybe it's the historian in me, but I want the weapons and ammunition to be as close to 'as-issued' as possible. It's an 'immersion experience' thing. I'm not into the 'gamer' or 'Win at all costs' thing. That's why I got out of IPSC and SASS. I'm hoping I can get to the Victorian Rifleman's Shoot in Vancouver next year. The NSSA doesn't permit paper-patched bullets which I find ironic for an outfit that promotes the 'authentic' use of the muzzle-loading rifled musket.

I think the debate about Burtons vs Pritchetts gets away fro the premise of the original post. Personally I've come to the conclusion that there may well be something fundamentally wrong with the musket. SMOKESTACK. Did you buy your musket new or second hand? Do you actually know the condition of the bore? There are two people that I can recommend who can look at your barrel and determine its condition and make recommendations. Bob Hoyt and Dan Whitacre. Bob does not have email or a website. You can call him at 717-642-6696. Try him early in the morning or just before 5:00 PM. You'll find Dan's contact info at www.whitacresmachineshop.com. Both of them are closely connected with the N-SSA and countless shooters. They know muskets in and out.

Many folk speak very highly of both craftsmen. I'm debating in which route is better, have a custom progressive-rifled barrel made for my Armisport or just spend the extra and find a Parker Hale that is already correct?