50 cal TC shooting Minie’

[Daryl S]

I've been on muzzleloading forums for many years. What I've found, is that a lot of people in the States use what I consider squib loads on game, right up into the larger calibres. There are also a bunch of guys with experience who use decent loads. I've seen, over the years a lot of animals on the ground, success stories with various sized deer from Pennsylvania, Montana, and all over, easily killed with round balls in calibres from .40 to .54. Guys in the Western States usually use .54's, the odd .58 and .62's. A close friend of mine up here used round balls on the local mulies. Our deer as as large as anywhere in North America, up to and over 350punds on the hoof. He NEVER failed to kill his deer with one shot, but - he was as exceptional shot. He also tried Lee's REAL bullets with he found, as I did, excellent accuracy with decent loads. In the .45, that means 75 to 80gr. I used 2F, he used 70 to 75gr. 3F. He noted after 2 seasons using the slug, "they killed deer no better nor worse than round balls", thus he went back to round balls.
Here's a picture he posted on spring, around Easter time, frontal head shot with his deer rifle. Works on snowshoe hares as well.

 

[Daryl S]

What I have also found over the years, is a LOT of people in the States do a lot of their shooting on the keyboard. I've put over 5,000 rounds(balls and loads) just through my .69. It was built for me in 1986. I've made a study of shooting these ML rifles since 1972. (1963 if you count the cannons we made when barely teenagers when shooting them at pods of weeds floating down the Thames River in S, Ontario.
Back in the early to mid 70's, I went through 300 pounds of pure lead in .36 through .50 muzzleloaders(& my 4" M29 S&W). Then after moving to Smithers in 1976, went through another 400 pounds until 1986, when my bro made me the .69. So - I've been there with ML's for a while. We shoot less now, being 75yrs old, bro 77.
Sometimes the shooting is not so hot, other times its's OK.

 

[fourfive8]

A target showing the theory of fouling equilibrium when shooting Minies- demonstrates one of the great advantages of the Minie’ over the roundball. Original US M1861 Mason rifle-musket. 58 cal RCBS N-S Minie’, standard service load of 59 gr of FF. Ten consecutive shots @ 50 yards. Shoot, load, shoot, load, shoot etc. as quickly as safely possible for ten shots.

 

[fourfive8]

The details of these loads I keep forgetting to mention are the caps and nipples. For serious musket shooting, I use full power RWS musket caps. For less serious plinking and shorter strings I use the more common, less expensive, less powerful re-enactor caps. For regular, non-musket rifles I use #11 CCI magnum caps. I use premium nipples of correct size for all guns.

 

[Daryl S]

Good shooting for a Minnie rifle. A round ball rifle is considerably more accurate than that. I changed out a barrel off a Flintlock Southern Mountain Rifle (SMR)because it would not shoot better than 1 1/2" at 50 yards. The new barrel does slightly better than an inch.

 

[fourfive8]

For giggles, i just did an AI search asking simple question about strength of various MUSKET CAPS and the AI generated answers were as expected all over the place, based on opinion and not based on any data. You know the result is going to be screwy when the answer re: “musket cap strength” primarily gives opinions on #11 caps!

 

[Daryl S]

Cap strength might be important for long narrow flash channels. I've never noticed accuracy changes when using a variety of caps in my rifles. I tested Hotshot nipples with the little hole below the top. Those nipples opened up groups (measurably) in my .69 moose rifle, that is now also the rifle I use for trail walks. It's accuracy is quite repeatable. The increase in group size, however was not much, though.

 

[Daryl S]

Appears you do not understand our shooting with patched round balls. We NEVER wipe the bore at the range. There is no need. When you load the next one, the shot before it is wiped down with the patched ball. There is ZERO fouling buildup - never happens, no matter the weather, from 7% humidity to 100% humidity. For hunting, Neetsfoot Oil or the old Track's mink oil is used. (not Neetsfoot Oil Compound which is synthetic).
The targets I posted are all offhand/standing targets. I can see the sights on the .69, not so the .50 Beck which was shot at 50yards. The Rhino targets were shot at 25 yards, offhand/standing.
During the war between the States, yes. minnie "balls" had an advantage over patched round balls, in rapid firing. Today, they have no advantage advantage & actually a disadvantage in poorer accuracy over NORMAL hunting or target ranges.

 

[fourfive8]

My understanding for the reason CCI went to the #0301 Reenactor or Multiple Use, weaker musket cap was that a skirmisher caught a piece of cap fragment in the eye and his lawyer sued CCI. More recently, CCI has produced the #300 Extra Strength musket cap. I do not know if the current #300 is as strong as the older, original “6 wing” CCI.

A few years ago, I built a simple device to measure the RELATIVE impulse of various caps. A simple pendulum set in front of muzzle. Fire a cap, note amount of movement of pendulum. Stupid simple but worked to show relative impulse strength of various caps. Not going to bother digging out the results but they clearly show caps like older CCI, current RWS, current Schuetzen and even an old non-winged, solid cup (Italian) marketed by CVA and possibly Navy Arms - all had much more impulse than the CCI 0301 Reenactor.

for what it’s worth

 

[Daryl S]

Weird. I think anyone who doesn't wear eye protection, whether with percussion, flint or matchlock is making a VERY foolish mistake. Back in the 70's my wife "caught" a tiny cap fragment from her .36 Seneca in her eyelid.
TC rifles, with thdir silly coil spring main springs were quite good at disintegrating caps. Luckily her eye "saw" it coming. She wore that fragment that turned green, for amost 30 years, when one morning, there it was, on her pillow case.
We always instruct new shooters to wear safety glasses of some sort. Its also a good idea with any firearm.

 

[fourfive8]

Another angle that’s related directly to the recent shooting and load development of the 50 Minie’ out of the TC is the feedback of the hearing and feel of the sonic crack. Similarly you can get really sensitive to detecting the slightest hangfire. If you shoot a lot and pay attention, you can learn to hear the sonic crack of the gas and the bullet near the muzzle. When working up loads in these guns that operate near that sonic threshold you can learn to listen for it. One load may be near but sub sonic while the next crosses the barrier… boom with no crack sound compared with the next incremental increase of load to a boom with crack sound. I also always listen and feel for any hangfire during any load development. I never detected any during testing this 50 Minie’. So open groups or shots out of group could only be blamed on my shooting- either hold or trigger. The load work up for the Minie’ in this rifle was very easy with no surprises. Kind of uneventful. I used the range at my house for this so couldn’t shoot with clear open background to watch for erratic bullet flight as the sonic barrier would be crossed when shooting out to longer ranges with the heavier load. That sometimes happens with bullets that are marginally stable. I doubt that would be the case with this 50 Minie’ anyway. Likewise I never detected any hangfires during the testing.

I remember working on a load for an M79 Rem RB in 43 Spanish one time and having a heckuva time getting any accuracy at 100 yards with a standard bullet designed supposedly for the 43 Spanish. Hah! One range session I decided to shoot at a 300 yard target. The light and atmospheric conditions were just right for watching the bullet in flight. The load muzzle vel was chronographed right at sonic. Sure enough somewhere around 100 yards the bullet was randomly veering in flight. The only thing I could figure was that it was marginally stable out the muzzle and as it crossed below sonic its delicate state of stability was lost. I ordered a custom mold for a different bullet design and solved the problem.