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broomhandle
11-27-2017, 12:52 AM
Hi Guys,

One of the fellows at the range has a new muzzle loader. A Enfield three band copy-Chrome bore?- using real 3 fff black powder.

He mentioned he is filling the hollow base with Vaseline! (prevent leading & make cleaning faster?)

The grooves on the bullet are filled with Crisco! I watched him fire a few rounds with the rifle.
Every shot sounded different! Accuracy is non- existent at 25 & 50 feet! At 75 cents a bullet for store bought Buffalo bullets- it's not a cheap project.

He had pre-loaded the charges in the little red plastic container they use & also carry's the bullet for faster loading! I think he is melting the Vaseline in a warm barrel & it's fouling his powder charge.
His percussion nipple is always clogged up after a few shots.

What if anything is he doing wrong. I'm not a black powder shooter, so I'm not in a place where I can try to help him out!

Thanks for any help,
broom

john.k
11-27-2017, 01:04 AM
Personally,I wouldnt interfere with the guy.And non existent accuracy is common.Cap blast and flame causing a monumental flinch.One guy at the range never sights,hes looking at the blast and smoke.It makes him happy.Lectures dont.If they ask,answer the question.They never ask.

RogerDat
11-27-2017, 01:11 AM
I am the opposite of an authority but it does seem to me Crisco and Vaseline are too thin and would melt too easy. Unless it is really, really cold there. Normal recipe repeated all over as a basic BP lube and what I use is 50/50 unsalted Crisco and Bees Wax melted and mixed. For hotter climate a bit more bees wax, for colder more Crisco. Some use Olive oil as opposed to Crisco or use some combination of the three.

I would think both the lubes you mention would start to melt out just from the barrel heat after the first shot. The lubes I have seen are either dip bullet when melted and it stiffens when cooled or smeared on and stiffen once they dry out a bit.

As I said a whole lot of more knowledgeable people around on this subject. Maybe they can suggest a store bought product and you can take him some to try? If it shoots better for him that would be the best way to clarify the better lube choice.

john.k
11-27-2017, 01:22 AM
I stood beside a guy hammering bare minie slugs down a genuine 1853 Enfield,including a jug of powder directly beside his firing point.He lodged a complaint with the range committee for interference.Now,I just move away. Well away.

RogerDat
11-27-2017, 01:22 AM
I do see this lube offered for sale By LsStuff makers of white label lubes. http://lsstuff.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3&products_id=42

Never tried it, but their other lubes are good so.... is your friends not hitting the target worth $17 + shipping to address?

stubshaft
11-27-2017, 02:09 AM
MCM bullet lube from North East Trading Company.

Good Cheer
11-27-2017, 06:39 AM
broomhandle,
Results with lube in the base depend upon the barrel, the size of the hole in the nipple, geometry of the ignition channel and how much back flow it's getting, how much powder, how much the skirts may be bent from shipping or handling... not to mention the lube used and how much.
Once that fellow finds out what works for him and wants to tell you how you need to do it then the thing to do is smile and thank him for sharing.

kens
11-27-2017, 08:50 AM
The grease is supposed to be in the grease grooves of the bullet. The hollow base is for the base to swell up and engage the rifling.
you should not have grease in direct contact with the powder. a really greasy bullet like you describe would have a dry card wad over the powder.
In my own experiments with any kind of hollow base bullet (I got 45cal) they dont like the hollow base to be tampered with.
I wanted to tighten up the bullet in the bore at loading, I used a light cloth patch which tighten up loading just fine, but it wouldnt shoot worth a darn.
Vaseline is a good grease for black powder, heck, any kind of grease is good for black powder, lard, crisco, tallow, they all work.
It does sound as though he is using a great deal of it on top of the powder charge.
I believe it feasible that the too much grease is interfering with a good powder burn and assisting with fouling the nipple.

You say the nipple is fouled after a few shots, is it a wet cheesy fouling, or a dry hard fouling?

dondiego
11-27-2017, 01:56 PM
Have him try it without the Vaseline.

OverMax
11-27-2017, 02:32 PM
Mini ball's were the biggest pain for me to experiment with. Always problematic.
Your friend may be better off shooting solid bullets (Hornady Great Plains) with a felt button pad between the bullets base and the charge. As far as a B/P bullet lube. Crisco and Vaseline are not bullet lubes nor patch lubes and are likely to be more troublesome than their worth.
As far as I know the center of a Mini ball is never filled with anything other than the burning gasses from the propellant used which intentionally expands the pure lead mini's skirt so to make contact with the bores side wall and rifling.
A store bought patch lube like OxYoke Wonder lube is smeared into the grease groves on the >side< of a mini maxi or bullet only. And done so with moderation in mind.
If your friends bore caliber is larger than 50 cal? He should be charging his rifle with 2FF-g_ Not 3FFF-g

bedbugbilly
11-27-2017, 03:15 PM
Lubing minie ball bases with crisco is a common practice and has been used for years and years. I personally have done it for 55 years and shot tens of thousands of rounds with excellent accuracy.

There are a number of things that come in to play when shooting a rifled musket. First and foremost is the minie ball fit to bore - I have always liked to have one .002 undersize of the bore. The rings do not have to be lubed - a quick smear of crisco with your finger in the base of the minie provides all the lube needed to keep fouling soft for many loads.

Using petroleum jelly is not the wisest thing to do. If shooting in hot weather, then stiffen the crisco with a little bit of beeswax melted in.

If the minie is too small for the barrel bore, you are going to get poor accuracy and very likely "key holing". Crisco in the base of a properly sized minie will allow for good skirt expansion and enough lube to keep the fouling soft. A standard service charge of 60 - 65 gr. of 2F is plenty adequate for accurate shooting of a "old style" or "new style" 575-213s minie out of a standard .58 caliber rifled musket. The enfield probably has a .577 bore so he needs to find a correct fitting minie to fit it.

I shot N-SSA for many many years and while the "new kids on the block" may have other things they use now, we never had any problems with clearing a pigeon board or breaking clay pots with a crisco lubed minie and a service load of 2F. I have participated in long range shoots out to 1,000 meters with rifled muskets - original 1861, 1863 Remington Zouave repro, Mississippi Rifle and 3 band Enfield. We were shooting at 2' X 4' pop down/pop up targets at Camp Grayling on the machine gun range. No, at long distances you aren't going to put the into "one hole", but out to 500 meters, we had no problems with nailing and taking down the targets which would be akin to shooting at a person. At 1,000 meters, they had a full size cut out of a man on a horse out of 3/8 steel plate. I wasn't able to hit it but my shooting partner/spotter hit it several tines one he got the elevation figured out with his 3 band Enfield.

Shooting a rifled musket is no different than shooting any muzzleloader. If you flinch, you are going to miss. You have to "learn" your rifle and how it shoots - just like any rifle. As far as nipple hole size3 and all of that "bunk" - the size of the hole in a rifled musket nipple is not going to affect accuracy. Think about it. The purpose of the hole in the nipple is for a flame channel for the cap discharge to get to the main powder charge. One that hammer falls on the cap, things are underway and the back pressure on the spent cap/hammer is minimal at best. If it were something to worry about and that much back pressure was taking place, the hammer would be blown back to at least half cock. When the powder charge goes off, the gasses expand the skirt and the minie is on the way down the barrel. Too much powder and you can "blow" the skirt. A poorly fitting minie will not allow for proper skirt expansion into the traditional military 3 groove rifling and yes, gasses will go around the minie as it is being forced down the barrel - and that WILL affect accuracy.

Advise your friend to go back to the basics. Lube the base with crisco, make sure the minie ball fits his barrel properly and if he is shooting a heavy minie - use a standard service load of 60 to65 gr of 2F. If he is using one of the lighter hollow base semi wad cutter boolits, do the same. Grease the base with crisco and finger - but use a lighter weight charge of 2F - in the 40 to 45 Gr range. It is not necessary to lube the rings on any of the minie balls or lighter weight SWC if the base is lubed.

The "vaseline"? Loose it. As far as cleaning, it isn't necessary to buy all the hyped up cleaning products and other stuff that gets marketed. Hot soapy water will clean the bore of any muzzleloader followed by a thorough drying and an olled patch.

The accuracy of a rifled musket - whether it be an Enfield, a Springfield, etc. - is plenty accurate for normal range shooting and certainly for most hunting range distances. But, it is only as accurate as the guy behind it. You need to learn the sight picture for the various distances, where the point of impact is for the point of aim . . . and then relax and top flinching and worrying about the recoil - it's going to be there whether you anticipate it or not.

Good luck!

maillemaker
11-27-2017, 04:23 PM
Bedbugbilly pretty much nailed it.

In period, expanding ball bullets ("Minie") were lubricated in two ways. Either they had grease grooves which were filled with lube, or they were paper patched, and the paper carried the lube. The British style of Enfield cartridge was a smooth-sided bullet with a hollow base - the "Pritchett" bullet. Originally, they had iron cups in the hollow base. The idea was the cup would be blown into the bullet cavity, forcing it to expand. Sometimes, however, the iron cup was blown through the bullet, leaving the bullet behind. Other times the iron cup would drop free from the bullet in flight, posing a risk to friendly troops being fired over. Eventually they switched to a wooden plug, and lastly to a fired clay plug. The bullet was paper patched as part of the cartridge, and was dipped into lube made from tallow and beeswax. Ultimately the British switched entirely to beeswax. But the paper carried the lube.

The Americans did not think the plug was necessary, as the charge itself would inflate the bullet causing it to take up the rifling. And they did not use a paper-patched cartridge like the British. They used a grooved bullet and the grease was initially made of 1:3 tallow:beeswax and later 1:8 by the 1855 and 1862 Ordnance Manuals.

At no time was lube inserted into the base of the bullet.

Like Billy, I shoot N-SSA competition. I have made up bullets using the period 1:8 recipe, and well as 50/50 Crisco/Beeswax, and I can pretty much shoot indefinitely. I routinely shoot 9-12 rounds in a 5-minute course of fire and I have fired many more than that between cleanings at the range.

There are as many recipes for lube as there are people shooting them. But I have always been told to avoid petroleum products for lube with black powder as they make tough fouling. Some proportion of beeswax and Crisco is used by countless folks.

Steve

Outpost75
11-27-2017, 05:09 PM
BedbugBilley and Steve nailed it.

I've nothing to add, except that at our range the yahoo with an open can of black on the shooting bench would be given a stern tongue-lashing, and directed to the covered loading area BEHIND the line! Loading at the bench using pre-measured charges in individual cartridge tubes is OK, but not pouring from a flask or having any open powder around.

rmark
11-27-2017, 05:45 PM
He may also need a larger diameter minie bullet, my Enfield replica needs a .580 diameter minie to be happy.

mooman76
11-27-2017, 07:39 PM
On top of all everyone said his bore could be leaded also.

Ballistics in Scotland
11-27-2017, 07:43 PM
Well first we shouldn't neglect the possibility that he wasn't pointing the thing in the right direction...

Other than that, Crisco may not be ideal but should be all right. The Snider used pure beeswax, and I can't see anything wrong with at least an admixture of it to the Crisco. All barrels are in a hot climate when they heat up, and the muzzle-loader bullet is in contact with it longer than the Snider one.

With the Snider cartridge, and possibly in the late muzzle-loader bullets, they filled the cavity with a mixture of clay and beeswax. When I picked it out (a century or more after manufacture), I found it hard but friable, and I think it would have collapsed to powder immediately pressure built up. That seems like a good replacement for the wooden plug or steel thimble, enabling a thin skirted bullet to expand well, without the skirt being torn off.

Good Cheer
11-27-2017, 08:00 PM
Hi Guys,

One of the fellows at the range has a new muzzle loader. A Enfield three band copy-Chrome bore?- using real 3 fff black powder.

He mentioned he is filling the hollow base with Vaseline! (prevent leading & make cleaning faster?)

The grooves on the bullet are filled with Crisco! I watched him fire a few rounds with the rifle.
Every shot sounded different! Accuracy is non- existent at 25 & 50 feet! At 75 cents a bullet for store bought Buffalo bullets- it's not a cheap project.

He had pre-loaded the charges in the little red plastic container they use & also carry's the bullet for faster loading! I think he is melting the Vaseline in a warm barrel & it's fouling his powder charge.
His percussion nipple is always clogged up after a few shots.

What if anything is he doing wrong. I'm not a black powder shooter, so I'm not in a place where I can try to help him out!

Thanks for any help,
broom



Once had a Zouave that did that when putting lube in the skirt. It made for a hard seam of greasy coal beneath the nipple, filling the ignition channel with stuff that you had to chip out. On that piece it was simply a matter of the geometry of the ignition channel. Too much lube made it a problem. It was as bad as putting American Pioneer Powder in the 1842 and every third shot being a clogged up no boomer.

bob208
11-27-2017, 08:03 PM
lose the Vaseline use Crisco only. also change out the nipple for one with the small hole like a hot shot. this combo works for me and all the others on the team.

Ballistics in Scotland
11-28-2017, 05:44 AM
Certainly Vaseline to fill the cavity is a bad idea. Besides possibly degrading the powder, it is liable to be irregularly distributed on exiting the muzzle, harming the weight distribution of the bullet. An undersized bullet, brittle alloy or excessively thin skirt might result in the skirt cracking, and a one-sided jet effect as the bullet emerges from the muzzle.

Some people fill the cavity with hot-melt glue of the kind that stays rubbery, or silicon sealer.

broomhandle
11-28-2017, 06:31 PM
Hi all ,

Thanks for the reply's! If i see him I'll mention this site to him!

broom

dave951
12-04-2017, 10:51 AM
Vaseline in the base VERY bad idea.

Where to start.......
First off, for anything resembling accuracy, the minies will have to be dead soft pure lead AND sized to within .001-2 of bore. Second, don't get hung up on the charge weight. Most minies shoot very well with about 75% of listed service charge weight and NO pyrodex, just the Holy Black. Third, lube is critical. Try using a 50/50 crisco/beeswax for lube. Start out with NOTHING in the base. Observe accuracy and fouling. If fouling is building in the chamber area with each shot, try adding a TINY bit of crisco to the base, meaning a spot smaller than a pea wiped in with your finger. Fourth, caps, CCI Reenactor caps are designed for blanks, good luck getting any accuracy out of them. Go with RWS or Schutzen.

In case you're wondering about what kind of accuracy can be gotten from these Civil War guns, I have 2 Colt Contract Springfields that will both dump 10 shots into one big hole at 50yds and a Parker Hale Enfield that will do it as well. I also have an Enfield musketoon that can do it. It took a while of experimenting to find the right combination but it is possible and while the Colts shoot the same load, it's different for the Enfields, not much but different.

If you're really serious about learning how to shoot the Civil War guns well, to over to the North South Skirmish Association board for more info. We're a competition shooting org that shoots only Civil War weapons, up to and including artillery (yes cannons), for score. I don't think you'll find a more concentrated place with knowledge on how to shoot these guns anywhere on the net. I've read other boards with folks spouting off about these guns but most of it is tripe gotten second hand from a cousin's friend or something. There are a couple on this board in the NSSA and if they offer advice and mention they're NSSA, you'd do well to listen.

n-ssa.net

quail4jake
12-04-2017, 02:58 PM
Good job, Dave 951! I've been fooling with rifle muskets for 40 years and made alot of mistakes (like casting Minie balls out of wheelweights) but the most pleasure I've derived is doing it right and watching the problems go away. Many years ago I listened to N-SSAers and changed what I was doing which made my musket shoot so well that I started using it for deer..that was 1979 and I've killed well over 2 dozen through the years with it. Within the last 10 years I read the ordinance manual and learned how to make lube and paper cartridges true to 1855 standards which made things work even better. Now I have 10 different repro US muskets that all perform very well. All the things I learned can be found on the N-SSA board which is the best source that you'll find on this topic. Now that we have this "internet fad" you don't need to reinvent the wheel, just ask these ol' boys and please share with others!

Pavia
12-04-2017, 08:45 PM
Lots of good info here. I’ll concur that the accuracy was most likely due to the lube in the base preventing expansion. Especially with an undersized ball or one with a heavy skirt. Just lube the outside and you’re good to go.

Buckshot
12-05-2017, 03:06 AM
...............I firmly believe that you should try to please the firearm (rifle in this case). I have a Parker Hale P58 Enfield 2 band Naval pattern rifled musket. It has 5 lands and grooves, with the grooves being of progressive depth. The grooves are deeper at the breech with a constant taper to the muzzle. The lands are the same ID breech to muzzle. Having owned a Zoli Zouave for umpteen years (like every other American shooter I know :-)) I started out treating the Enfield the same. Didn't work too well. I used Crisco for lube and smeared it into the lube grooves. I could get maybe 5 increasingly difficult to load minie'e to seat. The accuracy was nothing noteworthy.

To cut to the chase, with the 5 groove Enfield, it wanted it's lube in the HB, and Crisco simply wasn't it. It HAD to have Bore Butter. I've also found a couple others that work almost as well. However with the Bore Butter I could shoot almost all day. Trying over and over with ANY lube in the grooves, it's groups would NEVER be as tight as lube in the base cavity only. Also as long as the slug was a reasonable fit, it shot exceedingly well. It shot everything from the Lee REAL slug to a 580gr Pritchit, and including a Lyman 575611 that weighed 632 grs after dropping the core pin in the mould.

One of my shooting buddies showed up one day at the range with a new muzzle loader. Being a former Marine he was a bit odd. His handle was "3 band Bob' as he always shot a M1842 .69 caliber Springfield. The new front stuffer was a 3 Band Enfield. I do not recall who made it but it had been imported by Lyman. It was very well made and an attractive rifle. My P58 was superbly accurate but 'Picky'. This rifle of Bob's was also nicely accurate but exceedingly eclectic in it's requirements.

I fondly recall that on one very nice late summer afternoon at the range, Bob and I sat on opposite sides of a bench shooting at the 200 meter plate. Taking turns and handing that rifle back and forth. On the bench was a coffee can of Minie bullets, a can of powder, measure, cap tin, and a plastic butter dish of Crisco. I do not at this late date recall what we ran out of first to cause us to stop shooting his new musket. In any event we treated that gong unmercifully, and that Enfield repro got vary warm :-) Several months later muzzle loaders happened to come up in conversation. I asked Bob about that wondrous Enfield? He said he'd sold it to Leonard (a mutual friend). I asked incredulous, why in God's name would ANYONE sell such a magnificent piece? Bob replied that it wasn't much of a challenge, and besides the Marines were never issued Enfields! I said he was odd, AND a Marine didn't I?

http://www.fototime.com/6BF0D8313CD43F3/standard.jpg http://www.fototime.com/C1F823289439B8F/standard.jpg

Fired at 50 yards, benched. Notice the lube test on the right. Slugs are 540gr Challangers, from a mould I bought from Maven years ago.

http://www.fototime.com/0744963E3A064B6/standard.jpghttp://www.fototime.com/C75E453AEFB1E35/standard.jpg

Left, 500 gr 'Target Minie' from NEI. RIGHT, modified and stock Lyman 575611.

http://www.fototime.com/5A94DEA526A1BFB/standard.jpghttp://www.fototime.com/C3EE3AD183E490A/standard.jpg

LEFT, Right slug is a 580gr Pritchit from a Raphine mould. Left slug is the Pritchit after being swaged to produce a heavier skirt for heavier charges, along with a hollow point. Right Photo is the swage die I made to re-work the Pritchit.

http://www.fototime.com/E38BA7F52BCE965/standard.jpghttp://www.fototime.com/A203AE713612238/standard.jpg

The P58 2 Band Enfield. A completely delightful rifle.

................Buckshot

Col4570
12-05-2017, 04:04 AM
I fill the Bullet canelures with 50/50 Beeswax and Tallow,I make sure that there is nothing in the cavity.I believe that Grease in the Hollow acts as a cushion and interferes with the Bullet expansion at ignition.

carbine
12-05-2017, 10:13 AM
Only one question. You said he is paying $ 0.75 per minie? He needs to start making his own boolits

dave951
12-05-2017, 01:18 PM
needs a correctly sized patched bullet with plug.


I'll be impolite and point out we're talking about minie balls which do not get patched unless shooting the Pritchet design. That's the original load designed for the Enfield. Bullet was swaged from lead rod, smooth sided and designed to be loaded as is into the gun too speed up the loading process with cartridge paper still around the projectile.

Lots of cool stuff from that time period where they experimented with a number of ways of speeding up reloading.

dave951
12-06-2017, 11:41 AM
In actual practice, the Enfield round was designed as a paper patch bullet. While I'm sure some of the domestically made stuff got loaded the same way, that's not according to regs, but somebody probably did it in the heat of action. As a current practice, I don't know of anyone who shoots minies accurately with a paper patch. One of the guys on my team shoots a Shiloh Sharps 45/110 and he uses paper patches and that rifle is extremely accurate, but it's a different system of getting the lead down the bore.

In the OP I'd bet a dozen doughnuts he just went out and bought some minies from some source that cast them from questionable alloy that didn't size them at all. If his bore is actually 580 (like my Colts) then a 575 might even keyhole at 25yds. Most of the repops do run big. I had a couple Euroarms that were supposed to be 575 but measured 581 and I've seen others as large as 584. So, I'd also bet he's just doing what he read on a gun forum somewhere from somebody's cousin's friend's uncle posting doubious info he heard somewhere.

I cast my minies from pure lead and they're right at 580 so they do have to be sized to 579 achieve both consistency in diameter and size so they will go down the bore. I weigh each minie and have a tolerance I use for match (skirmish) ammo and a much tighter one I use for individual target and testing ammo. After a pass through the sizer, each minie shows evidence on a couple places where the sizer smoothed it out. In the Colts, I use 44.5gr 3fg Old Eynsford with Lens Lube (available at NSSA Nationals) and RWS caps. That load will shoot into 1in out of both muskets.

Eddie Southgate
12-10-2017, 11:15 PM
I run mine through a sizing die that is of a size that does not change the as cast size of the minnie . All i want it to do is make sure the skirt is truly round and add a little of the old original black Ideal lube to the grooves . As I load them I will add either some Crisco or a dab of some very old Lithium tube grease that I have a good supply of . All my Minnie's are cast in as near pure lead as I can find . Been doing it that way for over 50 years and my old Zoli Zouave will shoot groups as good as anybodys rifle .

Eddie

Outpost75
12-11-2017, 12:02 AM
Lacking a source of sheep tallow, use what we call "Confederate Army Lube", equal parts by melted volume of Goya Manteca (unsalted, filtered lard) and beeswax. I use it in cap& ball revolvets, as patch lube, for Minies and BP cartridge cowboy loads. Also OK with smokeless. Cheap and it works