Lee 500-360-M, improved Minie, in inline?

[caverryan]

Anyone shooting the Lee Lee 500-360-M Improved Minie in T/C Pro Hunter FX, or similar 1:28 inline? Found some info/opinions on here from back when they came out, but that was about 12 years ago; not seeing much talk about them recently.

[Brimstone]

Not much to say other than they serve as an alternative to expensive skirted and belted jacketed soft points from Hornady when used in suppressed rifles (yes suppressed muzzle loader) where cloth or paper patched bullets cannot be used due to baffle strikes.
Mind you, you can't push them anywhere near as hard or fast as the plastic belted or skirted designs or you risk blowing out the skirt.

[BLAHUT]

I am shooting a Lee 360gr minie in a wolf magnum, very accurate for me, in pure lead and at about 1200 FPS.

[caverryan]

I am shooting a Lee 360gr minie in a wolf magnum, very accurate for me, in pure lead and at about 1200 FPS.

A couple questions for you, DM Sent

[centershot]

Shot from an inline they should be really accurate, just be careful you don't blow the skirts off! BLAHUT is runnung them at 1200 fps, I don't think they'll take much more than that.

[Good Cheer]

As broad and flat as the nose on those 354 and 360 grain Lee designs are...

During the heyday of muzzloloading rifle target shooting people were experimenting with various types of two piece bullets. Sometimes they'd use a hard cast nose and a soft cast body to get expansion into the rifling grooves, the hardened alloy up front to give them an undamaged nose. That got me to thinking about the flat noses and tapered cavities in the Lee designs and whether they could be used turned around backwards with the addition of a nose casting to set into the cavity. Like load it with a card wad over a sufficiently heavy charge, the boolit expands into the rifling while enjoying the benefit of a solid base with the new nose of the boolit being whatever shape was desired. It wouldn't need to be hard or soft alloy, just whatever was best suited your application.

It's just one of those things I've thought about but may never get around to trying. Reckon if I had a left handed fifty barrel with a fast twist I'd be looking around for a nose mold.

[Super Sneaky Steve]

I've shot everything Lee has to offer in 50 cal. My inlines do well with heavy conicals.

Expanding skirted boolits leave a bad crust ring near the bottom of the barrel. Before the skirt expands there's blowby. All my testing is with black powder. Maybe new fangled whiz bang powders are different.

[dave951]

I've shot everything Lee has to offer in 50 cal. My inlines do well with heavy conicals.

Expanding skirted boolits leave a bad crust ring near the bottom of the barrel. Before the skirt expands there's blowby. All my testing is with black powder. Maybe new fangled whiz bang powders are different.


I shoot minies in competition and have zero issues like that. There are several reasons I can think of that would result in your problem. First, lead is not pure. For expanding skirt bullets like a minie, it has to be pure. Second, skirt thickness. A thick skirt coupled with harder lead will take higher powder charges to expand and you will get some blowby on that. Third, lube. That's something that would take experimentation to figure out.