Lee Enfield No. 1 in .410 Musket ...

[Reverend Al]

PS: It was a scorching hot up there at the range today! We're in the middle of a heat wave up here in Victoria and today it was running about 33 "Canuck" degrees which equates to about 92 US degrees! I was shooting my M1 Garand a bit and when we finally had a "cease fire" I walked out in front of my shooting bench to pick up my brass (about 20 minutes after shooting it) and it was still so hot that it nearly burned my fingers just picking it up. Sitting out in the blazing sun it just didn't cool down at all ...
I could only get about 5 rounds through my 98 Mauser .30-06 HB target rifle and then I'd have to put it up in the gun rack to cool down for a while. (The gun rack is under cover in the shade thank goodness.) We were up there from about 12:00 noon to 5:30 pm and I only shot about 40 rounds through the two .30-06's and formed the 50 .410 Musket cases with the cornmeal fire-forming loads. It was really just WAY too hot for a shooting day, but "mad dogs and Englishmen venture out into the noonday sun" don't you know! Even at 100 yards the mirage on the targets looking through my 15 power Unertl target scope on the old Mauser was brutal ...

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I had my hands on some of those 410 military ball loads the ones I had were the three ball of .380 in a shot colum, the kicker was the fact that the hulls were aluminum.

side note for a good bunny and nuisance bird buster try 10gr red dot 1/2" buffer wad and as many spent primers as you can get under an over shot card and a drop of elmers glue (to seal the card)

They would be safe at a much shorter distance than ordinary shot, for birds at close range, but I doubt if you could count on the penetration a rabbit needs.

They would probably spread wider too, but I doubt if this is the sort of load or firearm you need where a rabbit will bolt at three yards and be safe home at ten. For that kind of work the French used to market cubical shot, and maybe still do. You would get the same result by flattening ordinary lead shot, with steel rollers if you planned on doing a lot of it, or just a hammer. You could also cut up sheet lead.

[granville_it]

http://www.castbulletengineering.com...-double-cavity

Maybe something there of interest?

Interesting project.

Cheers Mark

[Reverend Al]

Neat link, but at .400" it is still 10 thousandths undersized for what I need. Rick at Sharpshooter moulds will make me a full .410" sized round ball mould at his regular prices ... I just have to be patient and wait for him to get caught up on general production back orders and when he has time to get to the special order sizes he'll make me a "big" mould to work properly with this .410 Musket. "All good things come to he who waits ..."

[victorfox]

For buck and ball, you can take a look at BB and F sizes. In brass cases (magtech) they respectively stacks nicely in rows of 3 and 2. I,m loading a .440 pellet plus about a dozen #F over it. Still have to pattern the thing.

edit: should I add I'm shooting them tru a .447 smoothbore brazilian judge (not .410 not .45...)