I have a new to me Muskatoon Zouave shallow 3 groove 1/48 twist mfg fbo Navy Arms by Antonio Zolli w/ .5792 bore
The commonly available Lee and Lyman minie's mold are .575 dia (Lyman #575213) as cast and even with lube will drop to the powder charge via gravity in my .58 (would obviously be dangerous to hunt with making a snap shot with a 530gr minie 2/3rds of the way down the barrel) ..
I have in my possession some purchased bullets from 3 different reputable guys in the trade of making and selling BP minies and am disappointed in weight variances as well as roundness (no I am not on a name the bad stuff mission)
I can see where a wad might get you a pass on flyers caused by lack of roundness w/gas blow by being better controlled but weight variance of 5 to 40gr (from pin holes to air pockets) is a booger ..especially when it is hidden inside the bullet
Two of the three batches of bullets referred to above came lubed and that is ok even though I am set up to lube and size and one batch was no lube as cast ..and there was my first clue as it is hard to weigh lubed bullets ..until they get above the 5 gr short weight
i regress ..sorry any way in the as cast un-lubed group I pulled out the one's short of weight and start examining individual "boolits" and some look perfect but some had pin holes ..pin holes in the nose pin holes in the apex of the hollow of the bullet base ..some pin holes went a ways but were pin size in diameter ..some pin holes led to internal cavities
The other thing is this is my first minie gun to tune ..I may be fixating on a minor reason the accuracy is only 6"/50yrds ..maybe something this big (530gr bullet) and moving this slow (900 fps) (65gr FFF T7) would not be fazed by varying bullet weight and roundness but I would think so and working to eliminate the variables ..??
So I want to converse with someone who casts his own .580 minie and shorten my learning curve on this rifle before it beat me to death
Bear