Round Ball in Pedersoli 1861 Springfield?

M

Model12Win

Moderator
Hello everyone! :)

Well, I've been in the market for a black powder rifle/musket for some time now. Flip flopping back and forth between guns, I think I've finally settled on a Pedersoli made Springfield 1861 musket of .58 caliber.

http://www.cabelas.com/product/Pedersoli-Springfield-Caliber-Musket/1389473.uts

But, there's a catch. I want to shoot round ball through this gun.

Why not Minie balls?

Because I don't cast. It's not that I don't want to, it's that I literally have no room to safely do it. I live right in the middle of town, in a small 1-bedroom apartment. I have no garage, no porch, really no place at all to cast Minie balls.

Commercial Minie balls are 'spensive, no doubt... expensive enough that I wouldn't be able to shoot the rifled musket as much as I would want to, which would be fairly often. What I've found though, is that I can get .57" cast lead balls for about $0.20 a pop from Track of the Wolf. That I can afford.

So the thing is this weapon has a 1 in 72” twist rate of the bore. Is that going to be appropriate for a patched round ball load? Will I get good accuracy with this, or is that rate designed for the Minie ball only?

This is an important question that must be asked at this time. I am stuck in this apartment for some time, so won't be able to move somewhere where I can cast. But, someday, no doubt I will begin casting my own Minies for this gun.

So if anyone out there could please help me on this, it would be greatly appreciated. If you've got one of these Pedersoli guns, have you tried round balls and how have they shot?

Thanks so much everyone, your help is greatly appreciated!!
 
Muskets operate at fairly low pressures even for blackpowder. You can't push a Minie fast without blowing the skirts. Most of the round ball patched rifles I have seen have thicker barrels.

I have shot Minie's but never round balls in a rifled barrel Musket. I don't doubt that you can shoot a round ball, heck the Brown Bess was around for 300 years, but I suspect your accuracy will be horrible.

I bought Minie balls off Ebay and other sources. Really, try some commercial cast Minie balls before going down the round ball route. That 1861 Musket will shoot great if you find the right combination.

I have two Muskets. You need a Minie ball that is no more than 0.002" smaller than the bore. If it is too small accuracy will be poor. And you don't want a Minie that you have to hammer down the tube. Skirt design is important. I am using Rapine moulds, such as .575" diameter Minies either 460 or 510 grains. Rapine made his moulds so you could shoot 50 grains of black with accuracy. His skirt designs are relatively thin. I have not tried Minies with thick skirts, my Rapine Minie's will shoot between 2 to 3 inches at 100 yards, which is excellent.

Ray Rapine suggested a 50/50 mix of Beeswax and Crisco for lube. More beeswax in summer, less for winter. Fill the cavity of the bullet with lube along with the grooves.
 
Okay, but we all know a patched round ball will shoot very accurately in a Hawken rifle.

What I need to know is weather or not the twist rate in this .58 caliber gun will stabilize a patched round ball. Preferably from someone who has actually done this.
 
While I do not have the experience with this specific model and round ball loads, the Pedersoli load data for the 1861 Springfield is clearly specifying a minie bullet.

I would recommend a .45 calibre muzzleloader, you will need less powder and lighter bullets will also be cheaper.

http://www.davide-pedersoli.com/supporto-dettaglio.asp/l_en/idsu_9/suggested-black-powder-loads.html

Pedersoli makes many nice rifles and I personally enjoy a .45 calibre Plainsman rifle that works well with RB and patches..

image_zpskkcuir6g.jpeg
 
A 1:72 twist is specifically a round ball twist. The originals were also 1:72. The reason they shot minies so well is the hollow base puts most of the weight in the nose and it acts like a round ball and the hollow base expands to grip the rifling to stabilize it better at longer ranges. A minie also works very well in a 1:48 twist but I have no idea how it would perform with a faster twist. In short it will handle round balls better than most rifles with a 1:48 twist which is what most of the modern repros have. It just won't have the range of a minie.
 
I've shot a lot of patched round balls through the Zouaves with good results. You don't need a lot of powder for target shooting and they usually shot their best groups in the 50/60 Gr. 2F range. Just find the best patch thickness for your rifle and go for it...it should shoot just fine with that twist.
 
Before discovering the joys of archery, the muzzle loading rifle I used for the local matches was very accurate with a 1:66 twist rate for round balls, properly sized and patched, of course.
 
Just want to say you can get into casting Minies for under $100.

Electric pot, Lee mold, and a RCBS ladle and you're good to go. Might want a sizing die.

Steve
 
Most often Lee molds throw balls/bullets that are good to go. Out of all of mine I only have one that needs sizing and that's for my .45 ACP and that's probably because the alloy I use is different from what they set the mold up for.
 
RTP:
OP said:
"I literally have no room to safely do it. I live right in the middle of town, in a small 1-bedroom apartment.
I have no garage, no porch, really no place at all to cast Minie balls."
Click to expand...
That said, see Post #7
 
If you ever want to hunt with it get the Lyman 577611 heavy skirted minie. I use 90 grs BP with that slug and it works great with heavy charges. The usual LEE and other thin skirted minies use lower charges die to their thin skirts.
 
I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of a thin skirted minie pushed by 70 grains of powder at 500 yards. You should see what one does to a metal five gallon bucket at 300.:D It will leave a hole nine inches deep and four inches across in the soft dirt of a pond bank at 300 after going through said bucket.
 
A 1861 Rifled Musket (as the 1855, 1863/64) has typical shallow 3 groove rifling designed for the Minie Ball. The rifling is not as heavy as a typical rifled civilian style barrel that was intended to use a patched ball.

BUT . . . certainly you can shoot a patched round ball out of a rifled musket with no problem. Normally on a standard rifled civilian barrel . . your patch thickness is determined by the depth of the grooves in the rifling. On the rifled musket . . . the rifling grooves are more shallow so you would just have to play with the size ball you want to use to determine just how thick your patch material should be. Most rifled muskets take a .575 - .577 minie ball . . but that can also vary depending on who made the rifle. My first rifled musket was a Remington Zouave that I bought back around 1962 or so. The bore on that is .580.

Using a round ball in a rifled musket is no different than using a round ball in a smoothbore . . . it just has the rifling versus no rifling. Barrel thickness has nothing to do with it. Yes . . . octagon barrels have thick walls . . . bu then look at how some people load them up with large loads . . . I'm trying to make this simple. My flint Fusil-de-Chasse is a .62 smoothbore - a 20 gauge for the sake of argument. I use a .610 ball over 60 grains of FFG with a pillow ticking patch - that load give me the most accurate load for what I shoot.

If you are limited to RB and have trouble locating minie balls . . . have at it and have fun. I wouldn't expect the same accuracy as you would get with a minie ball at say 100 yards or further . . . but you should get good results at say 50 to 75 yards . . . it will all depend on how you work up your load, the ball diameter, your bore diameter and your patching material.

Loading a patched ball in a rifled musket with the standard steel ram rod is going to be harder than loading a minie ball which is under bore size and depends on the expanded skirt on firing to grip the rifling I would recommend that you use a 3/8" "range rod" to do you loading as it will probably work a lot better for loading. I'd also recommend running a spit patch down the bore between shots to keep the fouling cleaned out to make for easier loading.

As an example . . . I spit patch the bore of my Fusil-de-Chase between shots. I use a short starter to start the ball in the bore but overall, the patched ball when introduced with the short starter is not what I would call extremely tight to the bore. It slides down the bore easily (if spit patched between shots) and with a initial "fouling shot" of powder only - spit patched - and then loaded with a patched ball, I can get good accuracy out of the gun.

Try it and see what you get . . then if necessary, adjust your patching material. After the war, many of these rifled muskets were cut down and used as civilian reforms. Some had the rifling bored out to make them into smoothbores (to be used as shotguns) and some weren't. I've owned originals over the years that were cut downs (probably some were "Bannerman Specials") and some were bored out, some not. Civilians who used these surplus guns would often use both round ball or shotgun loads out of them - regardless of if they're rifled or bored smooth.

Just don't load ridiculous loads of excessive powder - it isn't necessary. The standard service load for a rifled musket was 60 grains. Try starting out at 50 grains and see what the results were and then work up to say 60 grains as a maximum load (of 2F). That load range with a patched round ball should work well for you.

Good luck and have fun!
 
Thank you so much Billy!

It's just that Minie balls cost about 3x as much as the .57ish caliber balls I've been able to find. Since I simply have no place to safely cast bullets, I've held off for the longest time in getting a rifled musket... but it's come to a breaking point. I NEED a rifled musket, specifically a Pedersoli 1861 Springfield. Every morning I wake up and I can't stop thinking about it till I go to bed... then the dreams start... and I wake up again and it's the same damn thing, over and over again, until I'm just exhausted. I just cannot stand it, I HAVE TO HAVE A '61 SPRINGFIELD. I'm going to loose my mind if I don't get one soon...

While I might be exaggerating, I really do want one of these guns. Badly! :)
 
"I literally have no room to safely do it. I live right in the middle of town, in a small 1-bedroom apartment.
I have no garage, no porch, really no place at all to cast Minie balls."
Click to expand...

Still not really an impediment. Set up a box fan in a window with a card table in front of it and you're good to go. Might want to put down a canvas drop cloth to protect the floor from any drips.

Steve
 
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