Question on hollow based minie

Do You need to fill the base of the bullit with lube or Crisco or anything or just lube and load?

Either way. Some folks report better accuracy and less fouling or leading when filling the base. Good to try, but "correct" whichever way works best for you and your gun.

Thank You.

I never found it necessary to lube the base. I cast .50 cal modern mini's, and lube the grooves with crisco. That seems to work pretty well, for me........Robin

And thank you too

Doug, Here is what the the US Govt stated in a report dated 1856 that was in a document titled "Reports of Experiments with Small Arms by Officers of the Ordinance Department, U.S. Army". I am not going to try to retype the whole document as it is many pages in length but this portion deals with your query;

"Before enveloping the balls in the cartriges, their cylindrical parts should be covered with a melted composition of one part beeswax and one part tallow. It should be applied hot,in which case the superflous part would run off. Care should be taken to remove all of the grease from the bottom of the ball, lest by coming in contact with the bottom of the case, it penetrate the paper and injure the powder".

This document continues on for two more pages, describing in detail the assembly of the cartridge but the short answer is... Dont put lube in the hollow base. If the grease grooves are properly lubed with the proper lubricant then lubing the hollow base is unnecessary. I can fire my CW Springfield hundreds of times without cleaning or wiping. The proper lube is the key. Cheers, Bob E !!

That was interesting,Thank you for that.

I put a stiff mix of tallow/beeswax in the base to help with obturation of the skirt. It seems to help with accuracy in my rifle. Of course the minie is not going into a cartridge.

Mate, the critical part re a minnie, is its fit to the bore, should be a slip fit, or near to bore size as possible. If it has a thin skirt like some of the lee moulds, use a lighter charge of FFg say 55grs so you don't blow the skirt when the bullet leaves the muzzle. If a heavier skirted bullet I use about 75grs of FFg. You don;t need to fill the base with anything as the burning powder will slump the bullet into the rifling grooves. I use 5parts by volume beeswax to 1 of unsalted lard, pretty much the old standard British Army mix. Works well on my Enfield paper cartridges as well, but we are pretty warm down under, you may need to use more lard in your colder climes
I should say the paper cartridges I use a smooth sided pritchet bullet and not a minnie. !
cheers

heelerau

Back in the summer of '73 (1973 but might as well have been 1873), I hauled my new Navy Arms Zouave out to the range and proceeded to shoot Minie's using Crisco, lubing the base as had been shown in a muzzle loading tome of the period. It was a very hot, mid-July day and took only a few shots for the barrel to heat up and the Crisco soften and run. Before you could say "Bob's your uncle", I had hang fires. Wiped it down, quit lubing the base and those soon stopped. If you do lube the base, I would suggest using something with a lower melting point.

As a bit of information for those of you that were curious, Crisco melts at 98-119 degrees F depending on who you ask. (The low temperature was more of a general guess on a cake baking forum. Another link was quite specific and said the temperature was 116-119 degrees F.).

Hog lard and butter melt at about 85 degrees F.

Bees wax melts at 144-147 degrees F.

Now, who says you folks don't get a lot of very useful knowledge here on the MLF (besides your wife)? :grin:

Getting back to the subject, when I started shooting Minie' bullets I filled the base with lube so it would coat the bore as the slug traveled down the bore.
The idea was to provide some lube to keep the fouling soft.

It seemed to work because when I quit doing this, reloading became more difficult. The fouling left after the shot is quite hard without something to soften it.

At least that's my thought.

I was going out to shoot and at the last instant I remembered lube for the Minnie's I was going to use. All I could seem to find was Crisco and that was butter flavored. That seemed to work well enough. However I began to smell what I perceived to be someone cooking popcorn ( it smelled really good) . Then realized it was my own gun that was tantalizing me. This might work to distract your competition. I know I need all the help I can get.