Mold for 1841 cal .69 Harper's Ferry?

Picked up a fine example of the 1841 Model Harper's Ferry .69 cal musket at auction today. Barrel and stock marked 1848. This weapon was converted in the arsenal from .69 smoothbore to .69 rifled, and had a long range sight added too. Does anyone have a preferred Minie Ball reccomendation (a preferred mold) for this particular weapon or similar? I want to make some noise with this piece, and soon!

I shoot an original rifled Springfield model. Yours and mine are 1842 models. To be on the safe side, I'd have the barrel looked at by a competant barrel maker. Bob Hoyt(717-642-6696) comes to mind. These barrels are iron and the wall thickness after rifling is a bit thin. The breeching should also be checked out. The bore on mine was poor and Bob relined it.

As far as minies moulds go, you have two choices.
The Lyman original style 730 gr. or the Rapine
500 gr. semi wadcutter. Personally, I'd stay away from the Lyman. The recoil is brutal. With the Rapine and a service load of 70 gr. of 2F Goex, the recoil is about the same as a .58 musket with its service load. Most shooters consider it more accurate.

Duane

I shoot my 1842 rifled with the lyman concials every week at the range. The .685 minies are a bit on the loose side, maybe to overcome fouling like the real military bullets did in the CW. Recoil is strong to say at least, I shoot it with 75 grain swiss 3FG which accelerates the concial very close to sonic speed (80 grains makes the supersonic crack), but I am still developing a load it likes. I usually shoot 40 shots from the bench, recoil is like a 6 pounds 3/2 12 gauge magnum, on the hard side. Small framed persons should stay away from it, the weapon was quickly replaced with the .58 rifles because the soldiers couldnt handle the recoil.

The .58 with a 510 grain concial loaded with 65 grain 3FG recoils half as much as the .69 with the 730 grain.

Thanks for the information. Today I took this rifle to my gunsmith. He had a light we could drop down the barrel; to my joy it looked great- better than I could have hoped. He measures the bore at .708. With this additional information, what should I do first, order some .69 cal Minies? Commission a special mold? If the latter, based on a bore diameter of .708, what size should my projectile be? What is the bore diameter of your 1842? How accurate does yours shoot?

What about a roundball? I imagine I could get a tighter fit in my .708 bore with a certain ball and patch. Were these rifles conceived exclusively for firing Minieballs?

Hi,

the .69 rifle is still in development in terms of accuracy, I found out that 2FG powder do not expand the base of the bullets very well, several other shooters I know also get better accuracy with the finer 3FG in their .58's enfield and Springfields.
I use 3FG powder and accuracy is much better with it than with 2FG.
I think a bore which measures .708 is way to big for a .685 conical you get from the lyman mold, minies should be around .003 undersized, in your case it would be .018 which is very loose, too lose in fact. A custom mold would make sense if you want accuracy from the rifle, maybe something .704 or maybe .705, 750 grains with 3 lube grooves.

You could try some .685 minies with a thick paper patch around them to increase their diameter, seat them with force so that the skirt flares out. But I dont think you would get good accuracy from such undersized bullets.

I tried out round balls too, but never got good accuracy with them. I used .675 ball with 50-60 grain of 2FG, cant remember the patch size.You would need bigger bullets with your .708
But I've heard that several people use round ball in their rifled muskets with great accuracy.

Thank you for this very helpful information. I just knew a .69 cal Minie was not going to work. Yes, a custom Minie mold. One of .704 or .705. Now, who would you seek out for such a commission?

Sorry, cant help you with a custom mold, I am from oversea and get my custom molds from my neighbour country Germany.
A lot of users here use custom molds so I am sure they can be a great help. Just ask them! :thumbsup:

.705 sounds good for a minie for your rifle. Maybe you want a lighter one, 730 is hard on the shoulder, hard on lead, hard on powder and on the gun. There are -already mentioned- lighter conicals in such bigger calibers which are a bit more accurate. What about a 600 grain .705 wadcutter? Of course the 730+ grain bullets are fun!

Now, 750 grains seems awfully heavy for that .704/.705 Minie ball we're talking about. Sounds like it would knock me into next week- would you confirm the desirability of that weight? Could it not be lighter?

There are also bullets for my .69 in the range of 500 grain instead of the standart 730 grain, to get a impression round balls for the .69 are about 435 grain heavy. So its more of a round ball with a hollow base attached to it. Such shortened concials are nice on the shoulder an need less powder to shoot them-.They look like eggcups.

But IMO the heavier bullets are fun, they may be harder on the shoulder but I enjoy shooting bullets that large down the range. Thats the first reason why I got a .69 rifled.
Dont be afraid from 700+ grain conicals, they recoil very hard but they are still fun to shoot and far away from ''not controlable''.

You've got a large caliber gun, now shoot some serious large caliber heavy conicals with it. :grin:

Of course you could also get a custom mold with a very short 550 grain conical if you feel more comfortable with it. You can get a custom mold for a conical as light as you want it, I know a guy having a 950 grain conical mold for his .69 rifled. With a custom mold you can do anything you want, choose how many lube grooves, design of bullet nose (modern, round nose wadcutter) weight etc.
550 grain sounds good for a short target practice concial. The 200 grain less really makes a difference in terms of recoil.

There was a plus .015" variation allowed in the bore diameter of the M1842 rifled musket above the .69" standard. That means that if your musket was bored and rifled to the maximum allowed, there is .003" wear or erosion. That would still leave .002" deep rifling at the muzzle and about .012" at the breech if the wear/erosion is equal throughout its length. Is the rifling still visible and appear to be deep enough to engage the bullet? If the barrel was bored to .69 to start with, there would be no rifling left to see. If you have rifling, you got one that passed just under the limit.

:thumbsup:

Buy a .690 caliber RB mold, and use a .020" patching material. That should give good accuracy. If you really want to shoot those big minies, then order a custom mold from RCBS, or Jeff Tanner. Prepare to order a sizing die, as most of these big slugs are not concentric. YOu will want to size them to fit your gun, and lube them in the process. If you don't own a lubrisizer, it should be on your X-mas list. Frankly, I would find shooting 700+ grain bullets on a regular basis a little tiring. With That bore diameter, you are going to be shooting a RB that weighs about an ounce and that is a lot of weight to move.

A couple of things to consider.
Your musket is an original with an iron barrel and it's going to be less tolerant of high pressure loads, which is what you're going to get
with the "big" minie and hefty cahrges of hot powder. Round balls weigh alot less, but when tightly patched, they create about as much pressure as a minie with the same charge. As an example, in a .58 cal barrel, according to Lyman, a 530 gr mine and 60 gr. of 2F Goex creates 3,640 lbs of pressure. A patched .560 ball with the same charge creates 3,700 lbs. With 100 gr it's 6,040 for the minie and 5,900 for the patched ball. You'd think that with the lighter ball weight you could up the charge to get more zip, but pressures will go up. I tried patched .678 balls over 90 gr of 2F in my relined bore as a possible hunting load and they shot pretty well, but after discussing this on the N-SSA forum, a number of shooters advised caution, even with a relined bore. A steel barreled Armi is a different story.

What you shoot out of the musket may depend on what you want to accomplish. If you're looking for top accuracy, then you're going to have to go for a custom mould and all the accessories that go with it. And, be prepared to spend alot of time at the range. The sights on a '42 will drive you nuts, and the rifled bores are finicky.
If you just want to have some fun putting big hole in the paper, I'd go with the Rapine mould.
He can make it in a .690 diameter and you can experiment with paper patching to take up the windage. I shoot the service load of 70 gr of 2F
behind the Rapine minie and it does very well on paper and whitetail.

Duane

Custom Mould dead end. Proceeding on some helpful hints above, I contacted Rapine, telling him I wanted a custom mold for a Minieball for my Model 1842 rifled .69 cal, which has a bore of .708. We agreed I need a mold for a Mineball of .705 or .706, but Rapine doesn't make anything that big; he says it would cost me less to have a second barrel (exactly .69) made for it. He also said I should not consider relining the existing barrel, as this would be paying money to destroy the value of the gun. I'd be thrilled to get some comment on these suggestions? Any ideas? Thanks, Bill

Well, if a new barrel costs less than a custom mold (cant believe that! :shocked2: ) than go for it and save the original barrel! Get yourself the Lyman .685 mold and have fun.

But I bought a custom mold for about 100 bucks and new barrels are usually around 220 bucks and up! And thats the prices of factory-produced rifles.

A friend of mine bought a new barrel for his original '63 Springfield from Dan Whitacre for target shooting. He was able to preserve his original barrel for show and he was able to make a custom front sight (higher, wider blade) for the new barrel. Either Whitacre or Bob Hoyt can make a great barrel for this arm. It would be a good option if a man has the money.

I can see an odd sized one of a kind mold going for over $200 easy. A hexagonal mold for a Whitworth can run as high as $400. And those ain't really one of a kind.

Just out of curiosity, how did you measure your bore? Odd numbered groove barrels can be a p.i.a.
to measure accurately. That's not to say it isn't oversize( my original '63 Springfield is .585).
As far as relines go, you have to deside if you'd rather have a good shooter at the expense of some diminished collector value. A great many N-SSA
shooters shoot prized originals with relined bores, most of them done by Hoyt or Whitacre.
For me it's having a good shooter. Besides my rifled '42, I shoot a '41 Mississippi and flint 1816 with relines. A reline job will run you about $150.00. Dan Whitacre will make a drop in barrel for around $325.00. Short of those options, I'd go with Ray's mould in .690 try the paper patch. There are some threads on this site
on how to do it.

Duane