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.58 Armi 1861 Springfield

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11th corps

40 Cal.
Joined
Mar 26, 2005
Messages
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676
Repro
I had my musket out to the range yesterday. With 65 grains of 777 under a .58 minie, it was dead on at 25 yards. However I got at least a 6 to 8 inch drop at 100. Is this normal? My vision isn't that great anymore, especially with open sights. Could it be because I wasn't using real BP?
 
I'm supprised you didn't get even more than that. How heavy is the mini? The service charge was 60 grains of 2f and that gets tiring after 20 or so shots, are you going after moose at 100 yards?
 
11th corps said:
Repro
I had my musket out to the range yesterday. With 65 grains of 777 under a .58 minie, it was dead on at 25 yards. However I got at least a 6 to 8 inch drop at 100. Is this normal? My vision isn't that great anymore, especially with open sights. Could it be because I wasn't using real BP?

That's very normal. Sounds like you're getting her dialed in.
:hatsoff:
 
Lol. No to the moose. Just target shooting. Its been a few years since I got this out, I just did not remember it losing that much trajectory at 100 yards.
 
Say, have you determined your bore diameter yet?
An Armi Zouave I used to have and the Armi 1853 I have now both were graced with size XL.
The 1853 though has a 48" twist so maybe it's worth a little special attention. Might even try some solid bases in it if things was to get totally boring.
:snore:
 
Out of curiosity I made a few assumptions and then put them into my ballistic roundball program to see what it would say about the drop of a heavy Minie' ball.

Based on your load and powder, I'm guessing your guns muzzle velocity was about 1100 fps.

Then, I guessed your Minie' weighed about 530 grains.

Setting the range at 25 yards, and using the 1100 fps and 530 grains for the slug, I told the computer to do its thing.

It said the drop at 25 yards is zero which is of course reasonable because I told it to zero it there.

It went on to say, at 50 yards the Minie' would drop about 1 1/8 inches. At 80 yards the drop was 5.3 (5 5/16") and at 100 yards the drop was 10.2 (10 3/16").

Just to see what it would say for a .58 caliber roundball (282 grains) and 1100 fps velocity I poked those numbers in with the aim point set at 25 yards.
It said the drop of the roundball would be 1.3 (1 5/16") at 50 yards, 6.4 (6 7/16") at 80 yards and 12.4 (12 7/16") at 100 yards.

At 100 yards the 1100 fps muzzle velocity had fallen to 939 fps for the heavy Minie' while the velocity of the roundball at 100 yards had fallen to 841 fps.

Now, these answers aren't real accurate because the computer program assumes the nose of the Minie' is a sphere and because the nose of the Minie' is more aerodynamic, the velocity won't fall as fast but, I thought it was kind of interesting anyway. :)
 
Sounds about right to me. Thanks Jim for the computer support. :hatsoff: Interesting numbers.
Don't fret about using 777 vs. blackpowder. 777 is good stuff for a caplock shooter.
I've run several tests and find that in MY rifles, 777 shoots to the same p.o.i. as Goex using the same VOLUMETRIC setting on my powder measure. :thumbsup:
 
When I did War Between The States reenacting, I had and still have my .577 Euroarms 53 Enfield repo.
Those big minie's are heavy and not going that fast with 60-65 grs. of black 2f., the information that Jim supplied is about right. Big lead ball not going fast drops a bunch. No we didn't use minies on the field as it was frowned on, but we did on occasion have live fire events. Have fun.
 
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