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Maxi Balls Accuracy and tips?

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yakipreacher

32 Cal
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Apr 2, 2014
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Hi
I was curious about using Maxi Balls.... Anyone have any tips or thoughts on using them? Best lubes, loads? How accurate are they? 50 cal.
Thanks
Jerry
 
I'll be watching for the answers as I just picked up some .45 maxi balls to try.
I am hoping they will be as accurate as the Lee REAL slugs.
I am still experimenting with the Lee REALs, so I have little advice.
I have mostly lubed with alox and used a lubed fiber wad between the powder and bullet.
So far 100 yard accuracy has been around 2", about as good as my eyes allow...
 
With bullets such as Maxiballs and REALs, much depends on having shallow rifling. Those top bands are meant to engage the rifling starting at the muzzle and the barrel is supposed to have a diameter at the bottom of the grooves equal to the diameter of top band. Don't expect good accuracy if you have a rifle with deep grooves. All that gas cutting does very bad things to the sides of the Maxiball.
 
I've had very good luck with Maxi-balls as long as the twist rate is 1/48 or faster.
 
I've had very good luck with Maxi-balls as long as the twist rate is 1/48 or faster.
Did you have shallow or deep rifling? I am wondering about the rifling that has a bunch of thin rifling rather than the normal thick grooves. I don't know what they call that thin type... but I have one with it.
 
Maxi balls were a TC thing. They worked well in the TC rifles with TC lube. I shot a bunch of them years ago. TC used 1:48 twist in 50 cal. The rifling was cut with very shallow grooves, about 1/2 the depth normally seen today on a patch ball barrel. They were excellent barrels that shot both patched balls and maxi balls very accurately.

"rifling that has a bunch of thin rifling rather than the normal thick grooves." That sound like microgroove rifling, like Marlin, I am unaware of any ML company that makes microgroove barrels. Sometimes it looks like that when the lighting is a certain way. Use a flashlight and look a the muzzle carefully. Put a tic mark on the muzzle for each land with a marker. Betcha you have 6 or 8.
 
I have used the maxi balls in my TC .50 flinter since the 70's with excellent results. Approximately 2" at 100 yards open sights. I always purchased them so they were already lubed, looks like a stiffer bore butter was used. They hit a deer hard and knock them down quickly. I used 90 gr. 3f goex behind them, this gave me the best accuracy.
 
Yes, TC makes Maxi-Balls, but they never shot well in my Hawken nor my New Englander, both with 1:48 twists.
Maxi-Hunters are/were also made by TC and they shot well in my TC rifles and in my Pedersoli Frontier.
Now I found the R.E.A.L. bullets from Lee which I tried were as Mike mentioned, have a band near the front that is oversized. WHICH explains why their name is "REAL" as it stands for, "Rifling Engraved At Loading".;) These shot for me about the same as Maxi-Hunters. Today their advantage would be...you can still get molds for the REAL bullets, while for me the .54 caliber ones have been discontinued.

You should also look at Hornady, both the Great Plains bullets and the "PA Conical", aka the "ball-ette".

2003 was the last time I tried conicals, as the guide for a hunt in Canada and I discussed my using a .50 caliber flinter on Moose, and I opted for the heavier slug than a .490 round ball. Since then nothing I've hunted has made me pause to consider anything other than a patched round ball, so....

LD
 
370grn maxi balls with bore butter is all I've ever shot in my old tc .50cal rifle. 50yds is all I've ever shot distance wise as that's about all you'll get a shot at where I live and my eyes are bad and it wouldn't be humane to shoot game at 100yds for me anyhow. the rifle shot what I thought was terrific but last year I tried the lubed base wads over the powder and bench rested you could park them side by side or sometimes through the same hole. I dropped my old time load of 90grns fffg down to 80grns after I had rotor cuff surgery and didn't want to tear anything and it still shoots great.
I bought a lyman maxi ball mold and it does and excellent job.
 
Best quick accuracy fix I've found was to put a lubed felt wad between them and the powder. Yet to see that fail to improve matters in every gun I've tried.
 
Did you have shallow or deep rifling? I am wondering about the rifling that has a bunch of thin rifling rather than the normal thick grooves. I don't know what they call that thin type... but I have one with it.
Do you mean micro-groove rifling? I've never seen a muzzleloader with micro-groove rifling. Depth if rifling is subjective. IMO diameter and velocity are the things to ponder over. Every gun has it's own unique likes and dislikes.
 
The best advice I got about conicals were from this website. use a wonder wad between conical and powder. I use them with hollow base bullet or flat base its really helped my accuracy.
 
I've had very good luck with Maxi-balls as long as the twist rate is 1/48 or faster.
Minies can shoot in slooow twist barrels, if the (projectile) is not too long.

When I shot ‘cap’ guns, I had great luck with the Buffalo Bullet brand ‘Ball-Ets’, which were kind of like a shorter minieball, in a 50 caliber Mowrey Plains rifle with a 1-66” twist.
 
Minies can shoot in slooow twist barrels, if the (projectile) is not too long.

When I shot ‘cap’ guns, I had great luck with the Buffalo Bullet brand ‘Ball-Ets’, which were kind of like a shorter minieball, in a 50 caliber Mowrey Plains rifle with a 1-66” twist.

Very true.
 
Yes, TC makes Maxi-Balls, but they never shot well in my Hawken nor my New Englander, both with 1:48 twists.
Maxi-Hunters are/were also made by TC and they shot well in my TC rifles and in my Pedersoli Frontier.
Now I found the R.E.A.L. bullets from Lee which I tried were as Mike mentioned, have a band near the front that is oversized. WHICH explains why their name is "REAL" as it stands for, "Rifling Engraved At Loading".;) These shot for me about the same as Maxi-Hunters. Today their advantage would be...you can still get molds for the REAL bullets, while for me the .54 caliber ones have been discontinued.

You should also look at Hornady, both the Great Plains bullets and the "PA Conical", aka the "ball-ette".

2003 was the last time I tried conicals, as the guide for a hunt in Canada and I discussed my using a .50 caliber flinter on Moose, and I opted for the heavier slug than a .490 round ball. Since then nothing I've hunted has made me pause to consider anything other than a patched round ball, so....

LD
2018 Deer Creek catalog has REAL
Bullets in .54 cal 300/385 gr.
 
I got good results with the .50 TC maxi balls and wonder lube. I used other lubes including Crisco with good results but the wonder lube was stiffer. I shot mostly 80 grains of 2f. That worked on deer and elk.

The best tip I can offer is to wipe after every shot. Otherwise a crud ring builds up and gets bigger with each shot unless you wipe it. Accuracy dereriorates without wiping.
 
Solid flat base bullets have to expand to fill the rifling and therefore need adequate inertia to resist forward movement. In other the words, the heavier the bullet is the more likely you are to expand into the grooves and prevent gas cutting. Having a deep grease groove ahead of the bullet base also helps some because it promotes movement of the outer perimeter of the base (like on a maxiball).

So with any flat based muzzleloading bullet you have a balancing act with the forces involved. You need weight to promote base expansion but not too much bullet for the twist to stabilize. Or depending upon the firearm, to not run your pressures up too much. The solution for lighter weight bullets or smaller powder charges is to either mechanically fit your bullets and/or use hollow bases and/or shallow grooves (terms which are all relative and meaningless when taken individually).
 
The Maxi-Ball and Lee REAL (Rifling Engraved at Loading) bullets were designed for the top band to be larger than bore size while the rear band would be slightly under bore size. The bullet would fit to the bore for alignment and a slap on the nose would engrave the top band to the rifling. The engraved band and lubricant in the other bands would hold the bullet in place. The rifling was expected to have shallow grooves (T/C and other button rifled barrels with shallow grooves) to minimize gas cutting since the front band would fill the groove. Deep groove barrels don't allow the engraved band to fill the groove and the resulting gas cutting results in large groups.

Paper patching can help, but adds complexity to a simplified loading procedure.

Flat based bullet help to keep the base from damage. It is easy to deform the skits at the base of a mini. As we see it is very important to know the measurements of our firearms and properly fit our bullets to the barrel.
 
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