Please don't shoot the messenger.

A poster on a UK forum has asked me to give him some pointers to shooting his two-band .58cal Enfield - a 1997 Euroarms copy - with Pyrodex.

He has the Lee mould - I have the Lyman mould which, IMO, makes a more suitable Minié than the rather shallow-based Lee bullet.

Apart from advising him to use RS, and NOT P, I'm at a loss to offer him any advice, as I don't use the stuff in any of my rifles.

Your advice would be appreciated.

TIA

tac

A few thoughts, some of which you probably already know:

Minie' bullets can be finicky things and if the clearance between the bore and the bullets outside diameter is much larger than .003, they often shoot poorly.

Minie' bullets must be cast from pure lead.
Relying on the expansion of the skirt to seal the bore and grip the shallow rifling, harder alloys work poorly even if the fit of the bullet to the bore is correct.

Heavy powder charges are thought to "blow the skirt" out as the bullet leaves the barrel.
This is especially true of Minie's with thin skirts.
If the skirt "blows" or enlarges unevenly, accuracy goes to hell in a handbag.

Speaking of blown skirts and limited powder charges, I never bothered to notice this before but, the data in the "Lyman Black Powder Handbook & Loading Manual" (2nd ed) shows that Pyrodex RS in the .58 caliber, 1:48 twist barrel consistently produced less breech pressure than 2Fg GOEX.
This happened for all of the Minie's tested between 460 and 566 grain.

I can only guess how this effects pressures "blowing the skirt" on a Minie' but it may be that when loads of 70 grains of 2Fg black powder is nearing the limit, possibly 90 grains of Pyrodex RS could be used? The breech pressures are quite similar.

The velocities of a given powder load of 2Fg GOEX and Pyrodex RS were similar despite the difference in breech pressures.

As for shooting Pyrodex, I've found it to be more likely to misfire than real black powder.
On the positive side, the fouling produced is much less than real black powder.
This allowed continuous shooting with Pyrodex without the need to swab the bore. Something that I can't say when real black powder is being used.

Often, the trigger pull on these Rifled Muskets is poor to say the least and the heavy pull makes precision target shooting very difficult.
The guns were designed to be used against man sized targets under battle conditions so the shooter shouldn't get his hopes for great accuracy when shooting small targets.

Feel free to pass on these tidbits of thought if you think it will help the new shooter.

tac said:

A poster on a UK forum has asked me to give him some pointers to shooting his two-band .58cal Enfield...

Your advice would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

Was he unable to login here? :wink:

I don't have the musket but I do have a 58 Hawken and have shot the Lee Minnie up to 80gr no problem. Didn't shoot great but did shoot good enough at 100y to hunt with. The Minnie I talk of is the Copy of an original not the improved Minnie.

Also a good lube is important when shooting minies. If he is buying lube I suggest SPG blackpowder lube. http://www.blackpowderspg.com/spglube.html

If he is making his own a bees wax/olive oil stiff mix works well.

I shoot 80 grains of P grade pyrodex out of my muketoon.

By actual weight or equivalent volume?

VOLUME

Yep, volume.....

There are a couple of different nipples offered for that musket, I find on the internet. One company offers 2 Nipple Types, with one being "small hole" for target shooting, and one is larger hole for "reenactor". I don't know if the smaller hole gives more consistent pressures for better accuracy, especially out to longer ranges, OR if the larger hole is because of blank firing, and would allow too much back pressure on the cap if one fired live.

LD

Thanks, Dave, and all of you.

A few points for you here to help me to help him.

1. It's a high quality rifled copy of the two-band short rifle, not a musket.

2. It's for live shooting, not reenactment.

3. He can't have BP because he is living in rented accommodations, hence the subs.

4. I have all the loading manuals from Hodgdon and Lyman but he'd like to hear real-world experience.

5. I have a P-H Musketoon but only shoot black in it. Having shot it once with somebody else's RS load I'd rather not bother again.

6. He knows about the sizing of the Minié bullet, and has access to at least three moulds to get the right 'thumb-it-in' size.

Thanks again.

tac

The pressure curves are different between black and pyrodex. Black hits hard creating max pressure sooner, expanding the skirt better. Pyrodex has a curve where peak pressure comes on nearer to the middle of the burn. Some instances not expanding the skirt fully. He'd have to use a tighter minie to let the pressure expand the bottom out better to bite into the rifling. A thinner skirt would help also. I'll have to find the link to the data sometime. Just a matter of time and finding it out of the hundreds I've saved.

http://www.texas-mac.com/Black_Powder_Pressure_Curves_and_Bullet_Obturation.html


This is one link

Not one to repeat someone else, I was curious as to if this was what it was. Went out today with my CVA Frontier carbine to test. Used for the test was 385 Buffalo bullets. I drilled out the skirts to see what would happen.

Pyrodex P, RS, and Goex ffg were used. My standard load for this rifle is 75 of Pyrodex P. Seems to work good for distance and accuracy.

Set up water jugs to catch the rounds to check for deformation of the skirts. Backed off the loads to 60 grains each.

Curious thing occurred. RS showed limited expansion. Now P and the Goex were actually pretty close.

The bore is 0.504 on this rifle. The bullets have a knurle for lube. The RS still has a slight showing of the knurle with the grooves of the rifling. However, the P and Goex ffg show the knurling almost compressed all the way.

If stuck with Pyredex, go with P and make sure its compressed good.

Just a side note, the bullets were a tight fit.