Some detailed info on Civil War Minies

kh54 said:

@Stantheman86, what do you shoot?

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Everything

Repros, originals, "unmentionable " Breechloaders, .58, .54, .451, .69, you name it. 12 Gauge slugs out of Smoothbores.... .303 British loaded with blackpowder

If someone analyzed recovered bullets from the many places I shoot they wouldn't know what the hell went on there

Texas Gil said:

Just thinking about battlefield minies from CW. My guess is a lot of these were never fired but extra ammo dropped or thrown away after a battle. Probably they were cartridges wrapped in paper bundles. Over the decades all that’s left is the minie? Most that were fired would be deformed and show some sign of rifling

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Plus soldiers chucked 20 round packs of cartridges because they didn't want to carry them. More so Union troops.

Or if they got ruined in a bad rain or in humidity, NCOs had them discard them and draw new cartridges before a probable engagement

When I was in the Army , training with blanks I'd often just toss some on the ground. I was also the "ammo NCO" so I was told to throw unexpended live rounds into the woods and stomp them into the ground from Live Fire ranges, because returning unused ammo meant that the Company would be allocated less next time. Someday relic hunters will find millions of rounds at military installations that were stomped into the dirt by Grunts after a range day.

Getting rid of ammo for various reasons seems like it's always been a thing

TFoley said:

If you shot Brett Gibbons' 'English cartridges' then you'd find that swabbing would be a bad memory. He relates having shot 160 in succession without a single swab.

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I zipped through a whole cartridge box of 50 of Brett's Pritchett Cartridges, these are the way to go but too difficult to make myself. I just use the easier 1863 US pattern with a .575 Minie and they're "almost" as good, I've fired 40+ of those without wiping but the bore of my rifle has to allow for enough "windage" for this.

TFoley said:

I see no signs of rifling - perhaps they had been fired from a musket?

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"Reject" Minies that didn't fit in the muzzle, soldier tried to pound on them with the rod then gave up , tossed it and tried a new one?

nkbj said:

I can just get lost in examining photos of the various styles of hollow base bullets in use during the war.

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One website was selling Battlefield recovery .740 Nessler balls , made by a Confederate bullet maker. I assume for the .75 percussion Tower musket or converted Brown Bess muskets

Thanks, as someone who has dug up a bunch of "dropped" Minie balls over the years I found this to be quite informative, thanks for posting.

Stantheman86 said:

I always suspected all these "Battlefield Finds" were just new bullets that were aged. But back in the 80s they were like a Quarter and made neat souvenirs

Someday someone will dig out the backstop of my range and find the 1000s of Minies I fired and think there was a Civil War training camp there or something

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All my Whitworths will make someone's day

I used to live on the fringes of the 3rd. Battle of Winchester and there were fields there when I moved there. They are gone now, industrial park but a friend who grew up nearby tolde me when he was a kid and they plowed the fields it looked like it had just snowed from the minies brought to the top.

That's a very interesting article thanks for posting it

Jagumba said:

That's a very interesting article thanks for posting it

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It gave me some new info I'd never thought about

hawkeye2 said:

I used to live on the fringes of the 3rd. Battle of Winchester and there were fields there when I moved there. They are gone now, industrial park but a friend who grew up nearby tolde me when he was a kid and they plowed the fields it looked like it had just snowed from the minies brought to the top.

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Between dropped Minies, discarded cartridges and fired Minies I'd bet there were 10s of thousands of rounds in the ground

You figure a Minie is travelling at low velocity and is pure lead, so when they hit the ground they either just burrow in a few inches or ricochet and just land somewhere

There's been a few times when I test fired a .58 rifle or a .69 musket in the 50 yard pistol pits at my range and dug them out of the hard backstop dirt

A book I read puts the numbers of total projectiles produced or purchased by both sides in the multiple millions

Stantheman86 said:

This is why I just size all of mine to .575, they just work

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I wasn't clear - sorry. I was interested in what .58 caliber muskets you shoot the .575 Miniés?

I just happened to spend some time at the range with a Miroku 1863 Springfield last week. The bore is slightly oversized, measured at .584, so I have been shooting Rapine 583-455 Miniés sized to .581. I was center-punching my targets at 30 yards, until I ran out of bullets. When I used Lyman 575013-OS Miniés sized to .575 for my Parker Hale Enfield, the group size grew considerably.

hawkeye2 said:

I used to live on the fringes of the 3rd. Battle of Winchester and there were fields there when I moved there. They are gone now, industrial park but a friend who grew up nearby tolde me when he was a kid and they plowed the fields it looked like it had just snowed from the minies brought to the top.

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Plentiful around the Sharpsburg area too. Walking their plowed fields and shooting the the found bullets at each other with slingshots was a childhood pastime of a couple brothers I knew I've picked bullets off the surface metal detecting in the fields around Sharpsburg myself years ago. I'm sure you still see them after the fields in the park are plowed but the Park Service frowns upon such I hunted with guys in the early 70s who wouldn't even bother to dig bullets they were so plentiful, they only dug brass signals.

kh54 said:

I wasn't clear - sorry. I was interested in what .58 caliber muskets you shoot the .575 Miniés?

I just happened to spend some time at the range with a Miroku 1863 Springfield last week. The bore is slightly oversized, measured at .584, so I have been shooting Rapine 583-455 Miniés sized to .581. I was center-punching my targets at 30 yards, until I ran out of bullets. When I used Lyman 575013-OS Miniés sized to .575 for my Parker Hale Enfield, the group size grew considerably.

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I have a Miroku 1861 but I haven't fired it yet. Sized .577 Minies don't fit in the muzzle, which surprised me because most Mirokus run large in the bore.

I have 2 Parker-Hale Musketoons that use .575 Minies, a Parker-Hale P53 that has a tight bore that needs .575's, my ArmiSport CS Richmond can use .575 Minies but isn't the most accurate with them. I have 2 original 1861 Springfields, one is in decent shape, one kind of a "shooter grade beater" that has Trapdoor parts on it. Also a Pedersoli 1863 Springfield that likes .575's.

I usually just size Minies to .575 and I'd rather have acceptable accuracy and not have to keep wiping the bore, than to shoot tighter groups and have to wipe every 5 shots.

Out of all these rifles, only the P-H Musketoons run large on the bore at about .580 and could probably benefit from a .577 Minie but I haven't tried them yet. I have a guy who casts them for me and he has a 575 mold that drops them at about 578 so I can size them to what I need.

If it were me and I had a Miroku with a Miroku with a bore that big , it would depend on how it did with the .575's . "Acceptable Accuracy" for a rifled musket by US Ordnance standards was 4" at 100 yards. If it went outside that I'd play around with bigger bullets.

Whitworth said:

Plentiful around the Sharpsburg area too. Walking their plowed fields and shooting the the found bullets at each other with slingshots was a childhood pastime of a couple brothers I knew I've picked bullets off the surface metal detecting in the fields around Sharpsburg myself years ago. I'm sure you still see them after the fields in the park are plowed but the Park Service frowns upon such I hunted with guys in the early 70s who wouldn't even bother to dig bullets they were so plentiful, they only dug brass signals.

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I would guess the sides of any of the routes the armies marched through would be littered with cast off Minies, more so the Union troops. 50-60 rounds is a lot of weight and guys were known to take the packs they carried in Haversacks or the 20 round packs in their cartridge boxes and drop them, probably thinking they would just get fresh rounds later on or they just didn't care. Relic hunters on other online blogs say they would use metal detectors on the routes the Union forces used to get to Gettysburg and find 1000s of Minies, also because a large engagement wasn't expected at that time so they just tossed them along the way.

Carrying 5lb of lead on miles of marching , plus a rifle or musket, and all your gear probably made a lot of guys eager to shed some weight. I don't think not having enough ammo was much of a concern.

I load up my cartridge boxes with 40 or 50 rolled cartridges , depending on the box and that's heavy just walking with it to the firing line, I was thinking if I had to march for weeks carrying this I'd toss half of them out too.

I live on the battlefield of Northwest Georgia. We find a lot of recovered Minie balls, some unfired. We have a dig site on my farm which involved mostly Cavalry. Some Spencer cases, a part of the cantle of a saddle and other items. One Minie recovered was a field expedient muzzle plug. The soldier placed a Minie nose down and hammered it down on the muzzle until the bullet exactly fit the bore and formed a tompion. We also found a round ball with the impression of a patch, a brass lock marked “US”. All this was near a grist mill marked on the maps of the day. Some people nearer Atlanta have breastworks in the backyard. That’s where my unfired Minie ball came from. I live on the battlefield.

Most of the big battles had at least a hundred thousand men in the fight. Tons of litt led engagements. What a logistics nightmare it had to have been to cast millions of soft fragil ball and ship them under less then ideal means, waste had to be enormous
A saying in the war was that you had to shoot a man’s weight in lead to be able to kill him.
I wonder how many were shooting too undersized ball in their guns.

Stantheman86 said:

If it were me and I had a Miroku with a Miroku with a bore that big , it would depend on how it did with the .575's . "Acceptable Accuracy" for a rifled musket by US Ordnance standards was 4" at 100 yards. If it went outside that I'd play around with bigger bullets.

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I have just started working up loads for my Miroku. Next trip to the range will be for the 50 and 100 yard targets. I also have an 1861 Miroku but I haven’t tried it. I think the bore is also large. My original Springfield did OK with .575 Minies at 50 yards (3 inch group) but since I don’t plan to make it my main shooter I haven’t done too much more with it.

Great info, thanks

tenngun said:

Most of the big battles had at least a hundred thousand men in the fight. Tons of litt led engagements. What a logistics nightmare it had to have been to cast millions of soft fragil ball and ship them under less then ideal means, waste had to be enormous
A saying in the war was that you had to shoot a man’s weight in lead to be able to kill him.
I wonder how many were shooting too undersized ball in their guns.

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Some of the Relic sellers have stuff like .54 minies that were pounded into a smaller bore or chamber , fired .69 Minies with no rifling marks like they were fired from a Smoothbore

Got a RCBS 58-500 minie mold modified to throw a .586 diameter bullet when I had a Zouave with an oversized bore. Over the years there's been some big variations in reproductions. Now my preferred solution is a #575213 mold with the lube grooves removed for paper patch, afterwards sized to whatever is needed.