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58 cal Zouave question

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Nessmuck56

40 Cal.
Joined
Nov 5, 2011
Messages
461
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Location
New Hampshire
I shoot a 525 grain Minnie out of my 58 cal Zouave....my question....I would like to hunt white tail with it this year and was wondering if putting a wad of flax tow over the bullet to keep it firmly seated ....would that work ,and not effect accuracy ? Thanks
 
I have hunted with a mini and always kept the muzzle up and checked with the rammer from time to time but that is a nuisance. I read somewhere, possibly here, quite number of years back where someone put a cigarette paper over the muzzle before starting the mini. The paper served as a shim to hold the mini down on the powder and didn't affect his accuracy. Follow up shots were loaded in the normal manner. Some folks say they use the lube to hold the mini in place but I have never trusted that. Lube can soften or even turn liquid as the day warms up and allow the ball to move.
 
The minnie ball should be properly sized to be only a few thousandths of an inch undersized about 2 to 3 to properly fit the bore. Then when the minnie is seated on the powder, the skirts expand into the rifling and with the lube hold the ball in place.

That's why it is so important to measure the bore of the rifle to get the proper sizing die to run the skirted Minnie ball through.

Its also important to use pure lead so the skirts are soft enough to properly expand.
 
Mate,
years ago I used to hunt large hoppy hops with my PH two bander using minie bullets, no wad just seated on the charge and did not have a problem with them moving. the bullet I use is about 2thou under bore size so with lube there is plenty of friction to hold it in place. Needs to be a nice slip fit to give best accuracy anyways.
I guess firing a few shots at you favoured hunting range with your bullets wadded as mentioned might answer the accuracy issue. Deer, you lucky b----d !!

Cheers

Heeleau
 
A guy who shoots that same rifle told me that he used a shotgun style card wad on top of his and it did not effect accuracy for him.

I had a proper fitting .58 hollow base minie move on me. That was with the bullet seated hard to flare the skirt so I'm not keen on relying on that system.

I know the PRB chorus gets tiring, but oddly enough, mine was far more accurate with a ball too!
 
Yup, mine likes both round and minie equally.
The minie womps 'em visibly harder though, with less powder.
 
The Zouzave is a classic Minie gun, but there appears to be a lot of variation in bore diameters between various brands. That's the account of one of my buds who is a fan of the model.

His solution for undersize minies is to wrap them in teflon plumbers tape. He has a couple of different minie molds, but always seems to have a Zouave with yet a different bore size. Plumbers tape to bring it up to size, and he reports stellar accuracy with it.
 
Grenadier1758 2 to 3 thousandths under bore size is actually too large. I size to .001" or just a very little more under bore size using Jerry Harmon dies in a Lyman Lubrisizer and SPG lube. This leaves lube in the groves only. I have been shooting mini rifles in the N-SSA for 30 years and my wife has shot for 20 years so we have plenty of experience with minies. I shoot thin skirted minies made of pure lead and even have molds with base plugs modified to thin the skirt. I have never seen any evidence of the skirt expanding when the ball is seated on the powder (unless it is hammered far too hard) and I have no problems pointing the muzzle down and shaking a mini out on the ground with a few good shakes. I should mention again that there is no lube on the outside of the bullet, only in the groves. Any lube on the outside would only be scraped off when the mini is loaded into the tube which we use to hold the powder and mini.

In this area you can start out in the morning in the 30's and be down to a T shirt by late afternoon. Counting on lube alone to hold the bullet in place isn't a good solution in my opinion as it can soften too much to do the job. I believe if I ever got serious enough about hunting I would size my first round such that it was a snug mechanical fit in the bore as speed isn't important in loading before you get into the woods and use my regular rounds for following shots. Fortunately I have an assortment of push through dies so that I could do that.

Patched round ball for the first shot followed by minies? Might work fine! :grin:
 
'Flash Pan Dan' offers a very good suggestion. I, too, have a .58 cal zouve rifle that I shoot with 0.570 roundball/patch with excellent accuracy at 100 yards. Although I have OS minnie balls at home, when I have, on occasional over the last 40 years, taken that rifle out to shoot it has only been to shoot it with patched roundballs.
 
I use to own a Zouave .58 and shot lots of minies in it. After lubing the bullets I rolled a bit of toilet paper around the minie; not much, just enough so that it stuck to the lube and and held it in the bore. Worked fine for me.
 
Why not squeeze the shirt of the Minnie ever so slightly to where it is a little out of round before loading?
That way it will be a tighter fit in the bore and when the powder goes off the skirt blows back out to it's original round shape and proceeds down the bore.
 
Brown Bear is absolutely correct about many sizes of bores in various Zouaves.

Also, I can not agree more with Hawkeye2 that a soft lead Minie' Ball swaged to just One Thousandth of an inch under the actual bore diameter IS the most accurate size for almost every Zouave out there.

One problem with CRS is I can't remember the name of the guy who was on the same "Sutler Street" as we were at the NSSA Nationals at Winchester. He carried a bunch of different swaging dies differing in .001" per size and he sold a WHOLE BUNCH of them over the years.

Gus
 
Gots no use for minnies maxies pickett ect my self...but it is what you rifle was made to shoot. Use bees wax as a lube. Put some minnies in a small pan, pour some melted bees wax until it covers the grooves and let cool. It will stick in the bore, not melt unless its too hot for you to be in the tall timber, and work as slick as some more fancy lubes. Worked well for me when I had one or two of them modern rifles :haha:.
Of corse rifleman is right. If God wanted folks to shoot them long balls He wouldn't have created PRB :blah:
 
"Of corse rifleman is right. If God wanted folks to shoot them long balls He wouldn't have created PRB"

:haha: +1 :thumbsup:
 
Yup. That's why they used nothing but round balls in their Zouaves during the civil war. :rotf:

A guy can't use anything else but round balls in a Zouave and be politically correct around here. Even if a Zouave round ball is historically idiotic. :haha:
 
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