minies in smoothbore

[Treestalker]

I wonder if a short minie would be as accurate as a PRB up to say, 50 yards in a larger caliber smoothbore, .69 caliber. 0r bigger? Thanks.

 

[Stumpkiller]

Might be. Might not be. Many variables involved. Lube, load and bore fit among them.

There is a bit of additional form stability but it's still no guarantee.

 

[bang]

Wondered why they don't make a mini mold with rifling ridges like shotgun slugs?

 

[tenngun]

I wonder what sort of advantage it could be. Your range would still be in the fifty yard range. Even a small smoothie in the .50 range is going to be devastating to most game in this range.
A Minnie really come in to its own in the seventy five to hundred and fifty yard range. Until then it preforms pretty similar to a ball.
Maybe the market would be so small as to not justify making a mold.
I bet on average the smoothie shooter would buy some, play with them a bit then end up going back to ball and never buying a mold.

 

[Treestalker]

Thanks guys, it looks like the PRB is the answer. Just planning on shooting deer and maybe a hog so no sense getting minied up. I do like bang's idea of the rifled slug minie.

 

[Zonie]

Wondered why they don't make a mini mold with rifling ridges like shotgun slugs?

High speed videos show that the rifling ridges on those slugs do very little to cause the slug to spin in flight.
Although they do spin very slowly in a direction that the angle of the grooves would cause, IMO it really isn't fast enough to really stabilize the slug.

(WARNING: The video below shows modern stuff so if you don't want to see non-traditional things, do not open it.)

 

[Stantheman86]

You're pretty much trying to make a Nessler Ball.

In the 1850s there were numerous attempts to make a self stabilizing bullet to make smoothbore muskets, then obsolete, more effective until those units received rifled weapons .

To this day it seems hard to get them to shoot well, the over riding theory being these were more psychological in effect to make the troops feel like they had "bullets" similar to a Minie vs "outdated" round balls.

Test show the Nessler only improved over the round ball at 200+ yards and was actually less accurate at short ranges. They had a short service life, the CSA used the type shown in the bottom pic as well as the top pic , but to my knowledge after 1865 no military used them for anything. I bought 60 of the Nesslers in the bottom pic to try in my Pedersoli 1816 Springfield but haven't shot any yet. They mic at .680, I'm guessing I'm going to have ok results just hot dip lubing them and running them through a .680 sizer, and shooting them like Minies.

The idea being that the base will "collapse and expand" into the bore on firing and the bullet will use gyroscopic properties to stay pointed forward.

 

[Rat]

I'm thinking most any Minnie' will tumble. I don't see where the nessler would be of any advantage even if it didn't. It's so short, can't weigh much more than a ball. There are techniques to make round balls from a smooth bore shoot very accurately, several different methods discussed quite frequently on this forum. In fact, at fifty yards, a smoothbore with roundball can sometimes shoot about as accurately as the average rifle. It's usually the 100 yard mark that separates the rifles from the muskets.

 

[Stantheman86]

I had thought a short Maxi-Ball might be kind of a slug/ Nessler type bullet.

Round balls are the way to go for Smoothbores, if you're shooting past 100 then I guess you're operating outside the realistic capability of a smoothbore and are taking pot shots at that point.

The Nessler may have had use for soldiers firing in volleys, shooters have put about 3-4 out of 10 of them on 300 yard targets with consistent 0 out of 10 at that range with round balls. But for an individual shooter at real world hunting range there's probably not an advantage of a conical vs a round ball in a smoothbore.

 

[Rat]

Well, round balls from a smooth bore tend, or do, veer wildly after about 70 yards, maybe the Nesslers don't "veer" or hang sharp rights, lefts, and ups and downs as round ball does. ?? Some interesting dynamics going on. However, I may be wrong, but I think the shortest minnie's or maxi's I know of would still be way too long, and would certainly tumble. But I don't know. We nominate you to try it out!!!

 

[Rat]

What is the weight difference between a .680" Nessler and a .680" round ball?

 

[Stantheman86]

I got the Nesslers, need to lube them up and roll up 50 cartridges

 

[Stantheman86]

I don't have a scale that goes that low lol

 

[Rat]

That's okay...I don't have a scale that goes high enough to weigh balls for my Bess. ROTFL.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Wondered why they don't make a mini mold with rifling ridges like shotgun slugs?

Although they are inset at an angle to the bore....they are meant to reduce friction, not to spin stabilize the projectile.

LD

 

[GunnyGene]

What keeps a shotgun slug stabilized in flight from a smooth bore is the weight distribution. Weight is forward of the center of gravity as a result of hollowing out the base to a considerable depth. Often referred to as Mass Stabilization. The same thing applies to minies. Rifling on slugs is there to allow the slug to pass thru a choke somewhat easier, not to induce any spin.

Spin drift occurs in any spinning projectile, although it may not be apparent for quite a distance, depending on the RPM, the overall aerodynamics of the projectile and the velocity at any given moment during flight. Spin drift is normally given in MOA. ELR shooters compensate for this with advanced ballistic calculators. See this and other on-line calculators:

https://www.hornady.com/team-hornady/ballistic-calculators/#!/4dof

 

[RAEDWALD]

Just a gentle reminder, to those who are unaware, that the Nessler being referred to here is not the same as the Nessler bullet designed by the Belgian Army Captain Nessler and adopted by the armies of France, Sardinia and Russia during the Crimean War. The Confederate 'Nessler' ball as in the above posts, was a very different design.

 

[Stantheman86]

The consensus being that the North Carolina "Nessler" was pretty much pitched to the NC Ordnance Dept and they're like "ok looks good bott" ....and it was adopted for limited use.

It seems more inspired by arrowheads than previous Nessler balls.

 

[45man]

High speed videos show that the rifling ridges on those slugs do very little to cause the slug to spin in flight.
Although they do spin very slowly in a direction that the angle of the grooves would cause, IMO it really isn't fast enough to really stabilize the slug.

(WARNING: The video below shows modern stuff so if you don't want to see non-traditional things, do not open it.)

I did not watch the video since I knew the slug would not spin. Proven long ago. Only a rifled bore will spin a bullet.

 

[Tb54]

Like many other things today, they’re designed to sell, not work.

Though I, too, heard they were supposed to pass through a choke easier. I wonder why the groves have a “twist” to them if that was the only reason.