PRB in C.W. Enfield?

[swank]

After reading all of the support for roundballs on this site, I got to wondering if anyone had any first hand experience shooting prb from a .577 Enfield?

I have no idea what the rate of twist on my rifle is, as if I remember correctly, it was primarily designed to shoot conical minie balls and that is all that I have shot out of it.

 

[Zonie]

As I don't know who made your Enfield I have no way of knowing what the rifleing twist is.
A 1987 Dixie Catalog says my Parker-Hale (English proofed) has a 1:48 twist. I also know these guns have the "gain twist" which means it starts out real slow at the breech and increases to the 1:48 near the muzzle. The Dixie catalog also says the rifleing is deeper at the breach than the muzzle. What won't those Brits think of next?
This "gain twist" was supposed to prevent stripping (or slipping) during firing and volumns have been written about its worth with no real conclusion being agreed to by the pro and anti sides.

As for shooting round balls, I have fired 30 or 40 rounds thru both my 2 band, my 3 band Enfield and my Armi Zoueve.
Using a .570 ball and .012 patches over 60 grains of FFg they load all right but the groups are rather poor.
Perhaps this was due to the powder load but as poor as they were, I never tried messing with reduced/increased loads to find out what effect that would have.
Some of the open groups can be attributed to the "military sights" which don't lend themselves to real precision shooting but I think even with the poor sights I should be getting better than a 12 inch group at 50 yards when shooting from a rest.

Give it a try anyway. You never know what your gun will do until you try.

 

[hardykev]

Do you know the manufacturer of the Enfield and which model?

I assume it isn't an original.

Fall Creek Sutlery states that 1858 2 band Enfields from Armisport and Euroarms have 1-48 twist. The 1853 3 band Enfield from Armisport has 1-48 and the Euroarms version has 1-78 twist.

I don't have first hand experience, but at a 1-48 twist, it shouldn't be worse than all the other 1-48 twist rifles that are supposed to be able to fire PRB.

 

[swank]

Thanks for the info- I'll have to give it a try, my gun is made by Euroarms and is a three band model.

I was getting about four inch groups with minie balls at 50 yards w/ a 60gr charge. The t/c Maxi hunters pattern even worse, but are a hoot to shoot into pumpkins! I need to play around with the powder charge some and was just curious about the big balls.

I am curious as to how much accuracy I could expect out of enfields and what others out there are capable of.

While books speak of effective accuracy being 300-400 yards, reenacting and my experience shooting c.w. era repro rifled muskets leads me to believe that those yardages only established the range from which they could effectively engage a massed and formed unit. I guess I always just found those ranges a bit on the optimistic side.

 

[musketman]

If you pull a muzzleloading bullet, it will be engraved from the riflings...

You can use this to roughly figure out the rate of twist.

Example: (for ease of understanding, I will use whole numbers)

Measure the length of the of the riflings on the bearing surface, from rear to nose of the engraved muzzleloading bullet... (1 inch, 3/4 inch, whatever it is) we'll use 1 inch for this example.

From behind the bullet, hold the rear of one of the riflings at the 12:00 position, note where the front of the same rifling's engraved mark ends... (example: 10 degrees)

So, if it rotated 10 degrees (using a protractor from behind) and moved 1 inch down the barrel per 10 degrees of rotation, and there is 360 degrees of rotation per circle...

That means the riflings moved the bullet 1 inch, 36 times, to get back to the 12:00 position...

Therefore, the example barrel has a 1-in-36 inch rate of twist... (360 degrees, divided by 10 degrees of rotation, times 1 inch = 1-in-36 inch twist)

Confused yet?

If you have trouble, I will be happy to figure it out for you if you provide me with the measurements...