58 Cal. Minie Balls

[bamboomaster]

I hadn't pulled this Lyman mold out since last year ( Lyman Mold #575213 AV - with the THIN skirt - .05 inches) so I cast and lubed around 150 in the garage (both doors open to vent). I let them cool on the cold garage floor for about five hours before I pan-lubed them in my "summer" mix of 70% pure beeswax, 30% Bore Butter, and an honest teaspoon of graphite. This mix which is heavier on the beeswax side creates a harder lube that is less prone to melting under hotter summer temperatures.

I said "less prone to melting" - it'll still melt if you leave them in an environment for a couple of hours at 120+ degrees - which is why I store them in the basement - or in a shaded area when at a shoot or at the range.

Lyman Mold 575213 AV.jpg

The pan-lubing process for me involved heating a jury-rigged double boiler with about an inch of water in it, dumping in the ingredients (beeswax, Bore Butter, graphite), then turning it off as the water started to boil. The heat of the water alone will melt everything in about 10 minutes. To feel like I was doing something, I periodically stirred with a chopstick. If you need a little more temp, plug the burner back in but only until the water starts to boil (usually 60 seconds on my rig).

You want to avoid having the bubbling water overflowing into your melted bowl of lube.

Then I lined up the bullets in a shallow aluminum dish like good little soldiers and poured in the lube to just above the top groove of the bullet. Set it on the cool garage floor and come back in 15 minutes. Then just push the nose of the bullet through the lube "cake" and set it aside for some minor clean-up, if necessary.

If you let them cool too long, the lube becomes too hard and while not impossible, it becomes more difficult to push the nose of the bullet out of the lube "cake" without knocking out some of the what is now hardened lube out of the lube grooves. An easy fix, but certainly more work...

Using pure lead (which would make it easier for the bullets to obdurate), they weighed out at 500 grs. and were .5775 in diameter. According to my measurements, the inside diameter of the barrel was .5785, which made these bullets just around perfect.

Closeup.jpg

After I had finished all this, I remember a N/S Skirmish guy mentioned that using Lee "Liquid Alox" is a lot easier and works just as fine. I've used that before on solid cast bullets without lube grooves, but I was concerned about denting the skirt while rolling them around to get them thoroughly covered with Alox. I'm thinking they were probably shooting bullets with thicker skirts that were less susceptible to "denting".

I picked up a 1974 Antonio Zoli (Italian) copy of a Zouave rifle that was never fired and thought I'd try these Minie's in them just to be period correct. But for card-cutting accuracy, a .570 round ball and a .018 lubed patch is probably better?

As in most Civil War rifles, the front sights were usually designed to aim at the belt buckle at closer distances so the strike will probably impact somewhere in the chest. I'll definitely have to paint them with either red or green sight paint (which I have), but other than walking up to the target and sticking the muzzle on paper, is there a better fix available where point of aim and, say, a 50 yd bullseye intersect?

Although the rifle came with a spare "musket cap" nipple in the patchbox, the one on the rifle is for a smaller primer - even the CCI #11's sort of move around on it instead of fitting snugly. After pulling and measuring the nipple, the base diameter was .307" (around 7.8mm), so I ordered an 8x1mm from "Track of the Wolf" with a nipple that fits #11 CCI's, so, we'll see if/how it fits....

And while I grew up always hearing "Minie" pronounced "Minnie", I recently read that the correct French pronunciation is "Mi-ni-ay".

Please tell me this isn't true!

[streaker69]

They don't appear to be minnie, nor balls.