Pat in Virginia
01-13-2012, 04:32 PM
Links to pictures mentioned in this article (you will probably have to paste them in your browser manually):
381
Recently, I had the opportunity to purchase a mould for a Pritchett bullet for .577 rifled muskets, Enfields. I received a lot more value than just the mould itself. Tim Busby who for ten years was NZ’s long range Rifle Musket champion was the one offering the mould for sale. He shared much valuable information with me regarding his experience and thoughts about loading procedures and bullet design, including a bit of information on his loading procedure recommendations for the Whitworth. As you will see from what follows in this multipart post, Tim had, what are to me, some novel approaches that I intend to try out.
He sent me pictures of items associated with some of his comments. I will put them in PhotoBucket and post the links here (see above). Please, let me know if you have trouble accessing the pictures. As there is a 5000 character limit per post on some forums, I will have to divide the following exchange of questions (on my part) and information (on Tim’s part) into multiple posts (5 probably) for some of them. Since this really is a compendium of numerous exchanges I don’t think I’m really bending the rules regarding 5000 characters per post. Also, I think many will appreciate having the opportunity to digest what Tim had to say and, hopefully, find it valuable. I certainly did.
Some follow-up questions that I asked were to make absolutely sure I understood what Tim intended in his replies. Often I thought I knew what he intended, but I did not want to trust my understanding and miss out on what Tim really meant if my assumption was incorrect.
To make sure you will be able to quickly distinguish what I am asking and what Tim is saying I often will preface Tim’s statements/response with “(Tim said) or (Tim Responded)“. I intend to post this on several forums that all do different things with text and pictures so I’m trying to make it easy on myself and clear to you as to who said what. Color coding, etc. get to be too much work given multiple forums.
------------------
Hi Pat (This is obviously from Tim, so no “(Tim said) –“.
The bullet casts out at .564 in pure lead, and is less than .001 out of round. I sized/swaged all my bullets down to .563. It was designed to be used with ‘onion skin’ paper, it takes std large mould handles, depending on how you configure your base plug, (Wax/clay/wood/wax-wad etc) it weighs a nominal 525gr BUT I also further used to hollow point the bullets to allow me to shoot with excellent accuracy out to 1000yards.It shoots only a bit better than a ‘common’ cannalured bullet at short range (300y) but its benefit was past 600, where it retained velocity better than a ‘grease groove’ projectile.Base pug bullets shoot far better than any hollow base…
Depending on what twist your barrel has, accuracy is moot. With 1-78 twist I struggled to keep shoots on the 8’ x 6’ target beyond 800y. At 500 yards off a rest it could shoot inside 2’With 1-48 twist, on a calm day I could keep +90% of shots on at 1000y, and all shots inside 1’ off a rest at 500y…
Hi Pat
I spent many years researching and shooting rifled muskets, and cut through much of the hype and found what did or did not work in ANY rifle musket.
For over 10 years I was, and it was with much satisfaction that I used to shoot on-a-par with .451 match rifles out to 500y with my .577s
Much of my testing was based from the work of Metford, and Pritchett, utilizing HP ‘explosive’ projectiles and the ‘Express’ bullet.
Pretty well in ANY rifle-musket, a shallow base bullet is better than a deep hollow base. And Hollow point is FAR superior again; hollowing the bullet moves the mass to the periphery there by enhancing gyroscopic procession. The proviso being that the slower the rifling twist, the deeper and larger dia the hollow point needs to be; eg: I used to shoot my 1-78 Enfields out to 600m with great accuracy with a flat base 500gr bullet, but the projectile had a .25” dia hollow that was just under .875 deep.
With any rifle musket with a ‘fast twist, e.g. 1-48, 1-40, flat base hollow point bullets are superior in all instances; easier to cast, load, shoot and clean. And with a heavy barrel, +1200fps mv will see you out to 1000y with confidence; albeit a well padded jacket is needed as recoil when prone with +550gr .577 is ‘memorable’.
With all slow-twist arms, projectile length becomes critical. They won’t shoot a ‘long’ bullet unless the hollow base/nose is of a large dia. Slow twist, .58, and bullets should be no longer than 1”, to generalize.
If you desire to retain a hollow base, plugging is very advantageous. Filling the base not quite full with wax, leaving just enough room to seat a thin card wad into the base and flush with the bottom of the bullet is ideal. Load with an over bore size +.002” dia card ‘sweeper wad’ and a dry lubed felt wad. Gives Consistent expansion and can shoot all day without any need for cleaning. Flat base bullets, weight for weight v’s hollow base, shoot with a higher velocity.
If you are mad keen, ‘mould’ tiny little truncated cone plugs out of plaster of Paris, matched to the base cavity and 1/8” shorter than the base hollow, so that they JUST sit proud of the base. But you will soon give up as it is a LOT of work…
===========
Typically I patched/lubed/sized all musket balls to be with in .002” of bore size, BUT when using a plugged hollow base AND in tapered rifling you can pretty much use any bullet dia that comes to hand. Tapered rifling and a plugged, hollow base/nose bullet will shoot off a rest out to 800y and easily keep all shots well centered on a 6’x8’ target;1-2” groups at 100y, 2-3” at 200, 6” at 300…
A real advantage of hollow nose bullets at long range is ‘spotting’ the fall of shots, especially on wet ground. You will see EVERY shot land!Down side of HP bullets is that they totally wreck target frames.
To enable shooting all day without cleaning with Pre 1995 Goex powder I used a Dry lubed felt wad, then a +bore dia card wad (picture framing mount board).For consistency, I always cut the ‘mount board’ color side up; so that I always loaded the wads into the bore the same way every time; the wads when punched out of the card have a ‘face’ and a back; always load the wads with the same orientation or the scraping action is not consistent.If you have the time, load each wad separately and slowly to optimize/maximize the scraping action. I was never a fan of ‘grease’ cookies, they added to the fouling mass and gummed up the chamber. Dry lubed felt wad, (water-soluble oil 10-1 soaked and the water allowed evaporating) was better for me.
Bullet base condition is important especially with hollow base and no ‘plug’. I used to ‘face’ the base of each individual bullet: hold in a ‘collet’ mounted in a drill press, using a low speed lightly press down onto a sheet of plywood. Alternatively, simply holding the bullet down onto the plywood surface and ‘circulate’ the bullet.
Powder charges varied from case to case of powder, (I always bought powder by the case) I always aimed for 1050-1100fps max. So the powder charges varied from 70-85gr; over 85gr and recoil starts to be detracting.
The mould - Note the thick base and sprue plates… decent locating pins… Premium item.As you can see, the mould is fully adjustable for length, so you can make a bullet to suit slow or fast twist barrels…
[2 of 5 to follow]
381
Recently, I had the opportunity to purchase a mould for a Pritchett bullet for .577 rifled muskets, Enfields. I received a lot more value than just the mould itself. Tim Busby who for ten years was NZ’s long range Rifle Musket champion was the one offering the mould for sale. He shared much valuable information with me regarding his experience and thoughts about loading procedures and bullet design, including a bit of information on his loading procedure recommendations for the Whitworth. As you will see from what follows in this multipart post, Tim had, what are to me, some novel approaches that I intend to try out.
He sent me pictures of items associated with some of his comments. I will put them in PhotoBucket and post the links here (see above). Please, let me know if you have trouble accessing the pictures. As there is a 5000 character limit per post on some forums, I will have to divide the following exchange of questions (on my part) and information (on Tim’s part) into multiple posts (5 probably) for some of them. Since this really is a compendium of numerous exchanges I don’t think I’m really bending the rules regarding 5000 characters per post. Also, I think many will appreciate having the opportunity to digest what Tim had to say and, hopefully, find it valuable. I certainly did.
Some follow-up questions that I asked were to make absolutely sure I understood what Tim intended in his replies. Often I thought I knew what he intended, but I did not want to trust my understanding and miss out on what Tim really meant if my assumption was incorrect.
To make sure you will be able to quickly distinguish what I am asking and what Tim is saying I often will preface Tim’s statements/response with “(Tim said) or (Tim Responded)“. I intend to post this on several forums that all do different things with text and pictures so I’m trying to make it easy on myself and clear to you as to who said what. Color coding, etc. get to be too much work given multiple forums.
------------------
Hi Pat (This is obviously from Tim, so no “(Tim said) –“.
The bullet casts out at .564 in pure lead, and is less than .001 out of round. I sized/swaged all my bullets down to .563. It was designed to be used with ‘onion skin’ paper, it takes std large mould handles, depending on how you configure your base plug, (Wax/clay/wood/wax-wad etc) it weighs a nominal 525gr BUT I also further used to hollow point the bullets to allow me to shoot with excellent accuracy out to 1000yards.It shoots only a bit better than a ‘common’ cannalured bullet at short range (300y) but its benefit was past 600, where it retained velocity better than a ‘grease groove’ projectile.Base pug bullets shoot far better than any hollow base…
Depending on what twist your barrel has, accuracy is moot. With 1-78 twist I struggled to keep shoots on the 8’ x 6’ target beyond 800y. At 500 yards off a rest it could shoot inside 2’With 1-48 twist, on a calm day I could keep +90% of shots on at 1000y, and all shots inside 1’ off a rest at 500y…
Hi Pat
I spent many years researching and shooting rifled muskets, and cut through much of the hype and found what did or did not work in ANY rifle musket.
For over 10 years I was, and it was with much satisfaction that I used to shoot on-a-par with .451 match rifles out to 500y with my .577s
Much of my testing was based from the work of Metford, and Pritchett, utilizing HP ‘explosive’ projectiles and the ‘Express’ bullet.
Pretty well in ANY rifle-musket, a shallow base bullet is better than a deep hollow base. And Hollow point is FAR superior again; hollowing the bullet moves the mass to the periphery there by enhancing gyroscopic procession. The proviso being that the slower the rifling twist, the deeper and larger dia the hollow point needs to be; eg: I used to shoot my 1-78 Enfields out to 600m with great accuracy with a flat base 500gr bullet, but the projectile had a .25” dia hollow that was just under .875 deep.
With any rifle musket with a ‘fast twist, e.g. 1-48, 1-40, flat base hollow point bullets are superior in all instances; easier to cast, load, shoot and clean. And with a heavy barrel, +1200fps mv will see you out to 1000y with confidence; albeit a well padded jacket is needed as recoil when prone with +550gr .577 is ‘memorable’.
With all slow-twist arms, projectile length becomes critical. They won’t shoot a ‘long’ bullet unless the hollow base/nose is of a large dia. Slow twist, .58, and bullets should be no longer than 1”, to generalize.
If you desire to retain a hollow base, plugging is very advantageous. Filling the base not quite full with wax, leaving just enough room to seat a thin card wad into the base and flush with the bottom of the bullet is ideal. Load with an over bore size +.002” dia card ‘sweeper wad’ and a dry lubed felt wad. Gives Consistent expansion and can shoot all day without any need for cleaning. Flat base bullets, weight for weight v’s hollow base, shoot with a higher velocity.
If you are mad keen, ‘mould’ tiny little truncated cone plugs out of plaster of Paris, matched to the base cavity and 1/8” shorter than the base hollow, so that they JUST sit proud of the base. But you will soon give up as it is a LOT of work…
===========
Typically I patched/lubed/sized all musket balls to be with in .002” of bore size, BUT when using a plugged hollow base AND in tapered rifling you can pretty much use any bullet dia that comes to hand. Tapered rifling and a plugged, hollow base/nose bullet will shoot off a rest out to 800y and easily keep all shots well centered on a 6’x8’ target;1-2” groups at 100y, 2-3” at 200, 6” at 300…
A real advantage of hollow nose bullets at long range is ‘spotting’ the fall of shots, especially on wet ground. You will see EVERY shot land!Down side of HP bullets is that they totally wreck target frames.
To enable shooting all day without cleaning with Pre 1995 Goex powder I used a Dry lubed felt wad, then a +bore dia card wad (picture framing mount board).For consistency, I always cut the ‘mount board’ color side up; so that I always loaded the wads into the bore the same way every time; the wads when punched out of the card have a ‘face’ and a back; always load the wads with the same orientation or the scraping action is not consistent.If you have the time, load each wad separately and slowly to optimize/maximize the scraping action. I was never a fan of ‘grease’ cookies, they added to the fouling mass and gummed up the chamber. Dry lubed felt wad, (water-soluble oil 10-1 soaked and the water allowed evaporating) was better for me.
Bullet base condition is important especially with hollow base and no ‘plug’. I used to ‘face’ the base of each individual bullet: hold in a ‘collet’ mounted in a drill press, using a low speed lightly press down onto a sheet of plywood. Alternatively, simply holding the bullet down onto the plywood surface and ‘circulate’ the bullet.
Powder charges varied from case to case of powder, (I always bought powder by the case) I always aimed for 1050-1100fps max. So the powder charges varied from 70-85gr; over 85gr and recoil starts to be detracting.
The mould - Note the thick base and sprue plates… decent locating pins… Premium item.As you can see, the mould is fully adjustable for length, so you can make a bullet to suit slow or fast twist barrels…
[2 of 5 to follow]