Any Luck With .540 Diameter Mini-Balls In Slow Twist Roundball Barrel?

[Joc7651]

I have a .54 caliber Hawken with a 36" 1:79 roundball barrel and was wondering if anyone has gotten any kind of accuracy with Lee .540 diameter Mini-Balls from slow twist barrels. It shoots true 2" groups with round balls at 100 yards, so I'm not dissatisfied with it at all. Just wanting to see if I could get them to shoot well. Something to tinker with. I also have one also 36" and same caliber but with 1:72 rifling.

[Daryl]

Stay with the round balls. The slugs in that slow a twist, may give reasonable accuracy on paper, but due to the slow twist,
anything disturbs that ball in flight, wind maybe, twig or branch, leaves, whatever, will likely cause it to tumble. We found that
i TC rifles with 48" twist, .45/50 and .54 shooting the relatively short MaxiBall. Good on paper, tumble as soon as they hit and
NOT keep going on a straight line - not even close, something making 90dgree penetration switch.

[Dphariss]

Why bother?
Just shoot round balls.
Conicals in MLs are greatly overrated. Short conicals have no advantage at all over the round ball.
If you read modern gun writers discussing traditional ML arms or those who just got a bunch of free stuff from some supplier you may get a very distorted version of the truth.
There are valid reasons why very few people used conicals for hunting back in the day and they were experimenting with them and using them for long range target work by the 1830s.
If we read comments by Forsythe, W.W. Greener, and Sir Samuel Baker you will find that the conical causes more problems than it cures.  Baker at one time while hunting in Africa (he hunted widely around the world and I have read he bought his wife in a slave auction in the Balkans), had a "2 ounce" (8 bore) rifle he called his "Devil Stopper" for it "never failed to floor a charging Elephant" with a head shot. It shot a belted ball and he decided that a heavier conical would make it even better. So he had a mould made. He wrote that this totally destroyed its effectiveness and got him into "such scrapes" that he abandoned its use. And "scrapes" when hunting elephant can be, from my readings, messy. If you need more power you need a bigger round ball.
On raking shots on deer sized animals the pure lead RB will produce 30" or so on penetration in most cases and may well exit depending. 30" of penetration is adequate for anything you might shoot in the Americas and if you need more harden the lead.

Dan

[OldMtnMan]

I'm curious. Who made that 1-79 twist barrel?

[Daryl]

Yes - that is a strange #, for sure, Pete.   The slowest I knew of in a production barrel, were the PH 1853's (3-band rifle) with 39", bl. with a twist of 78" twist.
GM (or was it GRRW) at one time, did make some 80" twists, did they not, in .54 and .58cal. seems to me.

[hanshi]

I fully agree with using round ball over conicals.  Accuracy is excellent, penetration is exceptional and their killing power is beyond sufficient.  Besides, I've never seen a ball keyhole.

[Bob Roller]

The UnCivil War* was fought with elongated bullets fired thru a 1 in 72" twist and it worked fine.
I have owned a number of fine Enfields and Springfields and no complaints about the hollow base
bullets.
Bob Roller
*Nothing "civil" about getting shot at with a 58 caliber gun and even less civil if you're hit.

[45-110]

like Bob Roller says......minie balls/maxi balls work fine for hunting in slow twist barrels. but..........one has to do his homework and experiment and find what works. all minie balls are not the same, ie thin skirt or thick, and they have to be sized right. my dad only hunted with his civil war musket, and for 30 yrs took a white tail every year. i don't recall him losing any and the slug passed through. i did try .54 minies in the 80's for awhile in my flint longrifle and they worked ok....not stellar but ok......plenty good for 50 yd deer shots.
best
kw

[Joc7651]

I'm curious. Who made that 1-79 twist barrel?

Joe Williams at Oregon Barrels made it. He did a fine job on it for sure.

Don't get me wrong I love shooting round balls out of it. It's extremely accurate all the way up to 120 grain charges. The rifle shoots better than I can, that's for sure. I have a 1:72 made by Howard Kelly also in .54 caliber. One is as accurate as the other and every deer I've shot with them dropped where they stood with a ball. I was just curious and making conversation.

The 1:79 barrel is 36" long, 1" across the flat with .012" deep radius bottom rifling, and the 1:72 is 36" long, 15/16" across the flat with .010 deep square cut rifling.

I had them made for 2 T/C Hawken rifles. My favorite is my .36 Seneca though. That's my baby.

[Dphariss]

The UnCivil War* was fought with elongated bullets fired thru a 1 in 72" twist and it worked fine.
I have owned a number of fine Enfields and Springfields and no complaints about the hollow base
bullets.
Bob Roller
*Nothing "civil" about getting shot at with a 58 caliber gun and even less civil if you're hit.

The problem with the various Minie-balls was their inability to track straight when striking flesh. British Surgeons in the Crimea found that the bullet would strike and then turn as much as 90 degrees. Striking the chest for example, and exiting the hip. 
I have heard similar accounts of the Maxi balls similar antics on game animals. Conicals really need more twist to work well.
Bullets with a thin hollow base are limited to low velocity.
Dan