Having unjacked my reproduction Enfield Model 1853, I think I'll see if I can manage to run some rounds through it tomorrow. 60 grains of Pyrodex seemed to drive a .57 caliber round ball nicely for the whole series of three shots I had last time, although they were striking to the right of center. I've just lubed up 15 Minie-style bullets with a mix of paraffin and vegetable oil that has worked well for me in a Remington Rolling Block in .43 Spanish; I'm thinking it'll be interesting to see what I can get for five-shot groups at fifty yards with both types of bullets. If I can get some decent groups, I have up to 300 yards of range available to really see what I can do with the rifle.
With luck I won't freeze out at the range tomorrow.
3 comments:
A quantum improvement over the old Brown Bess, but these were already outmoded by the time they were fielded. Had the Union issued Spencers and Gatlings instead, the war would been much shorter.
"The immense slaughter of our brave young men chills and sickens us all."
-- Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, 1861 - 1869
The military, being a uniformed and armed (some of us, anyway) bureaucracy, is loath to engage in rapid change. Change is expensive, difficult, and highlights those who are unwilling or unable to adapt. Those unwilling/incapable persons also tend to be the individuals who have worked the system long and hard to get where they are. Thus the use of a direct-impingment gas system with an overly light/small/low section density cartridge being used long after most of us who have used it know there are far better options, and leadership that often is selected by PT scores on the enlisted side, and PC bootlicking on the commissioned side.
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