Well, in our work with kids, we've come to the conclusion that a minie style bullet for a standard camp gun wouldn't be a bad thing. Problem was, commercial ones were just scaled down from 58cal and the geometry, weight, and base cavity were not optimized for a 50cal. So I had a discussion with Steve Brooks at Brooks Molds and we arrived at this design. It's a modification of a pistol bullet made by the Enfield Armory in the early 1850s.
Conventional muzzleloading "wisdom" says you can't shoot a minie in a 50cal gun designed for round ball. Well, have a look-
This was the torture test I ran today. 3 different guns, one a flintlock. Each was shot 15 times straight with no wiping to set up worst possible conditions. Then groups were shot. The Hawkens had the worst handicap in that the front post is an 8moa bead making precise aiming dodgy at best. The best group was turned in by my ugly duckling I've named Schadenfreude Susie. It has a sewer pipe for a barrel but darn if it don't shoot. The flinter was having some issues with the flint and I didn't have a spare so the group is pretty good considering, especially with two bullets literally in one hole and a third only an inch away.
Next step is to get this tested in a camp environment. I'll probably run a small scale test on 10/30 when we have to work with about 100 kids at Scout camp.
Conventional muzzleloading "wisdom" says you can't shoot a minie in a 50cal gun designed for round ball. Well, have a look-
This was the torture test I ran today. 3 different guns, one a flintlock. Each was shot 15 times straight with no wiping to set up worst possible conditions. Then groups were shot. The Hawkens had the worst handicap in that the front post is an 8moa bead making precise aiming dodgy at best. The best group was turned in by my ugly duckling I've named Schadenfreude Susie. It has a sewer pipe for a barrel but darn if it don't shoot. The flinter was having some issues with the flint and I didn't have a spare so the group is pretty good considering, especially with two bullets literally in one hole and a third only an inch away.
Next step is to get this tested in a camp environment. I'll probably run a small scale test on 10/30 when we have to work with about 100 kids at Scout camp.
