Parker Hale Enfield P53 rifled musket.

[dromia]

His problem is a duff Lee mould, par for the course, the mould blocks are out of alignment usually a handle issue.

Personally I wouldn't faff on with the fecker I'd pay for a proper mould.

Lyman do a good range of Minies and the RCBS ones are classics.

[dromia]

Enfields were not wiped between shots as part of the contemporary loading drill.

However with muzzle loaders I like to do so when shooting for group or score as it keeps the barrel condition the same for each shot, I also like to do so when developing loads as it tells me a lot about the load and how it is progressing.

For instance with a good powder like Swiss the fouling will get softer as the load gets to an efficient level, poor quality powder like Kranks own nutty slack fouling will always be hard and plentiful.

[matdoodson]

That all makes sense...

I'll see if I can find the combustion ring next time out.

Cheers

[dromia]

On the subject of contemporary loading drills it is interesting to note that the introduction of the sub calibre Minie style bullet overcame the fouling issue that had previously made rifles the tool of specialist troops and brought the rifle to the line infantry.

However fouling was obviously still a problem on the battlefield even with the Minie style bullet as the British with their Pritchett cartridge finally reduced the bullet size from 0.568" to 0.550" to increase the number of shots that could be loaded before cleaning the rifle.

Obviously cleaning between shots wasn't a battle field option, fortunately however we can shoot in far less stressful situations and use our own procedures.

When I shoot I am looking for good groups as that is what pleases me. Like all shooting, consistency is the key to accuracy. What wiping between shots does is ensure that the barrel is in the same condition for the bullet to travel down for each shot.

With a good fitting Minie I can get around a dozen plus shots without wiping before I feel that the fouling is deforming the bullet upon loading, with the Pritchett that round count rises to around three dozen shots. So I could shoot a card with out wiping and still be able to load however my groups/score are invariably better with wiping.

At the end of the day these rifles were intended to hit man size targets out to 500+yards and the tactical demands of the time still used the line volley fire of the smoothbore round ball musket, what the rifled musket did was increase the effective engagement range ten fold.

This increase in engagement distance meant that soldiers had the time to fire far more shots (and do far more damage)before they met with the bayonet.

The casualty lists from the American Civil War bear testament to this where the rifled musket wrought terrible damage and death to the soldiers on a scale never seen before.