Thirty Five Shots With The .58 H&A Minuteman
 

I finally got the chance Saturday to give the Minuteman a good workout.



The session started around 10 a.m. under 60° overcast skies and ended around 3 p.m. in bright 77° sunshine.

I started off with five shots at 50 yards with 85 grains GOEX FFFg, a .575 cast lee ball, .018 pillow tick patch lubed with Liquid Wrench and wiped between all shots with one side of an alcohol patch. Here's that first target.



Man, that combination was a bear to load. Getting the ball in the muzzle by whacking the short starter with my hand was positively painful. I had to resort to tapping the starter with a wood mallet. Once short started, the ball went down tight with two hands on the rod.

I adjusted the sight a bit and then shot another five shot group with everything the same except the patch. I changed to a .016 patch from a tightly woven linen table cloth purchased at a Goodwill Thrift Store. Here's the second target.



Getting the ball started with the .016 patch was a little easier, but still way harder than what I consider acceptable. I didn't have any thinner patch material on hand, so I shot another shot group with the .016 patch and switched from the .575 cast ball to a .570 Hornady ball. Here's the third target.



That group isn't too bad. My .58 GM barreled TC Hawken will do a bit better at 50 yards. But that gun has set triggers and the Minuteman has a god-awful heavy trigger.

Sticking with the .570 ball and .016 patch, I upped the charge to 95 grains and shot a fourth group. Here's that target.



Not so good. But I have and excuse. The overcast skies had cleared up and the sun came out. I had a devil of a time getting a clear focus of the little shiny bead of the front sight.

For target number five, I made a temporary sun shade for the front sight, reduced the charge to 75 grains, and banged away. Here's the shield and the fifth target.





I knew I had one really bad trigger squeeze/break during that string, and assume that the high right shot.

OK, enough at 50 yards. Let's return to the 85 grain load and stretch it out to 75 yards. Here target number six.



Not exceptional. Not even great. But certainly "minute of deer" at 75 yards.

The rear lollipop peep sight on this gun had three apertures - large, medium and small. All of the shooting so far has been with the medium aperture.



After shooting the 75 yard target, while the target was still out there on the frame, I switched the sight to the small hole and looked through it at the target. It's amazing how much sharper the front sight was with that tiny hole. I wish I had started the session with the small hole.

Anyway, I tried one more group at 100 yards. Here's the seventh and last target.



Well, BLAH!!! A six inch group.

Looks like you almost always seem to get a "wayward" shot there old boy! I'd say that right now that rifle shouldn't be shot at any game beyond 75 yards for sure. But I think you'll figure something out for it.
I think I'd try a different lube and a thinner patch with your .575" balls. The ones you gave me shot really well out of my .58 GM barrel. So much so that I got myself a .575" Lee mold and cast a bunch.
As far as Lube goes I've been having some really good results using Jon's Anti-rust lube. I don't know what he puts in it but it is super slick and makes for nice loading.

Those are very decent five shot groups.

Nice write up. I know it's always a pain ending on a less than acceptable group.

I'll be doing some of that Bronko. But the truth is I've never had much luck with patches thinner than about .015.

I have some .562 balls from a Lee mold around here someplace. I wish I had them along for this session. I think those, with some .020 or .022 denim patch are going to be my best bet for an easy loading yet snug fit.

As for lube, I'm sure Jon's stuff is good and have seen good reports on it. However, I'm over experimenting with new lubes after trying many many commercial and home made concoctions over the years. I settled on Liquid Wrench a few years back after finding it gave me great accuracy in every one of my round ball shooters and will be sticking with that.

It's the story of my life Lone Wolf - keep going until you screw up. :D

I'd switch to 2fg. 3f never shot well in my 58cal. There's just to many out of the group shots to keep me confident.

Thank you for saying so Falcon. But they are short of my expectations, or at least my goal.

Once the correct load combination is found, I expect a round ball gun to put five shots into one ragged hole of no greater than 1¾" at 50 yards from the bench. I have six round ball guns that will do that, a .45 flintlock, .50 flintlock, .54 flintlock, two .54 caplocks, and a .58 caplock.

That target is cheating! On my last outing today, I shot a 1 1/2 H x 3/4" W bulls eye! I thought it looked a lil tiny at 50 yards LOL.

That's another option to consider Devil. It may make a difference. I do get very good accuracy with 3f in my .58 Green Mountain barreled TC Hawken.

One other contributing factor is the trigger pull on the Minuteman. It's a monster. It breaks clean, but the pull has got to be somewhere around 12 to 15 lbs. A few times during this session the pull felt so stiff that I actually stopped putting pressure on the trigger to check if the hammer was cocked.

I agree. But I hope fix that.