First shots from my new Enfeild

[Noisydad]

During the weekend I got to play with my new Zoli built Enfeild .58 cal rifled musket.

The load was 60 grains of 3F black powder and a 580 grain soft lead Minie ball cast in a Pedersoli mold.

Bullet lube is 50/50 bee's wax and bacon lard. This is applied by rubbing the lube sticks along the bullet like a "chap stick" until they are slathered with it.

No windage adjustment is available - you have to use "Kentucky windage".

She shoots 3" left at 50 yards and a whopping 12" high at 50 yards.

Hold dead on at 100 yards. Smacking gongs off hand at 100 yards is a ton of fun!

First group fired with an un tested bullet in an un tested rifle .

1st-group.jpg (58.32 KiB) Viewed 1697 times

2nd group - getting the hang of it now.

2nd-group.jpg (41.92 KiB) Viewed 1697 times

3rd group- oh yeah!

3rd-group.jpg (63.73 KiB) Viewed 1697 times

Experiencing a certain "vigorous tumescence" in my nether regions now!

4th-group.jpg (63.94 KiB) Viewed 1697 times

[Gwion]

Nice work, Noisy.

You are going to run out of lead pretty quick, with bullets that size!

[Wm.Traynor]

Been looking forward to this. Thanks for posting

[Noisydad]

I even deliberately bashed a bullet with hammer till I had to hammer into the barrel and it still hit within the group. I also changed to 60 grains of 1F cannon powder and it made no difference either.

[Noisydad]

Here's a couple pics of the monster bullets. I think I'll turn up another base plug for the mold to cast bullets of only 500 grains. Don't think the supplied base plug that makes the mold produce 645 grain bullets has a future.

A 50 gn Hornady .224 and a .580 gn .572 soft lead for the Enfield.

image2.jpg (75.79 KiB) Viewed 1697 times

Two bullets recovered from the target backstop. The mushroomed one is an inch wide. You can see the very shallow rifling marks on the other.

image1.jpg (71.52 KiB) Viewed 1697 times

[Elek]

Dats a big bullet....

[Bourt]

Looks like a small catapult should be launching that