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Various types of Minié balls. The four on the right are provided with Tamisier ball grooves for aerodynamic stability. James H. Burton's 1855 Minié ball design (.58 caliber, 500 grains) from the Harpers Ferry Armory. The Minié ball, or Minie ball, is a type of hollow-based bullet designed by Claude-Étienne Minié for muzzle-loaded, rifled ...
Originally Soldiers were instructed to use the special bullets as every tenth round fired. Williams cartridges were made up in the same fashion as the standard .58 caliber cartridge with 60 grains of black powder, but no official documentation has ever been located indicating that the cartridges should be made up in a colored cartridge paper.
Paper cartridge, Minié ball undersized to reduce the effects of powder fouling and for the skirt to grip the grooves when firing: Caliber.58 (14.7320 mm) Action: Percussion lock: Rate of fire: User dependent; usually 2 to 3 rounds per minute: Muzzle velocity: 1,000 ft/s (300 m/s) to 1,400 ft/s (430 m/s) Effective firing range
Paper cartridge, Minié ball undersized to reduce the effects of powder fouling and for the skirt to grip the grooves when firing: Caliber.58 (14.7320 mm) Action: Maynard tape primer/percussion lock: Rate of fire: User dependent; usually 2 to 3 rounds per minute: Muzzle velocity: 1,000 ft/s (300 m/s) to 1,400 ft/s (430 m/s) Effective firing range
Paper cartridge, Minié ball undersized to reduce the effects of powder fouling and for the skirt to get grip of the grooves when firing: Caliber.58 (14.7320 mm) Action: Percussion lock: Rate of fire: User dependent; usually 2 to 4 rounds per minute: Muzzle velocity: 1,000 ft/s (300 m/s) to 1,400 ft/s (430 m/s) Effective firing range
Also, the Minié Ball, being conical and longer than it was broad, had much more mass than a round ball of the same caliber. A smaller caliber Minié ball could be used to provide as much mass on target as the larger .69 caliber round ball. For these reasons, the Model 1842 was the last .69 caliber musket. The Army later standardized on the .58 ...
The cylindro-conical shape of the Minié ball also meant that the smaller-diameter but longer .58 caliber Minié ball had roughly the same amount of lead and weight as the larger .69 round ball. While the caliber was reduced, the overall length of the barrel was not.
Note: Use of this table for estimating bullet masses for historical large-bore rifles is limited, as this table assumes the use of round ball, rather than conical bullets; for example, a typical 4-bore rifle from circa 1880 used a 2,000-grain (4.57 oz; 129.60 g) bullet, or sometimes slightly heavier, rather than using a 4-ounce (110 g) round ...