will a smooth bore shotgun have better accuracy with round balls or a conoical shapedbullet..one of thepresicion reloading or ballistic reloading did have a cheap mold for a ten ga..i m gona get one some day...charlie

I'm thinking with the mini balls I can make the bullet diameters whatever us a snug fit in the shot cups .

Craig nei makes like a .770 diameter slug mould it is a real slug not some foster type .
Plus a mini ball wouldn't work in a brown bess because its a smooth bore .
My bad its a .774 diameter but close enough to .775

I was fed up with NEI about five years ago . They do decent enough work but every time I ordered a mold they gave me a quick turn around date and never ever came close to meeting it . Always excuses and excuses . Not once but five times , after five times of that I never bothered to order the sixth mold .

For me personally I've found Mountain Molds to be the better option . I have 5 or 6 of their molds . They also have a computer program that allows one to design their own mold send it to them and use Paypal to pay for it . Each time I've ordered from them they got it to me quicker then the time they quoted .

www.mountainmolds.com

All the 69 cal US muskets were smooth as well but they still made mini balls for them .

its a fine point - but the French inventor Minie' designed the round to seal to the rifling in a rifled musket to gain accuracy.

will it fire from a smooth bore - certainly- but the effect is lost

I'm thinking if I take the mini's and wrap them with enough tape to make them tight inside the shot cup they should do as well as any Foster style slug . And if I can keep the right and left barrel within 3 or 4 inches of each other at 25 yards then it's all good .

I may find mini balls or roundballs inside the shot cups of any of my 10;s , 12's or 16's isn't hitting on much and then I'll go back to buckshot only .

Craig ive read that 14,000 of the 1842s had their barrels rifled and 9,000 or so had rifle sights fitted to them for the rifling and these were used by the C.S.A with the 69 cal mini balls . I also read they were more accurate than the enfields but had way more recoil . though I don't see how a 750gr mini at 800 fps has alot of recoil ? That's about 1 3/4 oz (764gr) I think . Craig I bet you would love one of those old "bore" rifles used back in the day of the empire .

By april I should have my 3rd 10 bore double im going to have to reload those rst shells are pricey but good