Who makes the best quality Zouave?

[rdstrain49]

Who do you think is building the best quality Zouave? Accuracy is the main goal.

[rammed]

Since no one else spoke up I will. I think all the repro's are about equal. They all need work.

You will get a gun with a "lawyer's trigger". It will have a lot of "creep" and a horrible trigger pull. Both of these problems are easy to fix.

To fix the creep, shim the full cock notch on the tumbler by soft soldering a brass shim in the notch. If you look at the way the sear engages the tumbler, you will find the sear is sitting in the notch at least twice as far as it needs to. DO NOT GRIND THE TUMBLER. The shim should be fitted so the sear has a good hold on the tumbler but it takes very little movement to release the tumbler.

The trigger pull can be lightened by grinding the sear spring. I use a belt sander to do this. Grind it along the length of the spring. The flat side not the edge. The idea is to make the spring thinner to weaken it. Go slow so you don't remove the temper.

As far as accuracy goes, I prefer a barrel with a slow twist about 1 in 72 inches. A lot of repro's are 1 in 48. The other thing that effects accuracy is the bore diameter. It should be about .577, the repro's are usually over sized. Some are as large as .580 or more. Get a mould that is oversize and size the minie so the ball fits the bore with just a little side to side movement.

Once you have done this you need to play with the power charge to find what groups the best.

I've owned a lot of repro's over the years and have never had trouble getting acceptable accuracy out of them using these steps.

[rdstrain49]

thanks rammed, I should have kept my old Zouave, but it probably got traded for something.

[22shot]

Navy Arms Zouave; only because I shoot one!

As rammed posted; the "accuracy" is effected by the "twist", but this Zouave is not my BP "target" rifle!