The bullets that I use are quite similar to those shown in the video, and similar to Lorenz's original design. Greg Edington came up with single and double compression groove designs and had aluminium moulds manufactured by Lee [no longer available]. Northwest Trade had a batch of iron moulds built [no longer available]. And, Moose Molds currently produces a "Wilkinson" -- actually Lorenz -- design mould. All of the above were/are available only in .540 and .580. I have asked Moose to produce a .547 - .550 mould to no avail.
Regarding the U.S. Army's knowledge of k.k. Army arms and ammunition, the following may be helpful. In 1855 Secretary of War Jefferson Davis dispatched the Delafield Commission to observe the Crimean War and study the major armies of Europe. The members of the Commission were the first diplomatically accredited U.S. military attaches. In late December 1855 and early January 1856, the Commission visited Vienna and was given full access to the Vienna Arsenal, including meetings with Baron von Augustin and Werkfürher Lorenz. The k.k. Army “kindly” provided Major Mordecai, Major Delafield, and Captain McClellan [yes that McClellan] with four System Lorenz firearms and a quantity of ammunition, which they brought back to the United States. Modecai, who was the ordnance expert on the Commission, did not say which models of arms were provided in his official reports, nor did he mention the gift in the extensive notes he kept in his diary during the Commission’s vist to the Vienna arsenal. I believe that the weapons were a Muster 1854 Type I, Infanteriegewehr; a Muster 1854 Type II, Infanteriegewehr; a Muster 1854 Jägerstutzen; and a Muster 1854 Dornstutzen, since those were the four System Lorenz firearms in production at the Vienna Arsenal at the time. One of the Infanteriegewehr – the ordnance test report does not say which one – was tested in an extremely limited way at the Washington, DC, Arsenal on 10 July 1856. The ordnance testers fired 23 rounds at a 10 foot by 10 foot target 300 yards away. Seventeen of the shots hit the target, with a mean vertical deviation of 15.5 inches [5.17 minutes of angle] and a mean horizontal deviation of 12.1 inches [4.03 minutes of angle]. If one ignores the six shots that missed the target, for which there is no explanation in the very brief test report, this is a standard roughly comparable to the acceptance standards for service 1903 Springfield, M-1, M-14 and M-16 rifles with service ball ammunition, which were in the range of six minutes of angle.
The limited scope of the tests would tend to indicate that the Infanteriegewehr was superior to the Mississippi rifle used with round ball ammunition, but that the U.S. arms had the edge using U.S. elongated ball [Minié type] bullets. There are several things about the test which are curious, however. The testers used an Infanteriegewehr rather than a Jägerstutzen, which should have been more accurate. Secondly, the Austrian rifle was tested only at 300 yards, rather than across the full range of distances at which the U.S. arms had been tested during the development of the Model 1855 family of Springfield arms. One of the important considerations in foreign materiel intelligence exploitation is using the same test protocols for both the foreign arms being evaluated and any U.S. weapons used as test controls. Having just gone to the time and expense of adopting the Model 1855 rifle and rifle musket, however, it probably would have been very embarrassing for the Ordnance Department to have produced an evaluation which indicated that a foreign rifle and ammunition was superior to the new Springfield/Harpers Ferry designed arms. The test report also clearly indicates that the testers understood that the Austrian arms were “.55 caliber,” and used a 450 grain compression type ball with a 62 grain powder charge.
Despite the Ordnance Department's own intelligence exploitation of the k.k. Army arms and ammunition, there was a blind insistance on the part of the Department during the war that you could effectively use U.S. .54 caliber ammunition in System Lorenz rifles. The U.S. Army's .54 caliber ball was .537 inches in diameter, weighed 400 grains, and used a 50 grain powder charge. So, even if the cartridge had worked in System Lorenz rifles the weapons' sights were not calibrated for it. The Federals imported no k.k. Army ammunition that I know of. The Confederates imported some k.k. Army ammunition, and some "Austrian" [NFI] ammunition manufactured in Britain by Eley, but generally used their own rather poor quality stuff.
Regards,
Don Dixon