The Minié ball is a cylindro-conoidal bullet with grease-filled cannelures on its exterior and a conical concavity in its base. The development of the Minié ball was significant because it was the first projectile type that could be made a loose enough fit to easily slide down the barrel of a rifled long gun, yet maintain good accuracy during firing due to obturation by expansion of the bullet's base when fired. Before the introduction of the Minié ball, balls had to be rammed down the barrel, sometimes with a mallet, because gunpowder residue would foul a rifled bore after a relatively small number of shots, requiring frequent cleaning of the gun. Rifling, the addition of spiral grooves inside a gun barrel, imparts a stabilizing spin to a projectile for better external ballistics, greatly increasing the effective range and accuracy of the gun. Both the American Springfield Model 1861 and the British Pattern 1853 Enfield rifled muskets, the most common weapons used during the American Civil War, used the Minié ball. It was invented in 1847 and came to prominence in the Crimean War and the American Civil War, where it was found to inflict significantly more serious wounds than earlier round musket balls. The Minié ball or Minie ball, is a type of hollow-based bullet designed by Claude-Étienne Minié, inventor of the French Minié rifle, for muzzle-loading rifled muskets. Burton's 1855 Minié ball design (.58 caliber, 500 grains) from the Harpers Ferry Armory

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