Conicals for revolvers

After shooting the 200g lee conical in my 1858 for the last few weeks I am completely hooked. I put a brand new front sight on the 1858 from Taylors and benched it for a few shots. ground down the sight and then a few more shots until I got a 6 o'clock hold that I am happy with. I have not gone crazy benching the gun or trying to get perfect groups on paper off hand so don't have any pretty pictures for you. I mostly shoot steel and am happy when I can consistently get hits on 5" steel @ 25yrds and 6" steel at 40 yrds. I shoot a little bit of paper 50 and 60 yrds and am happy if I can get on an 8 1/2 x11 letter sheet and ecstatic if I occasionally hit my hand drawn bullseye with a revolver with crappy trigger. . no luck yet hitting the 50yrd 6" steel off hand with the revolver. I do not have the bench set up on that 50 yrd target but perhaps I will do that today.

Pros. I feel I am getting better consistency with conicals than I was with RB.

Once the bullets are waxed the loading process is faster and easier than RB. No looking for and positioning the spru, less pressure on the loading lever, no need to lube after loading.

Better reliability? perhaps its the wax seal? perhaps not using bore butter as a rb lube? but I have not had any slow fires or missfires since switching to conicals. Don't know the exact reason but not complaining.

Historically accurate. Any union soldier would have been issued paper cartridges with conicals. Any western lawman would have bought paper cartridges at the hardware store. This is what the gun was designed to shoot. It feels much more powerful and I am getting good hits.

The conicals are easy to cast and fall out of the mold easier than RB. perhaps I just have a lucky Mold.

Cons. They use a lot more lead to cast.
Applying the wax lube takes extra time and effort.

Summary. I wish I had started shooting conicals 50 years ago. its a hoot.

nick_1 said:

After shooting the 200g lee conical in my 1858 for the last few weeks I am completely hooked. I put a brand new front sight on the 1858 from Taylors and benched it for a few shots. ground down the sight and then a few more shots until I got a 6 o'clock hold that I am happy with. I have not gone crazy benching the gun or trying to get perfect groups on paper off hand so don't have any pretty pictures for you. I mostly shoot steel and am happy when I can consistently get hits on 5" steel @ 25yrds and 6" steel at 40 yrds. I shoot a little bit of paper 50 and 60 yrds and am happy if I can get on an 8 1/2 x11 letter sheet and ecstatic if I occasionally hit my hand drawn bullseye with a revolver with crappy trigger. . no luck yet hitting the 50yrd 6" steel off hand with the revolver. I do not have the bench set up on that 50 yrd target but perhaps I will do that today.

Pros. I feel I am getting better consistency with conicals than I was with RB.

Once the bullets are waxed the loading process is faster and easier than RB. No looking for and positioning the spru, less pressure on the loading lever, no need to lube after loading.

Better reliability? perhaps its the wax seal? perhaps not using bore butter as a rb lube? but I have not had any slow fires or missfires since switching to conicals. Don't know the exact reason but not complaining.

Historically accurate. Any union soldier would have been issued paper cartridges with conicals. Any western lawman would have bought paper cartridges at the hardware store. This is what the gun was designed to shoot. It feels much more powerful and I am getting good hits.

The conicals are easy to cast and fall out of the mold easier than RB. perhaps I just have a lucky Mold.

Cons. They use a lot more lead to cast.
Applying the wax lube takes extra time and effort.

Summary. I wish I had started shooting conicals 50 years ago. its a hoot.

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I had been working on finding both my New Model Army and Old Army pistols and then create a universal bullet for them. I ended up moving to a place where I couldn’t shoot black powder and so I only had two range days in 9 years and lost my proficiency with them. But we’ve moved back and I’m there once a month at least again.

What I had worked up at that point was my NMA did well with a weighed 32.5 grns of 3F Olde Eynsford and the ROA with 37.5 grns and the leftover chamber capacity looks to hold about a 230-240 grn wide meplat bullet for hunting. I use Accurate Molds to create mold designs, and use a small single lube groove and wide nose which makes for a heavy for its length bullet.

The big difference between the conicals you and I are using is that they aren’t very pointy. The army loved them as they penetrated horses but because pointy slow bullets allow the flesh to stretch thereby creating a smaller than caliber hole it wasn’t as effective on men. It seems the soldiers preferred a ball as its stated it took the fight out of a man. Your round nose design should act similarly to a ball. A wide flat meplat cuts a larger than caliber hole even at very slow speeds. Since we can’t rely on expansion I like a wide flat nose plus it allows for more mass giving better penetration. We have hogs galore here so I want a lot of damage.

I’ve been killing whitetails for years from my 50 cal flinty rifle using Hornady Pa conicals.

All advantages you have stated apply. Accurate out to my max range of 100 yards.

these things are cast with soft lead. they expand just fine.

nick_1 said:

these things are cast with soft lead. they expand just fine.

Click to expand...

At these velocities you can’t be so sure. I’ve talked with a lot of people over the years when I first started making my own designs and the general consensus is pure lead needs to be traveling over 1100 fps to readily expand without hitting bone. You aren’t getting 1000 fps, especially if it’s a 25 grn powder charge as I think you said. I don’t know what kind of deformation one can expect at 850-900 fps.

I’ve been told many stories of finding a ball bulged on the offside of a deer that looked nearly pristine when shot further out like 100 yds. At 100 yds a .490” ball is traveling just around 1060 fps according to my ballistics calculator. Faster than your RN at the muzzle.

I read a lot about developments by Elmer Keith as well as bullet designs for the .45-70 shooting long range. A wide meplat was what they found ideal. A RN isn’t a bad design, but it’s not as good as a wide meplat.

nick_1 said:

these things are cast with soft lead. they expand just fine.

Click to expand...

There was a military video from the 60’s where they showed various arms, including old black powder guns to include an 1860 Army. It was loaded with weak powder as the ball was traveling around 700 fps, but it went through ballistics gel and through the bone and made a perfect hole without deforming the ball at all.

I shoot taped and compressed romance novels my wife brings home.
Best use scenario for such things and was a real eye opener regards projectile performance.
The most surprising to me was the .50 rifle and prb.

I am not volunteering to stand in front of these things.

The next step in shooting conicals is paper cartridges. Roll your own try it.

Dave

AlexB said:

I shoot taped and compressed romance novels my wife brings home.
Best use scenario for such things and was a real eye opener regards projectile performance.
The most surprising to me was the .50 rifle and prb.

Click to expand...

What did you see?

nick_1 said:

I am not volunteering to stand in front of these things.

Click to expand...

Nope, they’re effective.

I do use T7 so 25g quite a bit hotter than real BP. I shot about 80 rnds this afternoon. My accuracy went to **** at the end. Could have been fouling or a case of the flinchies. when I cleaned there was a band of thick fouling completely obscuring the rifling for about the 1 1/2 inches on the muzzle end of the barrel. It took a vigorous scrub with a wire brush to get that cleared up. I suspect its wax from the Lyman BP bullet lube? I did start the session shooting pretty well.

rodwha said:

What did you see?

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I have a pile of used roundballs and conicals of various caliber and hearing a .50 goes through a deer without deformation is surprising.
In print they don't go deeper than 6" with a 60 grain load of t7.
Does fragment the ball into a lot of pieces and the enegy transfer appears to be significant.
36 has similar ball performance with 30 grains t7 but only 4" penetration but excellent deformation and transfer.
Not much difference with conicals there.
44 penetrates 4" to 5" with not much deformation of roundballs conicals penetrate about the same with better deformation and much better energy transfer again.
The 31 colt is another surprise and hits harder than the majority of posts would suggest using t7 and .33 projectiles.

nick_1 said:

I do use T7 so 25g quite a bit hotter than real BP. I shot about 80 rnds this afternoon. My accuracy went to **** at the end. Could have been fouling or a case of the flinchies. when I cleaned there was a band of thick fouling completely obscuring the rifling for about the 1 1/2 inches on the muzzle end of the barrel. It took a vigorous scrub with a wire brush to get that cleared up. I suspect its wax from the Lyman BP bullet lube? I did start the session shooting pretty well.

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Triple 7 is hotter than standard powders but it’s not quite as good as Olde Eynsford or Swiss Powder, or the French or South African sporting grade powders. I was using mostly Olde Eynsford after it was available but they seemed to group identically for me. Maybe someone better than I would notice the difference shooting offhand.

Have you seen the P-Max ballistics calculator designed for Swiss powder? It seems pretty accurate.

The big difference between the conicals you and I are using is that they aren’t very pointy. The army loved them as they penetrated horses but because pointy slow bullets allow the flesh to stretch thereby creating a smaller than caliber hole it wasn’t as effective on men. It seems the soldiers preferred a ball as its stated it took the fight out of a man.

Click to expand...

There was zero research done back in the day. You will note that the same Army used a Jacket bullet in the 1911 because it would feed correctly. No expansions and it poked holes (which is true of all Ball to this day because the Army wants to shoot through things). Ergo, on no proof they decided 45 cal was the way to go. Same folks that decided the single load lever on a Mauser action was the way to ctonrol people going nuts in battle and shooting off all their ammo (yea like a Sergeant was gong to stand up and walk behind them in a battle and, hey Trooper Curtis, get that thing back on single feed until I say otherwise, ooops, the Sergeant just bought the farm, boys, we can go to multi fire!)

So, Philippines proved 38 caliber was inadequate, so they go to 45 caliber but then for the 45 ACP its a ball round that does nothing expansions wise. Really? Yea. Then they decided 45 ACP was just too brutal and we got 9mm (ball) and .......

Equally in a battle no one is comparing, hey Joe has ball and I got conical s and boy do they work better. Someone did an article on the most shot guy back in the day, 20 some times (23-27? can't find it) and he lived. They did not say Concial or not but likely it was per the pre loaded cartridges. In a Calvary action you are going to see the difference?

I suspect a Concial was easier to put in a paper cartridge than a ball was so that is what they used. I could be wrong, that just conjecture on my part. Maybe someone did some ballistics tests? Nah..

I tried Conicals . Certainly no better than ball, probably worse. What I can say is nothing beats the 1 inch group I got out of an unmentionable with a SWC Lead 200 gr. Yea that was a once off, more typical is 2 inch groups, but they are more consistent than ball or conicals which varies quite a bit (lack of control of the compaction of the powder I suspect as well as better ignition characteristic of smokeless and primers all contained in a case)

Now they do Gell tests not because is mimics a human body all that well, but it allows consistent comparison of penetration and expansion in a known media that has some semblance to a human body.

Those statements above are simply not supported by an evidence but such is what urban legends are made of (before the Internet).

rodwha said:

At these velocities you can’t be so sure. I’ve talked with a lot of people over the years when I first started making my own designs and the general consensus is pure lead needs to be traveling over 1100 fps to readily expand without hitting bone. You aren’t getting 1000 fps, especially if it’s a 25 grn powder charge as I think you said. I don’t know what kind of deformation one can expect at 850-900 fps.

I’ve been told many stories of finding a ball bulged on the offside of a deer that looked nearly pristine when shot further out like 100 yds. At 100 yds a .490” ball is traveling just around 1060 fps according to my ballistics calculator. Faster than your RN at the muzzle.

I read a lot about developments by Elmer Keith as well as bullet designs for the .45-70 shooting long range. A wide meplat was what they found ideal. A RN isn’t a bad design, but it’s not as good as a wide meplat.

Click to expand...

Watched a .45 lead ball in slow motion exit a ballistic dummy skull, you could see it had flattened nicely despite only going not quite 500 FPS from a flintlock pistol. YMMV

The lee designed cap and ball bullets are very nice. The are not historically accurate but they make good shooters.

Whitworth said:

Watched a .45 lead ball in slow motion exit a ballistic dummy skull, you could see it had flattened nicely despite only going not quite 500 FPS from a flintlock pistol. YMMV

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Interesting. I wonder why such dramatic differences. Again, it goes back to my stating that expansion cannot be relied upon. And so I like the fact that the permanent wound track doesn’t get smaller, it’s either big or bigger.

nick_1 said:

After shooting the 200g lee conical in my 1858 for the last few weeks I am completely hooked. I put a brand new front sight on the 1858 from Taylors and benched it for a few shots. ground down the sight and then a few more shots until I got a 6 o'clock hold that I am happy with. I have not gone crazy benching the gun or trying to get perfect groups on paper off hand so don't have any pretty pictures for you. I mostly shoot steel and am happy when I can consistently get hits on 5" steel @ 25yrds and 6" steel at 40 yrds. I shoot a little bit of paper 50 and 60 yrds and am happy if I can get on an 8 1/2 x11 letter sheet and ecstatic if I occasionally hit my hand drawn bullseye with a revolver with crappy trigger. . no luck yet hitting the 50yrd 6" steel off hand with the revolver. I do not have the bench set up on that 50 yrd target but perhaps I will do that today.

Pros. I feel I am getting better consistency with conicals than I was with RB.

Once the bullets are waxed the loading process is faster and easier than RB. No looking for and positioning the spru, less pressure on the loading lever, no need to lube after loading.

Better reliability? perhaps its the wax seal? perhaps not using bore butter as a rb lube? but I have not had any slow fires or missfires since switching to conicals. Don't know the exact reason but not complaining.

Historically accurate. Any union soldier would have been issued paper cartridges with conicals. Any western lawman would have bought paper cartridges at the hardware store. This is what the gun was designed to shoot. It feels much more powerful and I am getting good hits.

The conicals are easy to cast and fall out of the mold easier than RB. perhaps I just have a lucky Mold.

Cons. They use a lot more lead to cast.
Applying the wax lube takes extra time and effort.

Summary. I wish I had started shooting conicals 50 years ago. its a hoot.

Click to expand...

I never use lube over balls, and pay no attention to sprue location.
Still get excellent accuracy out of my 3 Colt type open tops.
I do use thin lubed felt wads that I punch out and lube myself under the balls for lubrication only.
Grease over chamber mouths has no effect on preventing chain fires. More people are gradually coming around to that realization.

actually grease over balls has great efect in stopping chain fires if your balls are under sized. tested it with a batch of .440 balls. agreed that not necessary for chain fires with .454 balls but I do find that no lube equals harder to clean.