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Conicals for revolvers

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got home from a hike this evening and had just enough light to see my front sights. let two cylinders of 200g bad boys fly. The muzzle flash is quite impressive this time of the evening. hit the 5 inch steel a few times at 25 yrds, hit the 6 inch steel at 40 yrds a few hits on paper and a bullseye at 40 and made some massive fireballs.
 
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.
Click to expand...

That would be a case of pushing to an extreme and then saying lube works. Well, sort of. Any failure in the lube and its coverage and its a chain fire for sure. The correct approach is not to have to add stuff to try to prevent a guaranteed result, ie, use the right sized ball.

I go with the right size ball (.454) and as I buy mine, no sprue.

I also do not use lube over ball or conical and I have had not chain fires. I do use a felt pad if I use a .451 ball (like to play with things) . Now I am a low end user, maybe 1000 shots so far. I think its a fair sampling but more is better.

At .451 according to the stuff I look at, you are into the upper range of iffy. At a guess .448 is getting into close of it not virtually a guarantee of a chain fire.
 
Your just talking. I have done it. Vaseline over the balls and I was able to use up a whole box of.440 it chain fired every time I skipped the lube. I even got all six to Go off one time. With the lube no chain fire.
 
nick_1 said:
Your just talking. I have done it. Vaseline over the balls and I was able to use up a whole box of.440 it chain fired every time I skipped the lube. I even got all six to Go off one time. With the lube no chain fire.
Click to expand...
.457 in my Pietta Shooters model will chain fire. I’ve never tried lube over the ball, I just use a .465” ball.
 
Back to if you have the right sized projectile you don't need goo over the chamber.

Statistically you may get away with the goop covering up the bullet size issue but one the protection for a created condition fails, well, you pull the short straw. I have no desire to do chain fires. Ergo I am not going to use .440 balls or conical s thank you very much.

You won't know if you are protected until it fails.

Don't take that drink and go driving. You may get away with it or you may not.
 
I just don't like it when folks who have never actually had a chain fire start preaching about what will or wont cause or prevent one. They are just running their traps if they have never deliberately caused a chain fire and then tested the remedy to stop it. People dont know how to listen and learn. Everyone has to be an expert even when they don't know what they are talking about. If you actually want to learn something if you ever get a new box of balls and for some reason they come in too small to shave a ring you can simply grease the chambers with Vaseline and shoot them up with no fear of chain fire. I wish I had tested with something less messy than Vaseline but that is what I tested with. Obviously its much better to use the proper size ball but in an emergency this is what you can do to stay safe and still be shooting instead of wishing you had a different size chunk of lead.
 
I think it'd be less work to melt the wrong size balls, and cast them into the correct size rather than have to deal with the mess of lube everywhere. And, if I didn't have that ability, I'd probably just shoot something else while waiting for the correct sized ammo.

Heck, at pistol distances, it'd probably be just as accurate to tap each ball with a hammer to widen them out enough to get a good chamber seal. :D
 
lots of different solutions to the problem just don't say that lube over balls dosen't work when it clearly does.
 
Shooting a 0.440” ball through a gun with 0.442” lands and 0.4535” grooves sounds ridiculous, as does slathering a bunch of Vaseline to hold an undersized ball in place and to prevent chainfires. Vaseline?!?! Sure does seem to go against conventional wisdom…
 
Ive shot .452 and .454 cast lead 180 and 200grain with good results in my Ruger Old Army revolver. .451 bullets may be prone to moving up off the powder when shooting hotter rounds. Depends on how snug they are in your cylinder. I think you might like a 200 although lots of guys swear that nothing shoots better than the round balls. They did shoot great in my old Pietta 1858. Ive also got a .454 160 grain mold Im hoping to cast up some bullets and try out. Ive also heard that a Kaido bullet shoots stellar in the ROAs and 1858s. You can buy them on GunBroker and sometimes on Ebay. Its on my list of bullets to try out.
 
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...
Are you using the Lee 450 200-1R
If so have any issue getting them started straight in the cylinder?
 
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...
If you enjoy shooting conical bullets out of a percussion revolver, Eras Gone Bullet Molds sells historically correct conical bullets for .44, .36, and .32 revolvers.

Since they have a heel, they tend to load more squarely into the chambers than the Lee conical.

Steve
 

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