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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.

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.
 
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.
.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…
 
I always thought we had the capacity to learn from others without the need to experience things firsthand in order to learn. Guess I should toss out my books, they’re clearly no good.
 
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.
 
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