Hi Rat Trapper,
It's been a long time since I've done any shooting with conicals, but for a while they were my projectile of choice for hunting.
The rifle I used was (is) identical to yours and I'll throw out some of the things I learned. They may or may not be applicable to your shooting so take them for whatever they are worth.
I used my chronograph extensively and still have the data derived with these loads. This was back around '95. T7 wasn't around at that time so there were no tests of it. Pyrodex was the only sub that I recall as being available then and since I had a can of RS I used it as well as goex ff.
My favored hunting load at the time was 100 grains of goex ff under a 370 grain Maxi Ball. This load chronograped at 1350 fps. There was no significant difference between those particular lots of RS and ff as far as accuracy and velocity was concerned.
The same held true for 80 grain charges of the same two cans of powder. They ran about 1312 fps. With only 38 fps difference between 100 and 80 grains, I went to 80 grains for my "service" load. The diff in recoil was worth it!
I'll also add that the only elk I ever killed with a conical was a bull at 130 yards with the Maxi Ball over 70 (yes 70, not a typo
) grains of goex ff. It broke a rib going in passed through both lungs and stopped under the hide on the opposite side.
Next, I had been discussing bp loads online with a fellow who was a writer for Precision Shooter magazine. He had little experience with bp but had acquired a .50 cal TC (not a Hawken) and was doing some shooting with it. He pronounced that his rifle gave a higher velocity with NECO "P" wads on top of the powder. These are thin plastic wads. He made that statement without using a chronograph. Why, I don't know but according to him the rifle "cracked" louder and recoiled harder and therefore it must be shooting faster. How's that for science?
Anyway, I acquired some .50 caliber P wads and tried them with ff and RS over the chrono with 80 grain charges. I also shot the same loads without the p wads that same day under the same conditions, etc. There was absolutely no difference between the p wads and no wads in respect to accuracy or velocity.
Another thing that was on the market at the time was a thing called a "maxi patch" by Butler Creek. This was a plastic wad about 1/4 inch thick with a flat base to seat the bullet on and a cupped edge on the underside to serve as a gas seal. When I tried these with the ff and rs 80 grain charges, the maxi patched loads ran about 10 fps slower than the loads without a patch. I don't know why.
Nex came a round with Lee REAL bullets. I got two different weights in .50 cal but honestly don't remember what the weights were. 250 gr and 320 grain comes to mind but my mind is not what it used to be. Testing of REAL bullets was brief for me. I ran up and down the scale on powder charges from 70 to 90 grains of ff and found they were very accurate at 50 yards but at 100 yards the same loads were shooting 10 to 15 inch groups. I considered that a lesson learned and put the REAL bullets behind me.
Next came a Lee modern minie. Lee makes two styles of minies in .50 cal. They both have a cupped base and a skirt with a similar thickness to the civil war style minie that they make in .58 caliber. The moder minie shot very well at all ranges out to 100 yards as long as the powder charges were held in the 60 grain or less range. Anything over that and they got wild probably due to the skirt being blown into a badminton bird shape by the heavier charges.
The skirts on your Buff bullets are much thicker and I doubt if you would blow them out even with heavier charges than you are shooting.
Next, I tried some slugs that I got from a friend. Thes were 450 grain slugs from a mold designed to cast for the .50-70 cartridge gun. As cast they came off at about .515, but he had sized them to .504. They were a bit tight to load but not at all difficult. I only shot these with 80 grains of ff and did not have my chrono set up. These shot nice tight groups at 50 and 100 yards. Recoil was stout but not unbearable. These slugs in a .50-70 Sharps killed more than their share of the buffaloe on the western plains and they did it at about 1150 to 1250 fps. Do as you please with your hunting loads, but there is a useful lesson buried in that fact!
These days I hunt almost exclusively with round balls, but if I were to go back to conicals, the 450 grain slug and a custom sizer from lee would be my choice.
I have never tried the fiber wads under any bp load and I doubt they will do anything to benefit your shooting. There is all this talk about the wads "sealing" the bore but I doubt if that is the case. Others claim that they prevent the bullet base from being melted.
My own theory on these wads is that since they do provide a cushion, they may well cushion and spread out the pressure that upsets the conical into the grooves for a tight seal.
As far as melting bullet bases goes, I have recovered many pure lead slugs with plain bases shot unprotected on top of the powder charge from both ml guns and BPC guns and there is absolutely no evidence of melting or any other damage to the base of the bullet.
Whether or not the wads might be detrimental to shooting your HB buff bullets is a non-question as far as I'm concerned. The hollow base will further assure a good upset of the slug and I see no purpose served by a wad. And, as suggested by another poster here, it might jam up into the hollow base and that would probably not be beneficial!
The last thing added here will be what I found about wiping between shots with conicals. Ya gotta do it!
Conicals cause a much larger and more persistent "crud ring" than round ball shooting. I don't know why. Maybe it's the added heat combined with the conical sitting in place just a hair longer before starting to move. Like I said, I don't know. After three shots without wiping, there was a substantial bore restriction caused by a ring of fouling build up where the base of the bullet seated. If it was not wiped away, accuracy seemed to decline with further shooting. Once I started wiping after every shot, accuracy improved a bunch. The crud ring does show up in round ball shooting but not as much of a build up and it seems to reach a certain point and then stops growing. I can shoot up to 40 shots with prb from my .50 hawken without wiping and accuracy is not effected.
The crud ring grew with Pyrodex and Goex but OTOH, may not be a problem with T7.
Hope that helps a bit, but don't take any of it as gospel, do your own experimenting. I'd sure like to hear more about your results.
