Would You Consider Hornady Great Plains Bullets Traditional?

[GBG]

A brass gang mold is shown on page 10 of Lyman's Cast Bullet Handbook 3rd.ed. It casts five RBs from .50 to .67 caliber plus one .68 caliber by 3/4" long flat base, flat point, cylindrical wad cutter type slug. The mould dates from the Pre-Revolutionary War period.

 

[Dphar]

The way I see it there are good valid reasons to use a conical if you want. While PRB is no doubt plenty good enough at reasonable range a conical can stretch that a bit and if you want to use em do so. I dunno about the typical hunter but the military used em. I believe I read where many builders supplied a mold with two cavities with the rifles they built, one round ball and one conical matched to the rifle...

Most of this was addressed in a previous post.


The question was are they historically correct. The modern conicals are not. Period.
The "conicals" the original moulds were cloth patched "picket bullets" unless they are cartridge era moulds. Then *some* TARGET rifles used grooved bullets but they are not ML hunting bullets. Picket bullets are very much not the same as a modern ML bullet.
Virtually all the unpatched conicals/bullets have some down side, they won't reliably stay on the powder. Some are better than others but all are a sliding fit in the bore unless patched in someway.
The cloth patched picket is really the only HC choice for hunting rifles and as previously stated it requires extra, expensive tools to actually be useful.
Unless using some hot replica powder you will have problems with trajectory once past round ball range. For practical purposes there is no difference in the trajectory of the two, both are good for 120-150 yards. Yes the conical will kill farther. But as practical matter with *tradition sights* its a no gain. To shoot at longer ranges the shooter must practice a lot at longer ranges and have a range finder or KNOWN ranges cause you just cannot guess that close all the time. And once past about 150-175 yards precision adjustable sights are nice too.
I hunt in the west and I very seldom have a situation where the RB is a liability other than range. I often kill deer at 250-300 yards when on freezer filling hunts with a modern rifle. I have a couple of pretty darned accurate BPCRs, a 40-60 for silhouette and a 45-100 that will probably hit the kill zone of an elk at 800 yards 8/9 of 10 shots. IF I read the wind right and IF I know the range to within 6ft or so (its falling that fast).
I would not dream of taking either rifle out and trying to kill a deer at 300 yards and expect a first shot hit without a laser range finder, a precisely adjustable sight, a table of sight settings and maybe a wind meter. The 45-100 will kill almost anything to 500-800 yards but HITTING is something else again. When I hunt with BP I hunt with a round ball and I have killed quite a few critters with a BP loaded cartridge rifle in several calibers.

The modern conical is an answer to a problem invented by the people making the conicals. The round ball is perfectly adequate for any game on the planet so long as it is SIZEd properly for the game and made of the proper ALLOY. This has been proven repeatedly. Animals are no harder to kill now than in the past.
Those with access to the book should read the pages leading up to Chapter 6 in "Pondoro" By John Taylor.
He shot elephant in Africa to 2 1/2 months in the 1930s with a 10 bore percussion smoothbore killing 13 "good bulls" and 8 Rhino. He used hardened lead balls and 6 drams of powder. States he never lost a animal shot. Its pg 76 of my copy.

Dan

 

[tg]

"plus one .68 caliber by 3/4" long flat base, flat point, cylindrical wad cutter type slug. The mould dates from the Pre-Revolutionary War period.'

I think they were called lozenge balls or bullets there were several types that were made pre1800 all solid base I believe,but none were maxi ball,REALs, HornadyGPBs,Buffaloe Bal-ets and on and on the latter are of modern design and manufacture much like Knights and Whites guns alike in name only to those of the past.

 

[arcticap]

The cloth patched picket is really the only HC choice for hunting rifles and as previously stated it requires extra, expensive tools to actually be useful.

The use of lead & lead alloy bullets from fast twist barrels that produced superior accuracy and penetration were well proven before the Civil War. To use a conical bullet with a higher sectional density to shoot an animal such as a buffalo at longer range could only mean that luie b's dad isn't :youcrazy:, but rather crazy like a fox.
After all, the Whitworth bullet is traditional. For all intents and purposes, that makes the Hornady Great Plains bullet as close to being traditional as any reproduction side lock muzzle loader is. :wink:

by Sir Joseph Whitworth

First Comparative Trials
Of The Whitworth And Enfield Rifles

In the year 1855 I commenced a series of experiments in the new rifle gallery, and was at that time requested to adhere to the service charge of powder, viz., 70 grains, as well as to the service weight of bullet, viz., 530 grains, but I was unrestricted in every other particular...

...The expansion principle may be combined with an easy mechanical fit, so that a projectile made of metal harder than lead, such as an alloy of lead and tin, may be used, and the bullet will then expand sufficiently to fill the bore, giving a penetration more than double that of lead.

In my earlier experiments I tried the effect of lengthening the bullet of the Enfield rifle, and I showed, by means of a piece of tissue paper placed three yards from the gun, that an increase of only a quarter of an inch in length caused the bullet to strike obliquely. This fact was clearly ascertained by the mark left upon the paper. I then made a barrel of the same bore with a twist of 1 turn in 30 inches, instead of 1 turn in 78 inches, and I kept the weight of the lengthened bullet at 530 grains by making a portion of the interior hollow. The result was that with the same charge the bullet hit the target at the same height.

Having thus proved that there was no loss of range on account of the increased rotation of the bullet, and that the trajectory was as good as before, I made another barrel, reducing the minimum diameter to .5 inch, and lengthening the projectile, and finally I reduced the bore to .45 inch.

In order to satisfy myself as to the effect of increased twist in the rifling I tried barrels with 1 turn in 20 inches, 1 turn in 10 inches, 1 turn in 5 inches and lastly with 1 turn in 1 inch. I fired from these barrels mechanically fitting bullets of lead and tin, and with the barrel rifled to 1 turn in 1 inch (using 35 grains of powder) I penetrated through 7 inches of elm-tree planks.

In this way I exhausted the subject, and arrived at the result that the best twist for a rifled musket bullet would be 1 turn in 20 inches, the minimum diameter of the barrel being .45 inches...


...I experienced great opposition to the change of rifle turn from 1 turn in 78 inches to 1 turn in 20 inches, or I should have made the twist somewhat more rapid in order to fire a steel bullet when necessary for penetration. It should be understood that the amount of rotation must be increased when the specific gravity of the bullet is made less, otherwise the projectile will fall over in its flight, - that is to say, an iron projectile requires more rotation than one made of lead...

...The superiority of the Whitworth, as compared with the Enfield rifle, was first proved in a series of trials made at Hythe, in the year 1857, under the direction of Lord Panmure, then Minister of War.

These trials led to no satisfactory conclusion, and after a lapse of eighteen months a Committee of Officers reported to the Government in 1859 that the bore of my rifle was to small for use as a military weapon.

Compare with this the report of another Committee of Officers made in 1862, "that the makers of every small-bore rifle, having any pretensions to special accuracy, have copied to the letter the three main elements of success adopted by Mr. Whitworth, viz., diameter of bore, degree of spiral, and large proportion of rifling surface."

In 1869 a Special Committee reported to the War Office that the calibre of a breech-loading rifle, should be .45 inches, as appearing to be the most suitable for a military arm. This conclusion is directly contrary to that arrived at in 1859, but is the exact bore which I recommended in 1857...
http://www.lrml.org/historical/whitworth/gunsandsteel02.htm[/quote]

Confederate Whitworth bullet

http://www.ohiovolunteerrelics.com/page 5.html[/quote]

 

[tg]

" the Whitworth bullet is traditional. For all intents and purposes, that makes the Hornady Great Plains bullet as close to being traditional as any reproduction side lock muzzle loader is"

Not really, the sidelocks guns were made as an attempt to provide a gun of the style and type from the past the modern bullets were not based upon anything from the past,it is not a difficult concept grasp if one looks at it from a factual/logical view point and not from an "I want it to be so" pont of view,as I said it is pretty hard to call these modern offering "traditional" when the manufactures will notmake any claims as such, I suspect it is a waste of time trying to take this topic any further here, more traditional oriented venues typical will recognize the distinction between the two types of comicals.The continued presentation of the existance of conicals in the past is interesting as no one has said that they were not around even in the 18th century the point is they were not the basis or insperation for the modern bullets made for ML's today,but if the wanna be faction chooses to ignore the logic.common sense and manufactures position on the modern bullets so be it.

 

[fyrfyter43]

After all, the Whitworth bullet is traditional. For all intents and purposes, that makes the Hornady Great Plains bullet as close to being traditional as any reproduction side lock muzzle loader is. :wink:

The only similarity I see is that they are both made of lead.

[/quote]

 

[arcticap]

They also share a hollow base like a minie and are better
suited for the twist rate of most reproduction guns.

.69 caliber minie ball

.575 minie

.58 cal. Hornady Great Plains swaged hollow point bullets
before and after firing with 65 grs. 1 Fg.

 

[fyrfyter43]

I still don't see much similarity, other than the metal that they are made from. Certainly not enough to claim that the Hornady bullet was modelled after a Minie. Of course, since you have convinced yourself that they are "traditional", you will see what you want.

And of course, you originally compared the Hornady bullet to a Whitworth bullet. Other than the fact that both are made of lead, there is no similarity.

 

[luieb45]

I guess I'll let him use him this year. If he gets one this year I am really going to push for him to use roundballs next year. The only reason I made a big stink about this is I know if he gets a deer at a somewhat long distance with his gun he's going to just rub it all in my face. I just don't see it as much of a challenge when you're using a rifle with adjustable sights and conicals. To me it's not that much different than an open-sighted inline. But that's just my opinion. But I'll be able to get a deer or two with my muzzleloader next year since I might hunt all the firearm seasons with the muzzleloader unless I am in a deer drive which to me requires a shotgun. I know plenty of you have done them with a muzzleloader but to me the way we run things I wouldn't be able to keep up with a muzzleloader and all the time it takes to prepare for a hunt with one. It's much easier to use a shotgun on those since we drive one place then go and drive another and we do that all day.

 

[tg]

Hunting days with Dad are to precious to be done with dark clouds between the two, most people can accept the fact that there are many modern design bullets made for use with ML's that are not traditional and hunt with them and have a good hunt, some cannot accept the very thought of their choice of gear falling into the modern category, typicaly a father and son team can just hunt and not worry about whether their gear is modern or traditional, My Dad and I have done this many times in the past as he has used Maxies and has modern sights on some of his guns he accepts the modern gear for what it is and has a lot of fun and kills a lot of Deer. I would bet that both of you could do the same, the long range shooting is a possible issue but most often the challenge to get closer will be accepted particularly between family members, good hunting to you both, whatever ypu put down the bore.