.36 Buffalo Bullets

[mec]

These cost about $15 for fifty through Dixie Gun Works. I shot a 7" group at 50 yards while chronographing and then one just over 2" at 60 feet standing and with the Uberti 61 navy with shoulder stock mounted. It appears that they approach round ball accuracy.

The bullets strike higher than 81 grain balls. this is useful with the shoulder stock since point of impact is several inchs low with ball loads. The groupw was only silightly low but shot 1- 1.5" left of the point of impact with ball.

 

[mainmech48]

I've used quite a few of the .44s, and like them a lot. FWIW, they're much cheaper from Cabela's at $8.99/50 with wads. As this is $3.00 more per box than when I first ran across them, I haven't ordered any in a while.

In my replicas accuracy, after some experimentation with charges, is as good or better than I get with RBs, and POI is much closer to POA to boot.

Wish that there was another alternative to casting my own other than the original design cast conicals from Dixie. The Buffalo items are both easier to load consistently and more accurate.

I've tried the conicals made with a Lee mold, and they're almost as nice. Unfortunately, my source went OOB.

If you don't mind casting, the Lee design would be a good alternative. At $13.99/50 + S&H, you'd amortize your investment in equipment in pretty short order, even counting the cost of wads.

Makes me wonder if the sights on originals weren't calibrated for conicals. I've heard the stories about how the disparity between POA and POI with RBs is because they were designed to coincide at longer ranges than we are accustomed to use, but it just doesn't make sense to me.

Why design something to work correctly at the outside limits of its effective range when it markedly hinders precise shot placement at ranges where the danger is likely to be more commonly encountered? Wouldn't it make more sense to make them shoot where you point 'em in the midrange, and save the bulk of the compensation hold-over/under for less usual distances?

That even the middlin' quality repro conicals shoot so much closer to where I'm pointing than RBs at ranges out to 50 yds makes me curious. Any hard historical data out there?

 

[mec]

I've often wondered if the navy's hit high because a taller bead would be easier to knock off the front of the gun. I don't much buy into the 75 yard zero theory - maybe 100. Mine are sighted for about 25 yards and shoot pretty flat out to 75

I have the lee 200 grain .44 (45) mould and it shoots ok from most of my guns and has turned in some almost ball quality groups from my 59 rem. I'm finding no great advantage to going to a bullet in these but do like to explore the options. Bullets were fairly common in the old caplocks and I kind of like to see what might have been happening when they shot them. Ive seen bullets in some cased .44 Colts that looked a lot like the Lee bullet and that makes it close enough for me.

 

[mainmech48]

I've often wondered whether the sights on the old percussion Colts weren't meant to be something more like the bead on a shotgun: pretty much just a muzzle reference to aid in pointing at closer ranges. It would explain why they're so far off when you try to use them in the now-conventional manner.

I've had some pretty mixed results trying to test this theory. When I'm having a "good" day, co-ordination wise, I can kick cans around almost monotonously out to about 20 yds or so. When I'm not, there's a dismal shortage of cigars, so to speak Paper targets look more like shotgun patterns than groups, and the dirt around the cans gets most of the pummeling.

One of the other reasons I'm inclined to wonder about it is that all of the post War Between the States period commercially-made combustible revolver cartridges that I've seen in museums and photographs have contained conical bullets. Haven't been able to come up with much in the way of hard historical data as to just how prevalent their use was outside of the military so far. My web research skills are pretty rudimentary, and available time is limited and sporadic.

There are only a couple of practical advantages to using conicals over RBs that I can accept as outweighing their loading difficulties. Their increased mass gives more kinetic energy on-target, and they have a better ballistic co-efficient which would add markedly to their potentially effective range.