.44 roundball versus conicals

[hildo]

Single handed with Colt Walker on 25 meters (some 30 yards or so I think)
The big blue dot is POA
The 12 red holes are the round balls (54 grains BP with lube pill)
The 12 green holes are the conicals from the Lee 450-200 mold (45 grains BP with lube pill)

Apart from the lowest red dot flyer, all the round balls are pretty close for my shooting capabilities, but the conicals are not grouping as well.
Shot the conicals before and the results were simular, don't think I will be shooting the conicals much anymore...
Nice to try them though.
Hildo

 

[ArmedBear]

There's a bullet called the Buffalo Ball-et.

It's closer to a round ball in shape and weight. I think the idea is for it to shoot better in a gun designed for round balls.

 

[Phantom Captain]

Wow!

Thanks for posting that! Very intersting results as I've only ever shot round balls. I've often wondered about them but never had a serious desire to shot conicals out of my cap and balls. Those are about the size groups I get (your round ball groups) with my .44s also.

 

[K.A.T.]

Who makes the best round balls, I'm new at all this. I shot one box of speer (or is it spear) 454 out of a Colt army 1860. I noticed the speer and the traditions has little flat looking spots on them. I think the Hornady is smooth like a marble, do they shoot better? I have a 1858 New Army on the way from Uberti, will it also take a 454 ball? I think a Walker will be next on my list!

 

[Plink]

Swaged balls like the ones from Hornady are more consistent. The balls with a sprue are cast rather than swaged. In revolvers, the loading process distorts the balls more than loading a patched ball in a muzzleloader does. I'm not sure there would be enough difference in accuracy to notice in a revolver. It's not really all that noticeable in muzzleloaders either usually.

 

[Donny]

Hildo,

Your results from conicals is pretty typical in my opinion. The only conical that I've shot that comes close to ball accuracy was the wad cutter type made by Big Iron Barrel works and they have fallen from grace with many members here and I'm not even sure they are still in business. Too bad, their bullets were easy to load and shot straight.

Don

 

[Plink]

I wish Big Iron was still around. There were so many things I wanted to buy from them, and a lot of work I wanted done. I hope someone else will pick up where they left off. I never got a chance to try their conicals, but they looked perfect.

 

[Imaginos]

Loading Concentricity

The major accuacy issue with conicals comes from the loading process. It is very hard to load the conical bullet so that it is concentrically aligned with the chamber and bore. This causes the bullet to be slightly cock-eyed as it is pressed into the chamber and when it is fired and thus less accurate.

A roundball avoids this problem because not matter which side is up you get a concentric load. For the most consistency, the sprue on cast balls should be loaded top or bottom and not to one side.

The military supplied ammo for percussion pistols using a conical for better bullet energy and longer range, but the cavalry soldiers quickly discovered that the roundball was more accurate and was more effective at downing their opponents that the pointed conicals. The roundball supposedly delivered more shock to the recipient than the conical which "slipped through" the target and produced a smaller wound.

 

[O.S.O.K.]

round ball vs conical

Nice post hildo!

I wouldn't count the conical out quite yet though. Your test was limited to one load and one type of lube pill. Could be that a lubed felt wad with that same load would tighten the conical group, or maybe a different load - 50 grains? Also the bp granulation could be changed up to see what effect that has - try ffg instead of fffg for example.

I think that the opinion that round balls are more accurate than conicals comes from them being less finiky about loads. From what I've read and experienced myself, the conicals are much more picky about their wads, loads, etc. but can be ultimately more accurate than the round balls if their load is found - or not...

Just think of all of the fun you will have testing

One thing is for sure though, the conicals will maintain a flatter trajectory and penetrate deeper into the target than the round balls. The round balls tend to be more impressive on the target at closer ranges. Nice to have options!

 

[hildo]

The conicals come in higher, although less powder is used. Think this is because the barrel already goes up a bit before the, heavvier & slower, bullet has left the barrel. I'm not sure about a flatter trajectory since the bullet is moving slower than a roundball. When a bullet is flying at a slower speed it has more time to drop before it hits the target, or am I missing something?

Also noticed the conicals did come in point first in the target since they made no elongated holes, so they would come out of the barrel and fly pretty straight to the target I'd say, right?

I'm still not sure why the conicals do not group as well.
Thinking about the bottom side of the bullet. Maybe, when they are not perfectly flat & square they would get a 'push' out of the straight path at the moment they leave the barrel.
Will make sure the conicals are absolutely straigth & flat on the bottom when I try them next time.

Like Imaginos suggested, maybe the bullets are 'cock-eyed' in the cylinder. Will check visually next time after loading.
After all in a modern cartridge revolver conicals do shoot accurate.

 

[O.S.O.K.]

ballistics

Please allow me to clarify myself. I meant to say or should have said that given the same velocity, they will shoot flatter than the round balls - this is only an issue as the projectile increases distance and not for "normal" ranges of 25 yards and less.

You can load the conicals to the same velocity at the round balls without any safety issues - except of course at the highest end of maximum loads.

I shoot conicals in my big revolvers only (Dragoon and Walker) because they have so much more room under the loading ram. My Rem 58 is fairly roomy too, but not like the aforementioned Colts.

Again, I suggest trying some different loading combinations before giving up on the conicals for accuracy.

 

[flibuste]

Hello,

Could you tell us what is the twist rate of the barrel of your gun. Accuracy of conical is strongly depending on fast twist rate which your gun may not have.......

A basic way of checking with a 8 inch barrel : 1/4 turn of a rifle is slow rate and 1/2 turn is fast rate

Have fun

 

[hildo]

bullet drop speed & twist rates

O.S.O.K.
No worry, I'm not about to give up on conicals just yet!
Want to know all about them before I do. Later on I will drill the bottom of them too, try to make a minie out of them and see if that makes a difference. Maybe more stability in the barrel. Saw in another post with contributions of MEC that minie's (bigiron ramlok bullets) performed pretty well.

A conical would fly a flatter trajectory then a roundball when moving at the identical speed.
Always interested in a test so... have just taken a 138 grain roundball and a 450 grain 50/70 bullet and held both in my hands, at the same height, and let them both fall to the ground at the same moment to see if there would be a difference in drop speed.
Both bullets hit the ground at the same time. Tried several times with identical result. Gravity does it's job to the bullet and pulls it down, weight difference does not seeme to matter much if any at all.
A flatter tracetory with the same bullet speed means there would be some sort of difference in aerodynamical difference between a roundball and a conical which would give the conical more lift?

Just been looking through barrels for twist rates.
My Walker has an approx. twist rate of 1/2 over the 9" barrel length
This quite quick I guess. But very shallow cut.
Have a 1st model Dragoon, twist rate approx. 1/8 over 7 1/2" barrel length.
This should be real slow. It's actually quite accurate with roundballs, Interesting to see the difference with conicals... and if there is a difference with the fast twist Walker

Also checked the barrel of an antique Rogers & Spencer, just 5 lands & grooves and they are cut much deeper. It has approx. 1/4" twist on 7 1/2" barrel length.
Would this gun, made in 1865, be designed for roundballs rather than conicals since it has a slow twist rate?

Sorry for the lengthy post
Hildo

 

[Steve499]

Hildo, I think whats going on with the flatter trajectory of conicals isn't that they get lift somehow but rather they fail to create drag as rapidly as round balls. Gravity, as you just demonstrated, doesn't care what a bullet weighs or how it's shaped. If you could somehow propel the round ball and the conical at the same speed, and have both bullets maintain the same rate of speed reduction throughout their flight, both would have the same amount of drop at any given range. What really happens is the round ball, though starting out faster, slows more rapidly due to it's terrible aerodynamics. At longer ranges where that factor has had time to work, the round ball arrives at the target later than the conical, giving gravity more time to pull it toward the ground and causing it to strike lower on the target.

I think that all this is really like the discussion about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. For revolver shooting, probably 99% of all rounds fired will be at targets within 50 yards. At close range, from a handgun fired by hand, a heavier bullet always hits higher on the target, as the target posted above shows. You can mess around with velocity but you just can't fool Newton's law. A lighter, faster bullet may generate the same recoil as a heavier, slower bullet, but it will exit the muzzle at a lower point in the muzzle's rise from that recoil, and print lower on paper because of that.

Back years ago, my department issued us .357 magnums. The duty ammo was 125 grain silvertips. We carried the revolvers loaded with those but qualified with 148 grain wadcutters. A lot of the men never fired their weapons with the 125 grain loads and had the sights set for the wadcutters. After all, the score during qualification is what's important, right? The full power .357 loads generated substantially more recoil than the target wadcutters and the 125 grain bullet probably didn't miss being twice the speed of the 148 grain bullets by too much. The 148 grain bullets still printed higher. Newton. The difference in the impact points wasn't so much to matter a lot in a social disagreement conducted at 7 yards, but it just bothered me since one has no guarantee they will all happen as close as that. I zeroed my revolver in with the full power duty loads and aimed low during qualification.

The same effect will always be present when different bullet weights are fired from a hand held pistol. Due to the heavier conical bullet printing higher at close range because Newton says, and it slowing less rapidly at longer ranges, conicals will generally print higher on target (and be described as shooting flatter) at all ranges.

Anything which prevents the pistol from recoiling will modify the above. Ransom rests, shoulder stocks, two hand grips with the butt held down on a bench, etc., reduces or eliminates muzzle rise from recoil and will reduce or eliminate the difference in impact points of bullets of different weights. Rifles are a whole 'nother story.

Time for ME to apologize for a long post.

Steve

 

[arcticap]

Try to improve the bullet profile

Except for the 3 shots to the right, the rest of the conicals are right in line with your sights. Like many revolvers, maybe one of your chambers isn't perfectly aligned?
Anyway, the 200 grain .450 Lee bullet has a longer, tapered round nose design, right?
Maybe that round nose profile creates some bullet instability and wobble which affects accuracy with your twist rate, etc... Personally, I would try grinding part of the round nose down using a consistent method to accomplish that for a small batch of bullets.
You would lose some weight, maybe ~25 grains, but you would end up with more of a wadcutter/semi-wadcutter bullet profile, and a lighter one at that, which might shoot more to the same impact as the round balls, and achieve better target accuracy too. If the problem is due to the overall length of the conical or the nose profile, then shortening the conical and the nose profile might produce improved results.
I couldn't even get those particular bullets to shoot very well out of a .45 carbine BP rifle.
So why not just give shortening them a try, what have you got to lose?
As they say, necessity is the mother of invention!

 

[Jamie C.]

Rates of twist... something to consider:

If a bullet or ball requires a faster or slower rate of twist to be stable, the trick is to find the velocity at which the rpm is correct for that particular projectile.

The point being here that although the twist of a given barrel is set to a particular distance... ie. 1 turn in 14 inches, etc., you have a choice on how fast the bullet covers those 14 inches, and, as a result, how fast the bullet spins.

This is probably why most BP pistols aren't as accurate with a full/heavy load; the rate of spin is too fast, and the ball destabilizes or wobbles.

With a heavy conical bullet, the problem may be that there's just not enough room in the chamber for the powder required to get it up to the necessary speed.


J.C.

 

[hildo]

Steve499
Your long post is worth reading. Think you are right on the dot with everything. Thanks, I'm a bit more certain now that I'm on the right track and not blindly overlooking the obvious.

Articap
My Walker shoots a bit to the right, that's why I'm aiming to the left a bit, maybe a bit too far on the shooting card above. Don't know if one of the chambers is not corecctly aligned. If I have a brilliant day I can keep them all in the black with roundball, so the gun should not be too far off. Since I'm not that good a marksman, further testing I will do on a rest to make the results at least more reliable.
I will try making the nose more pointy on a series of bullets to see if that changes results.

Jamie C
Yes already wanted to do that, O.S.O.K. suggested it as well. Will fumble around with different loads to see if that makes a difference, and use different powders too.

Will keep a good record on all results to prevent forgetting what I did.
limited time on the range, I may be occupied for quite a while. Don't matter, lot's of fun for a longer period.

Thanks guys!
Hildo

 

[DuncanSA]

Conicals vs Ball

This is a most interesting thread and it is a pleasure to exchange ideas with shooters of such experience. To chip in my 2 cents worth, I wonder if the short length of the conicals actually gripped by the rifling might not explain the more random distribution of conicals on Hildo's target?

I have been digging my bullets out of the backstop to compare conicals and balls and (with bullets cast in the Uberti mold that came with my 1860 Colt) it seems that only the rear quarter an inch of a conical is actually engaged by the shallow rifling. This is of course the same for a round ball, but if a conical enters the forcing cone a little "out of true" it must surely fly erratically?

Would conicals cast with longer parrallel sides be more consistent?

 

[hildo]

Rifle gripping of conicals

For visual reference. The 450-200 bullet from the LEE mold.

There is indeed not much material to grip the rifling.
The conicals just have two thin places where they grip the rifling. The top and the middle. The bottom part does even less because the diameter is kept small to aid loading into the chamber. Although the bottom part of the bullet is large enough to prevent entering the bullet into the front of the barrel. The lower ring should give the bullet some stability in the barrel when it is shot I think, but not much probably.

Yesterday, when I was comparing barrels of my guns, I noticed how very shallow the rifling on the Colt Walker is.
I can imagine that the bullet could possibly 'slip' through shallow rifling with a lot of twist, like the Walker has.
I will first try my antique Rogers & Spencer. The rifling, just 5 lands and grooves in the barrel (where the Colts have 7) but it is cut much deeper and twist is only around half of what the Walker has.
We'll see.
Hildo

 

[Old Dragoon]

Your bullets should be sized so that the driven bands(I see Three) are the same Dia at the Groove Dia. Your chambers should be the same size dia. also. Shooting BP cartridges bullets or conicals, you need to have the driven length to be longer than the bore Portion to be accurate. 3 to one is good, this gives lots of contact with the grooves. When you slug your bore you will see just how the drive bands and the grooves interact. Have you slugged your bore to know what the Groove Dia really is?

 

[Tinker2]

I could not see any advantage shooting conicals until
I got and used a detachable shoulder stock. That is
where conical bullets shined for me.



Tinker2

 

[Plink]

There is indeed not much material to grip the rifling.
The conicals just have two thin places where they grip the rifling. The top and the middle. The bottom part does even less because the diameter is kept small to aid loading into the chamber.

Remember that there is still more driving band on a conical than there would have been on a round ball, yet the ball shoots fine. Also, slugs bump up a little upon the pressure of firing. I wouldn't worry too much about that part. The hardest part is loading them perfectly concentric to the bore. I think that's where a lot of the flyers come from. I haven't tinkered with conicals in revolvers as much as I would like, so I don't have any loads to offer for accuracy though.

 

[O.S.O.K.]

good replies

Steve499 summed up the balistics effect very well. It's all about resistence to the effects of moving through the air, which acts more like water when velocities increase.

One thing to note - the base of the bullets isn't nearly as critical when you use a lubed wad - the wad stays with and acts as the base on the way out of the muzzle and usually increases accuracy.

My Uberti dragoon loves the Lee 200 grain conicals with wads and 45 grains of Pyrodex P.

As to the conicals printing higher, this is due to the muzzle have a bit more time to rise in recoil before they exit the barrel - its pointing a bit higher. That is why I set the "same velocity" condition. That was what happened with Steve's slow wad cutters too - they print higher even at closer range - the difference would really be noticable as compared to the high velocity 125 grain hollow points.

 

[faustopph]

One thought to cosider.For rifles shooting round balls,say 50 caliber.The spin is nomally around 1:68 and for conicals around 1:48.A 32 caliber for round balls is normally around 1:48
So I would expect the faster twist would shoot conicals a little better in the revolver also.

 

[hildo]

After testing conicals vs roundballs... confusion

This is an old post, it took some time testing and now I'm really, really! confused. Get confused more and more about the inconsistend results. I'm just a crappy shooter probably... and I don't care!
If anybody's interested, view along and see what happened.
Ran out of conical bullets so stopped. Next summer I'll cast some more and keep on testing till i'm grey and old, or maybe I'll grow tired of it before that

I have used three revolvers, a Walker, a Dragoon and an original Rogers & Spencer. Think the Walker is the best performer with its quick twist barrel.
Walker twist: 1/2 twist over the barrel length (the fatest). 7 shallow grooves
Rogers & Spencer: 1/4 twist over barrel length. 5 deep grooves
Dragoon twist: 1/8 twist over barrel length (slowest). 7 shallow grooves

45 grain Explosia behind the conicals
54 grain Explosia behind the roundballs
All with lubepills below the bullets

32 grain Swiss with lube on top of bullets

Dragoon: 37 grain Swiss with lubepill
Walker: 45 grain Swiss with lubepill (on both roundballs & conicals)

37 grain Swiss with lubepill

34 grain Explosia with lubepill

36 grain Explosia & lubepill with roundballs
29 grain explosia & lubepill with conicals

29 grain Explosia with lubepill, the last 6 (green) were shot without lubepill

36 grains Explosia powder

36 grains Explosia with lubepills & started a fire on the range

Sometimes the range owner is not too happy with me. 'Jeese, Hildo with his old blackpowder rubbish again'!

45 grain Explosia powder with bullet lube pills

45 grain Explosia powder with bullet lube pills

Something completely different that I just had to share with you
Wait for 8 seconds and see this antique lady do her thing!

Hildo