.44 roundball versus conicals

[Roswell 1847]

I tried a .451 185 grain swaged lead semi wadcutter made for the 45 ACP once years ago.
The pistol was the rebuilt brass frame .44 bellygun I've mentioned earlier on. My modifications have made it much stronger than a stock brass frame revolver.
The chambers were on the tight side for a .44 and .451 balls fit nicely though not really tight and with no ring of lead shaved so I tried the .451 Lead wadcutter over a light load of around 24 grains of FFFG and a number 10 cap.

I only had a couple of these semi wadcutters that were among some reloading supplies a friend gave me when he cleaned out his shop before moving, so no extended test firing was possible. This brass .44 only has a three inch barrel and very little rifling (The Barrel was a mess when I got it)so accuracy tests wouldn't have revealed much.

All I can say is the semi wadcutter fired without any problems and hit where it was pointed.
Punched a nice neat round hole in a scrap piece of 3/8 inch plywood. Looked like it had been drilled with one of those tublar lock fitting bits.
I don't know as how I'd recomend it for most replica guns but a properly size bullet of the same type shouldn't be a problem for the Ruger Old Army or the Walker and Dragoon pistols.

 

[Bezoar]

no one else has mentioned it yet but, you can get conical bullets and moulds to make your own that have a rebated heel on them, like the 22lr has. The heel is supposed to align the bullet up with the chamber and help prevent tipping of bullet.
As others have found with experimenting with conicals of various types, the standard rammer is not intended for anything other then a round ball. THat means the point of most conicals will get deformed, and that causes fliers.
If you read enough of MECs posts, youll see he tends to get a replacement rammer and grind the surface that actually touches the bullet when loading, to fit the nose profile of the conical to prevent distortion. Seems to have helped hugely if you look at his photos here.

Tried a different powder yet?

 

[Steve499]

What's confusing, Hildo? Looks like you've figured your guns out pretty well, how to hit with all them. Pretty neat organization with the target pictures, too. I can even, or should I say, even I can understand them.

Steve

 

[hildo]

The 457-200 bullets from the Lee mold fit quite good in combination with the stock rammers. The rammer does not touch the bullet anywhere, exept on the outer perimeter as can bee seen on the photo above. Just by eyeballing it I think it goes quite straight into the chambers since it is nicly pressed on by the rammer on the outside only.
I cannot see an advantage in modifying the rammer for this type bullet.

The bottom side of these bullets go straight in, since they are undersized.

Just the top ring of the Lee bullet is wider than the chamber.
Therefore I feel it is not too difficult to get the bullets in straight. Just a few gentle taps with the rammer to seat the top .457 ring bullet nice & square to chamber entrance, then ram it home.

I have used both Explosia (a cheap not very powerfull brand) and the powerfull but expensive Swiss in my shooting sessions. I see not much if any difference's. Recoil on the Swiss powder is noticibly a little higher though.

Concluding I say there might not be all that much differences in accuracy between the roundballs and Lee conicals, as I thought there would be when I started.

If I were to compete in a match I would still go with the roundballs though.

Hildo

 

[Misfire99]

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.

NEWS FLASH: Galileo LIVES!!!!

I think that all this is really like the discussion about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

I have seen this brought up many times but have never seen the results discussed. Most of the time it is used to imply that the church was full of brain dead idiots. That's the reason that the results are not discussed. The final paper that came out of this study was that it is a category or domain error. Angels are spirituals creatures and a pin is a physical item. Their spheres of influence are different. Therefor the question itself in a domain error. And as everbody knows Angels don't dance.

 

[flibuste]

Some more data :

2 hands hold with rest at 25 metres :

On the left : 20gr BP, 25 gr cornmeal, crisco, 0.456 ball
On the right : 30gr BP, Lee 200gr bullet 0.451, crisco on top.


http://www.servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=25&u=11021458

With some fast twist barrel pistols (e.g. recent Rem 1858 Uberti or R§S with lotar Walther barrel or ROA) the accuracy is not changed whether balls or bullets are shot. But with slow twist barrel pistol (the majority of cap§ball) the accuracy with bullet is decreased compared to ball.

Have fun