Howdy
Guys, the OP was asking about shooting old Top Breaks, not Cap & Ball.
Most of the easily available Cowboy ammo is not generally loaded with soft bullets. I have no idea what the Brinnel hardness is, but generally speaking if I can dig my thumbnail into a bullet, I consider it to be relatively soft. I just tried digging my thumbnail into the bullets of some commercial 45 Colt cowboy loads and I barely scratched the bullet. I would say they are just regular hard cast bullets, nothing soft about them. Just tried to dig my thumb nail into some commercial Cowboy 32-20 ammo from HSM. Same story, could barely scratch the bullets. Most definitely not soft lead bullets. I just checked the Missouri Bullet Company (mbc) website, and yes they do say their bullets are soft lead, and they even have the formulas posted. But most of the easily available, off the shelf 'cowboy' ammo does not use soft bullets in my experience.
I shoot large frame Smith and Wesson antique Top Breaks all the time. Mostly chambered for 44 Russian. I have a couple of antique Schofields, but for some reason it is the New Model Number Threes that get shot most often.
I used to cast my own bullets for them, and they were dead soft pure lead. I don't cast anymore because the lead content in my blood is too high, so I buy all my Big Lube bullets from a commercial caster. I do not know exactly what the content is of his bullets, but they are very soft.
By the way, I NEVER shoot cartridges loaded with modern Smokeless powder in these old revolvers (the one on the left left the factory in 1896, the one on the right in 1882).
The iron those old cylinders and barrels were made out of didn't have the ability to flex like modern steel does.
The iron used in cylinders and frames of 19th Century revolvers was not the same as cast iron or pig iron, such as cast iron frying pans are made from. The iron used, particularly for the frames and cylinders of the very early Colt Single Action Army Revolvers was what we would call today high grade Malleable Iron. In fact, the reason the old Colts had Malleable Iron frames was to retain the ductility of the material. That is why they were Case Hardened, to retain the ductility of the iron, but to form a thin layer of harder carbon enriched iron on the surface for wear resistance. Of course the iron frames, and particularly the iron cylinders were not as strong as later steel versions, but they did have some ductility to them. I do know the First Model Schofields had iron frames, but I suspect the cylinders were made from steel. The Second Model Schofields had steel frames and cylinders. Again, no where near the tensile strength of modern steels, but they were steel.
Gil Sengal of Handloader Magazine made the point that older guns sometimes had the same size lands and grooves in the barrel and the soft lead bullets could strain and split the barrel because the lands would try to displace a large amount of lead. New guns with narrower lands were better for hard cast bullets. And yes all I would use in an old gun is dead soft lead bullets.
Interesting. I have peered down the bore of lots and lots of modern S&W and Colt revolvers, and most of them have lands and grooves of about the same width, no different than my antique Top Breaks. Anyway, perhaps that is a typo, but it makes more sense to me that harder bullets would cause more problems trying to resize themselves to lands and grooves of equal width rather than soft bullets.
Anyway, that's my take on it. Nothing but soft lead and Black Powder in my antique Top Breaks.
