conical bullets for a Remington 1858 clone

[saskgunowner101]

Well I finally got a couple of bullet molds for my Pietta 1858 clone, so I cast up a whole shwack of round balls as well as conicals. The mold for conicals is the Lee 450-200-1R. I've read on other forums that the conicals don't perform as good as a round ball. I've also seen it mentioned that the conicals limit the amount of powder that you can use, and are hard to get started in the cylinder.

A .451 round ball is supposed to be 138 grains and.......451 long. The conical bullets are supposed to be 200 grains.......and are .568 long, so basically .117 of an inch longer (how much powder loss over that, really). The back end on the bullet is slightly smaller, so they do drop down into the cylinder. Can't wait to try them out, just thought I'd throw this out here in case anyone wondered about the length of this type of conicals.

 

[Skinny 1950]

I tried conical's with an 1851 Colt clone,the bullets that I cast didn't have a rebated base so they were impossible to load without modifying the base of the bullet. by filing the base I could get them loaded but they weren't accurate. I am starting to think the shape of the base of the bullet is important for accuracy.
How about a range report comparing the accuracy of round ball vs conical???

 

[lyman54]

I also cast conicals from a Lee mold. They were hard to load because of the base and did not have the accuracy of the RB. Maybe for you it will be different, let us know.

 

[saskgunowner101]

I should make it to the range in the next few weeks, I'll let you know if they can hit the broad side of a barn.

 

[saskgunowner101]

Nice weather was a good enough excuse to go to the range and give the Pietta 1858 a good workout......just under 80 shots through it in one session, 60 round ball and 18 conicals My fingers still hurt from pinching caps. It turns out that the conicals are near impossible to load with the cylinder in the gun. Something about the shape of the bottom end of the loading lever interferes.

Anyways, I didn't have a loading stand for loading out of the gun so I had to improvise. A chunk of small wooden dowel and a dinky hammer (it probably weights 4-5 ounces) worked surprisingly well to seat the lard lubed bullets flush. With the cylinder back in, seated them all under a bit of pressure and good to go.

Contrary to almost everything I've read, the conicals shot better than round ball for me. Recoil is more noticeable and I'm only using about 20 grains of Pyrodex "p". If you're wondering about them, give it a try, you might have the same good luck.