Cap & ball boolit?

[aephilli822]

Any reason this couldn't work? (Pietta Remington 1858 .44)



http://leeprecision.com/mold-dc-452-200-rf.html


Did I mention I'm a cheap bastage and this would do double duty for the 45ACP, too?

(460 Rowland, 454 Casull, and 45 LC make quintuple duty, right?)

[dondiego]

The hard part will be getting it to center in the cylinder. The conicals designed for cap and ball have a rebated rim that allows them to be easily started straight. You should try it though.

[aephilli822]

The hard part will be getting it to center in the cylinder. The conicals designed for cap and ball have a rebated rim that allows them to be easily started straight. You should try it though.

maybe a chamfering tool :?:

[bubba.50]

I would go in the other direction. get the Lee mould for blackpowder revolvers & use it in the ACP.

[rodwha]

My Pietta NMA chambers were 0.446" in diameter. There's no way it would seat without a balancing act as you held it in place while ramming it.

There is someone who has used a resizing die to resize the base to make them fit.

My chambers have been reamed to 0.449" so as to share bullets with my ROA that has 0.453" chambers without stressing the loading lever too much as my bullets drop at 0.456" that I created at Accurate Molds. I've wanted them reamed a little larger but I'm uncertain about the wall thickness as I use more energetic powders (3F Olde E and T7) with 30 grn charges.

[Harter66]

I loaded a few 45-200 RCBS swc in mine . It loads a dead soft 454 RB without any difficulty but as mentioned above it was easier if sized to slip fit the bottom band in the chamber first. It worked fine otherwise.

[Earlwb]

Conical bullets may work just fine. Give it a go and see if it is acceptable to you or not. Some rifles may work fine with conical bullets, other rifles not so much. But for muzzle loading rifles, the rifling twist rate is quite a bit slower with round balls rather than later rifles designed for conical bullets. The faster rifling twist rate stabilizes the longer conical bullets better. Think minie ball using a hollow base in the bullet. That allows the skirt of the bullet to expand out and grip the rifling better. It makes for easier reloading as the minie ball just about drops down the barrel easily.

[swathdiver]

There's cheap and then there's foolish. What you're wanting to do is akin to changing the oil with your wife's frying pan.

Unless you're just wanting to lob big hunks of lead at soda cans from 5 yards, get the right tool for the job, the Kaido Conicals in 200 and 240 grains will reach out to 50 yards and drop a monster Florida hog dead in its tracks.

[bubba.50]

Conical bullets may work just fine. Give it a go and see if it is acceptable to you or not. Some rifles may work fine with conical bullets, other rifles not so much. But for muzzle loading rifles, the rifling twist rate is quite a bit slower with round balls rather than later rifles designed for conical bullets. The faster rifling twist rate stabilizes the longer conical bullets better. Think minie ball using a hollow base in the bullet. That allows the skirt of the bullet to expand out and grip the rifling better. It makes for easier reloading as the minie ball just about drops down the barrel easily.

if you read the original post, he's askin' about usin' the same boolit in a blackpowder revolver & 45acp. nothin' was said about rifles.

[berksglh]

I would go in the other direction. get the Lee mould for blackpowder revolvers & use it in the ACP.

I have both molds, and a new army 1858. I do not like the conicals. While they feel better, meaner when shooting, they don't load true for me, and accuracy is piss poor.

Same gun is extremely accurate with round balls cast from a cheep lee mold.

Based on my findings, get a "good" conical mold, or just shoot round balls.

I took the remaining conicals i had cast and powdercoated them for trying in my 1911.

[Baja_Traveler]

This:

http://www.biglube.com/BulletMolds.aspx?ItemID=09d6fdda-c105-4c87-b269-68ebfdaba982

Is the mold you are looking for - proven design in my Cap & Ball pistols, as well as my 1911's. I even loaded a few in my 45-70, and they worked quite acceptable...

If you want to try a few before committing, drop me a line, and I'll send a few cylinder full's out to you. All you would have to do is pan lube them and load.

[Jim K.]

The Big Lube is the mold I am using. I am making them out of pure lead. I am sizing them to .457 and using the Pearl Lube from Big Lube and they work great in my Ruger Old Armys. I was using 30 grains of FFFG with round balls and 22 grains with the conicals to shoot POA. Also works great in 45/70 for short range.

[Omnivore]

The bullet you show has a crimp groove and as such it was not designed for the ACP. You might could make it work in the ACP but you'll have to seat to other than the crimp groove. That would be one of your main concerns.

There is a complete tutorial, with photos, on how to make a non-heeled bullet work easily in cap and ball here;
http://1858remington.com/discuss/index.php?topic=10093.0

It assumes that since you have casting and cartridge loading equipment, you already have a sizing press. All you need then is a .439" sizing die to put a tapered heel on your ACP bullets.

As said earlier though, it might make more sense to use a cap and ball bullet in your ACP. Again though, you'll want to pay attention to where the grooves are, relative to your case mouth when the bullet is seated to proper length in the ACP, before you order a mold. Accurate Molds, for example, does you the favor of detailing all the specs of the bullet in his on-line catalog.

Still and all; you'll be casting a lead-tin alloy for the ACP and pure lead for the cap and ball, plus you'll be "heeling" your C & B bullets and sizing them to .450" or even .449" (they'll just plain load easier that way) while you'll size for the ACP to something like .452". That means you're not really using the "same bullet" for both guns, even though you're using the same mold.

Better yet is to avoid the extra steps in sizing and heeling your ACP bullets for the cap and ball, and get a mold that's ready to go for your cap and ball. Depending on your C & B gun, you'll want a particular heel diameter. For a factory Pietta 44 for example, a heel diameter of no more than about .442" is best, and if you think you'll ever use paper cartridges, get a heel diuameter of no more than .440" (+0.0/- 0.003").

Also there's a high probability that you'll want to open up the C & B gun's loading port so as to make the loading of conicals easier. In some cases it's not even possible to load conicals in a factory stock Italian repro until you modify the loading port. If you have an Uberti Remington, you may be good to go however. A bullet with a longer heel will tend more to clear the loading port better than the same bulllet with a shorter heel, simply because it slips farther into the chamber. Likewise, a bullet with a long, wide nose will require more clearence than a bullet with shorter, narrower nose. Colt repros are more hostile to loading conicals (will require more modification) than Remington repros, and getting a Colt repro to take paper cartridges easily is the most challenging.

[rodwha]

As Omnivore pointed out modifying the loading port is likely necessary on the Pietta NMA, and I forgot to mention that I had to do that even with my 170 grn bullet due to the design of the frame.

Another thing that comes to mind that I've yet to modify is the nose of the ram that imprints its rounded design on the face of the bullet.

[John Taylor]

A few years back there was a writer that was testing a BP revolver. One of the things he mentioned was loading a conical bullet backwards to make a "wadcutter", said it did good. Before buying any mold the barrel should be slugged to see what the groove diameter is. Most of the new made cap and ball revolvers have a cylinder bore that is smaller than the barrel groove diameter. I have reamed out more than a few cylinders to match the groove diameter and they shoot more accurate.

[Omnivore]

That's right. You can continue to use the loading plunger as it is, but it will deform the nose of anything but a round ball. Modifying it can therefore be nice if you don't mind doing that kind of work. Another mod to consider is making a new, longer loading plunger so it's fully supported as it enters the chamber and thus will not wander off axis under pressure and ding the chamber mouth. There's something of a tutorial on that also, here;
http://1858remington.com/discuss/index.php?topic=10045.0

And so it is, as I've been saying, that the bullet is designed to fit the gun while the gun is designed to fit the bullet. The Italians make decent ball shooters, and at a very low price, but when it comes to handling conicals, especially conicals in paper cartridges, they leave something to be desired.

Conicals by the way, were the predominant projectile type in military use, at least officially, by the North, during the Civil War. Millions of "consumable envelope cartridges" were made using conicals of up to 255 grains (though actual specifications varied widely) during that period, for the 44 caliber percussion revolvers. The Italians have yet to discover this fact, apparently, or they don't care about it.

[bigted]

Another check before spending much is to test where the conicals will print out of your revolver. I sent to some expence and discovered that my '60' colt wouldn't shoot to POA with conicals but was rite on with round balls.