Coneing part 3

Part 3 is out in Muzzleloader I was wondering (is this the right place for this?) what ya'all think about it, since it covers all kinds of barrels Flint,cap,ect? FRED :hatsoff:

I haven't read it yet But I have a .54 G.R. Douglas barrel that I coned several years ago and I love it.
I can't tell any difference in accuracy and It's great for trail walks, since you eliminate the short starter.

Happy Birthday old son. It's all down hill now you know. :thumbsup:

Haven't you heard that since there were no shooting bags that had places for short starters, that they must not have been used so they are not PC!!!! :bull:

rabbit03 (hope you had a good birthday)

Can one cone a trad. trapper pistol?

ss1- i don't see why not. i've put a cone on all my muzzleloaders except one (too cheap to buy the tool). While there are a number of methods, I like Joe Woods' tools. You will have to remove the barrel from the piece, but once the job it done, I think you'll find it's been worth the trouble.

good luck with your project!

msw

1. Can I use a cone shaped gringing rock attached to a drill? 2. How did you do yours? thanks

I doubt that you can find a grinding tool with the shallow enough angle on it to do the coning properly. A reamer is used so that the cone is up to three inches long, and the angle is about 1 degree!

Remember that you are only removing the lands of the barrel, down to groove depth, so that you can start a patch and ball down the barrel with thumb pressure only. Once it is below the muzzle, you can cut the patchingd with your patch knife.

I think their article made my head hurt. I know they were trying to be scientific about it but for my purposes they went to far. From actual people that have had it done they have all said it is the best thing that they've done and it hasn't affected accuaracy in their opinion. I'm going to start doing mine when I get some $$ to get the tools.

Did you read the Mark Baker article about the gunsmith who does it by hand with files? That's neat, and sounds easy but I'm sure there's some technique and eye for it.

Hello Fred how goes it up north? Hope you're having some good days lately!! :thumbsup:

Talked to John the other day and I might spend for a coning tool for the .58 and we might give it a try and check for accuracy before and after the coning job. I am all for ease of starting the ball as long as the accuracy does not suffer in any way. It would come in handy in the woods especially since short starters aint PC and I wouldn't want those deer to laugh at me for using one! :hatsoff:

rabbit03 (will let you know how it progresses)

I understand now. A dowel 3'' long, for a 1deg taper would have to be what size on each end? 50cal.

YOu want the widest end to be at least the Groove diameter of your barrel, and the smaller end would be smaller than your Bore diameter. You might also want to provide for a bore guide on the front end of that rod, to ride on the lands to guide the coning device into the barrel in a straight line.

I would be doable, bore guide could be "live" ball bearing, and tapered mandred could be made on lathe. [ would haft to allow for increased thickness of emery cloth]. With a hole thur mandrell, a bolt could hold all of it together. I sorta beleive that angle [if mandrell was even 6" long] would be greater than 1deg. Ofcouse that would depend on depth of groves. I think?

WADR, Why don't you just order a tool from Joe Wood? He sells them for under $40.00, caliber specific. You can make one, but I think your labor is worth more than what it would cost simply to buy one from him. When your friends find out that you no longer carry a short starter around to start that PRB into the muzzle, you can charge them $20.00 to do their barrels and recoup the cost of the tool.

These are hand held reamers, so you don't need mills, drill presses, lathes, etc. to do the work. If you already have that equipment, You can use them with this tool, but all you really need is an adquate bench vise, some oil, and elbow grease. :thumbsup:

It is sounding better. thanks

I have emailed joe wood to get his price shipped. I am superised that one never see any used ones for sale. thanks

That long tapered cone isn't necessary. All one needs to do is remove the sharp ridge separating the crown from the bore. If you look into the muzzle, you will see what I mean.

Remove that sharp line, and raduis the rest of the muzzle using 320 grit wet or dry paper supported by the ball of the thumb. Or, for a smaller caliber whatever finger will fit most closely.

Some folks even use the rounded end of a file handle for the entire job.

It ain't rocket science. If Mike Miller can do it with a file, anyone else can do it with a simple tool or two...if they take their time and perform the job evenly.
J.D.

J.D. said:

That long tapered cone isn't necessary. All one needs to do is remove the sharp ridge separating the crown from the bore.

Click to expand...

Are you confusing "coning" with "crowning"?

A long taper is necessary for coning.

IMHO

54mountain said:

I can't tell any difference in accuracy and It's great for trail walks, since you eliminate the short starter.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure that I fully understand why a short starter isn't necessary. If the lands still have the same depth to them where they do begin, except that they are located deeper inside of the barrel, how does that eliminate the short starter?
Does the coning actually help to squeeze the PRB into and past the point where the actual rifling does start?
Since the rifling is the same dimension, but only deeper within the barrel, then wouldn't the same amount of total effort be needed to get the ball started past the beginning of the lands, except only over a longer distance?
I can see that the coning taper would create a ramp to help thumb start the PRB into a stationary ramming position, but saying that it's easy enough to fully seat it into the rifling as well without a short starter leads me to wonder whether or not a short starter is ever necessary, or if the PRB being used has a looser fit?
What about for the very tight target PRB loads that some folks shoot? Coning wouldn't allow folks to load these without using a short starter, would it?
Aren't some folks just using the bottom end of the ramrod for leverage as if it was a short starter? :hmm:

These guns shoot conicals that are 1 to 2 thousandths under bore diameter. Bore diameter is the Land Diameter, or the distance from one land to the opposite land. In fact, later conicals were made many thousandths undersized so that the paper patching would make up the difference. They had hollow bases, so that the skirt of the hollow base would expand and put the paper patching into the grooves. I think you are assuming that bullets are Groove diameter, as they sometimes were in cannons. That, however, proved to burn out the rifling so fast, that even cannon balls were made bore diameter. Later, rings of copper, zinc, and other allows where used to fill the grooves and offer a seal against gases.

Claude said:

Are you confusing "coning" with "crowning"?

A long taper is necessary for coning.

IMHO

Click to expand...

It depends on one's definition of coning. Kinda like what the definition of is,is. :v

Coning is simply a cone in the muzzle of a gun, any gun, no matter how short, or long that cone might be.

The length of cone I mentioned is apparently the question.

My point is that a long tapered cone is not necessary to ease loading.

All that is necessary is to remove the line inside the crown, separating the crown from the bore proper. Remove that line and raduis the very short cone, or long crown, and loading will be MUCH easier.

I performed this operation on an old Pedersoli .32. This puppy was hard to start any patch/ball combination that I considered accurate enough to consistently hit a squirrels head at 40 yards.

The line delineating the bore from the crown was removed using a case neck deburring tool. The resulting very short double "cone" was radiused using 320 grit wet/dry paper backed by my pinky.

The result was a short radiused cone, or long radiused crown, whatever one prefers to call it, that made loading of a .315 ball and an .018 patch 500% easier than prior to "radiusing." So, now we have terms for crowning, coning, and "radiusing." :blah:

That rifle is now consistently accurate enough to hit a squirrels head at 40 yards, AND is easy to load.

The latest issue of Muzzleloader contains an article briefly describing Mike Millers technique of filing a short cone to facilitate loading. I might add that he is using nothing but a file to file the lands deeper than the grooves.
Demonstrating,once again, this ain't rocket science.

His "cone" is no more than about an 1/8 of an inch deep, probably not quite as deep as the depth of my "radiusing."

I would like to claim to have invented the radiusing technique, but in all honesty the idea was stolen from a CANADIAN who consistently shoots amazingly small groups at 100 yards and beyond. :redface: :rotf:

J.D.