Conical bullet selection website

Archer 756 said:

Has anyone found any cast 36 cal conical

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What caliber exactly? .355/356 would be 9mm or 380 boolits, 357/358/359 would be 357/38 special

I also was looking for a larger 36 conical the last few months, thinking it would provide more penetration for larger game. I work a lot of overtime and have kids so I don't actually hunt much, but I hope to after retirement. I knew I could buy the Lee mold for the 130 grain 1R conical, and I knew I could get a mold or buy ready-made bullets for the approximately 140-grain Kaido conical. Both are better than the 80 grain ball. But I wanted heavier yet. So I looked through the choices of Lee molds and I chose the 175 grain 40 cal mold for 40S&W. It's a truncated cone flat meplat bullet. I wanted the flat nose for impact, but more so for loading clearance so I could load more powder. I then bought a series of the Lee resizing bushings. It's a newer cheaper version of their old resizing dies that were about $20-25 each; the bushings are only $9-12 each, so cost is slightly better than it used to be. I bought the .396, .389, .385, .380, .375, .366 diameter ones, hoping I could swage/reduce the bullets in these small steps. I got them from Titan Reloading. For the ones they don't normally carry, I wrote to them and they said they'd add them to their website and if I placed the order, they would pick them up on their next restocking visit to Lee. Very accommodating those Titan folks. I cast them with pure soft lead, and used the Lee Alox lube during resizing. I used the Lee C-press. This is the first time I've bought any kind of reloading anything. I'm one of those people who grew up 40 years ago reading Outdoor Life and dreaming of shooting and reloading but then life work and family came in and had to put all gun stuff on hold and now I have a little time and a little bit of money to try these experiments. And I have a PhD in chemical engineering so I figure I can figure some things out. So, I resized about 30 of the cast bullets. It worked fine, and very little pressure was required because of the small steps, but I wouldn't have wanted to skip any of the them. I did get a little skirt at the bottom, but it was easy to scrape off with a fingernail. I'm a beginner; if I use words like "skirt" it's because I read many forums like this before I started this project. The grooves were shallower obviously, but still present. The key thing in this was to get a rebated bottom band, so the bullet could be inserted in the cylinder. This bullet has the bands and grooves but is not rebated at the bottom since it's a centerfire bullet. For this I used the .366 bushing, and I placed the bullet upside down on the loading ram, which works since the nose is flat. Then I gently pushed it into the reducing bushing. As soon as it reduced that bottom band and advanced to the first groove, the resistance decreased, and I stopped pushing. It was easy to feel this stopping point with a light hand on the press lever. I then took a wooden dowel and easily pushed the bullet backwards out of the bushing. I've shot one of these one time from my Pietta 1851 36, steel frame. I used 16 grains Pyrodex P since that's what my flask throws. I had already verified at home that I could load the bullet on the gun and rotate it under the rammer. I had already measured powder depth, chamber depth and bullet length at home so I figured that with a little compression it would all fit. If it wouldn't have, I had a small knife and would have shaved the protruding nose down in order to be able to rotate the chamber under the forcing cone. I had done that once before on my 1858 44 with a protruding round nose conical. But there was no need since it seated with about 1/¹⁶ inch to spare. Wearing safety goggles for whatever good that would do I shot it through 6 gallon milk jugs of water from 3 feet away. It went through all of them, and I'm now saving 12 milk jugs from my household consumption to give it another try. Ultimately I want to know what full-cylinder bullet/powder combination gives the most penetration. The choices I want to try are 80gr ball and about 30 gr Pyro P, 130gr Lee and about 23-25 gr Pyro P, and my 175 gr with 16gr Pyro P. Sorry for the long post; my first ever! Thank you for forums, a great source of from-the-heart information and entertaining stories.

Hey Phdchemeng, welcome to the forum, it's a great place to be! If you're in the market for a conical, try ACCURATE MOULDS, look under 38 caliber moulds, you'll find conical moulds there. I don’t own one, yet, but he gets praise for his product, and will make changes to his moulds for you. Keep us in the loop, this topic is near and dear to me!

Another vote for Accurate Molds. In have a couple of their molds (of different designs/weights) of heel bullets each for both .36 and .44. There were more available. Using a bullet with a rebated heel centers the bullet in the chamber and it loads nice and straight.

William, which 36 &44 moulsd do you have, and how does it shoot? I'm thinking of buying one or two of Accurates moulds before summer so I have time to shoot them before next deer season.

Pete453, the .36 molds I obtained were 38-120-C and 38-135-C. The .44 molds were 45-204F and 45-210H. All these have been accurate. There are more heel bullet designs to choose from in the Accurate Molds online catalog.
It just depends what you are trying to accomplish. The length of the .36 designs take up a bit of space in the cylinder. However using both .36s at Cowboy matches were there are often knock down targets I can tell the difference at how much harder they hit compared to a round ball.
On top of that, every Accurate Mold I own has been superb. It is made to your specs. Service is pretty quick considering the mold is made to your order. One time I ordered a mold on a Friday morning and it was delivered on the following Tuesday!! I was floored.