How common was round balls versus conicals during the period of cap and ball revolvers? I've seen the colt molds for .31 and .36, the Johnson and Dow for .44 but would round balls been common in the era or is this a modern substitute due to availability? Also how common was paper cartridges compared to loose powder from both civilian and military perspectives?
Conicals were the "norm" since the 1847 Walker, that used the Pickett bullet, but loaded from a flask
I've also seen period molds for revolvers with both a round ball and conical in the mold block
I'd imagine most civilians that had access to them would have just purchased a couple packs of nitrate cartridges from the store, they didn't shoot like we do back then. Wild Bill had his ammo paid for by the town of Abilene and he claims to have shot 3000 nitrated cartridges per month to stay sharp.
However, I'm sure plenty of regular people poured powder into chambers and loaded cast round balls.
The military exclusively used nitrate cartridges from the 1850s on, early Colt cartridges were foil but they didn't work well. Millions were produced by the US and CS arsenals
There are no hard and fast rules for anything. Early Dragoon cartridges were more like mini musket paper cartridges and had to be poured in, the bullet taken out and then rammed. There's a written account of an Indian fight where a guy, I'm not sure if he was a soldier, an "Indian fighter" or just a regular guy, was loading a Dragoon in a moving wagon with non combustible paper cartridges and spilling the powder everywhere
Supposedly some cavalrymen in the Civil War and Indian Wars didn't like that nitrate paper cartridges went bad in humidity or rain, and carried flasks but we'll never know how common this was
And Skeeter Skelton says the Confederate cavalry vets he grew up shooting with said they liked round balls in their .36 Colts because they put men down better than conicals
Confederates who were out of revolver cartridges apparently melted down Minies taken out of rifle cartridges and cast balls or bullets, and used rifle powder. This may have been something one guy did one time or it happened more often, we'll never know
Basically, everything and anything was and could have been used