454 conicals in a 451 chamber?

B

Busyhands94

New member
hello everybody! this is my first thread on this forum, I really like it so i decided to join! so, i recently got two molds from someone. a Lee 454 round ball mold and a 454 conical mold. i have practiced casting with them and i feel like i can cast some pretty good bullets. i am not a newbie to casting, i have made bullets and ball ammo for my rifle, and tiny .17 conicals for my Remington rider derringer. so, i am thinking of getting a Colt 1851 Sheriff model with a shorter barrel than the full length one, but i am wondering, can i load the 454 conical bullets in the colt that has a 451 chamber? i imagine there is going to be a bit of lead shaving going on, but before i buy the gun i would like to know if they will be a pain to seat in the chamber or if i can do it without having to wiggle it in there. if it won't work i can always modify my cylinder a little to get it to work, maybe bore the mouth of the cylinder to 454 down maybe 1/8th an inch or so. i wouldn't like to have to do that but i will if i need to. anyway, advice would be very appreciated!

Sincerely,
Levi Hawken Dabney
 
The Lee conical molds make tapered bullets. They will load easy and yes they're supposed to shave lead.
 
Busyhands,
You will not be able to load the .454 conical into the 44 cal Sheriff or US MArshall or any other '51 navy type 44 regardless of barrel length. Same goes for most 1860 Armies too (ASM & Ubertis OK but not Pietta) unless you take the cylinder off the gun and load it with a separate ramming tool. There is simply not enough room to do so unless you hog out metal from under the barrel and at the ramming port. I did that with a Dremel on one of my US Marshalls that I have since sold. The 454 balls work great especially if you make a rammer extension (metal tube or drilled out 1" dowel slipped over the rammer to give you more leverage. Otherwise your hand will get very sore after a while.
The LEE conicals have a small enough diameter rebate on the bottom of the bullet to fit the chambers with out drilling out the mouth of the chamber. I would not recommend messing with the cylinder. Just decide to shoot round ball only, grind away metal from the loading area below the barrel to make room for a conical, or get a 44 Remington which will take anything you want to feed it but looks less cool than a Colt.
 
The Lee conicals should work with anything. The whole shank of the bullet slides into the cylinder leaving about as much lead exposed as a round ball.

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well i decided to not get the 51 sheriff. instead, i will be buying a brass framed 1858 Remington, my dream gun. I have wanted one ever since i was old enough to shoot. i saw them in westerns and they looked so cool! so, i will be getting that instead so i can actually shoot my conical bullets. this, is going to be sweet :cool:
 
My first BP revolver was a brass frame 1858 Remington. I still have it. I paid $25 back in 1978.

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that's pretty! dangit, now I'm going to have trouble sleeping until my gun gets here! it's like Christmas when you're eight! oh well! that's just more time for me to cast some bullets!
 
i was actually thinking about getting a steel framed gun, stripping the bluing from the frame, polishing the steel, and then plating it with gold using a Caswell plug-n-plate kit. plating is actually very easy to do at home. so i know i could do that without any problems. i know brass isn't as hard as steel, so i figure i can shoot standard velocity or light loads in it. i mean I'll just be using it for plinking or small game anyway. to be honest my mother kinda swayed me toward brass, she saw one of those brass framed pistols at a Civil War reenactment and thought it looked really pretty, so i went with it! after all i wanted her to have a good time shooting too! she could very well become a BP addict too!
 
The brass frame may weigh a little more but if you hold it with 2 hands like I do then that shouldn't matter very much.
 
mistake!!!

okay, i was doing a little more casting last night, but then i started to get curious about the diameter of the mold. i took a look on the box... the conicals are 450 in diameter. GRRRRR!!! why didn't i just read the darn thing in the first place! guess i just had another moment.
 
Busyhands,
There are two LEE conicals: one for Ruger Old Armies and then everything else (all other 44 C&Bs). The one I have for non-ROAs works in all my 44 Remingtons. I don't know what the box says but look it up on leeprecision.com and check the model # and you will know if yours is for the ROA (which would be too big and put undue stress on a brass framed gun).
 
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