Let me clear it up for you as I have explained before this is a forum there are other people who haven't heard any of this not even the unfounded part. Some out there may want to further this study and add to it ,instead of calling it fables and other negative input. There may be people out there that have a line on the books mentioned which could show us the original text.
To condemn something out of hand as Jagers shooting conicals when the book" New principles for Gunnery" states the rate of twist "For Conicals" at around 1-28 give or take and that just happens to be what many Jaegers have in them,coincidence? Right now that's just an idea like this whole thing started out read my opening statement and notice that it has a question mark behind it. But maybe question marks didn't mean the same thing back then like prepositions and subjects that seems to be in question by some.
One can also shoot conicals from 72" twists, Minies anyway which fly like darts. 72" was the standard for the Springfield Rifle Musket. I had a 450 BPE double rifle that had a 40" twist. It would shoot bullets to 350 grains or more very well at hunting ranges.
Twist is irrelevant as "proof" of the use of a conical unless you can come up with a conical of the period.
The British over twisted rifles for quite a long time because they would then shoot very well with a ROUND BALL and a dram or two of powder. Nice target rifles. Useless for hunting though.
James Forsythe describes this.
Some Gunsmiths thought that the rifling had to make a turn in the barrel to shoot well. So if the barrel was 26" long it needed a 26" twist, if it had a 36" barrel it needed a 36" twist. Note the barrel length on many German Jaegers, also note that a lot of English makers used German barrels. This has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE PROJECTILE.
EXCEPT that many also thought that the larger the ball the faster the twist needed to be. This is EXACTLY opposite for ball OR conical especially if you want to shoot high velocity with a cloth patch. But a great many rifles were made using these principles. So we have a LOT of round ball rifles of various calibers with twists in the 30" range. It has nothing to do with conicals it has to do with people making rifles who really did not understand the proper twist rate for ANY projectile. This was long before any tests to find a twist for a given bullet length. 28" in a 50 caliber will stabilize a bullet around 3 calibers long. In a 45 it will only handle a bullet about 2 calibers and properly stabilize it.
Many picket rifles that gave exceptional accuracy at 200 had twists in the 36" range.
Now look at the rifling FORM and depth. Now look at the Minie ball rifling form and depth.
Yes you can shoot cloth patched conicals from round ball form rifling. BUT cloth patched conicals are VERY difficult to start straight. Start them just little off and accuracy if gone. So we need the Guide/piston starter and/or false muzzle. The false muzzle was patented in 1840. Naked bullets can be shot from MLs with no added equipment if properly designed, but they don't care for deep rifling as used for cloth patched projectiles. They also are known to not stay on the powder. So all the conicals have some Achille's heel. If they use cloth patched conicals they need a precision equipment to start them. Equipment that was not invented until well into the 19th century. I have shot picket bullets with no starter and its hopeless. I have shot naked cylindrical bullets in MLs with no starter, just slide them down on the powder. They will slide around in the bore pretty easily. But they shoot very well.
Did the fast twists work for RBs? Sure, the rifles shot well. But the powder charge was often so light that the point blank range is 50 yards or less. Making the rifle practically useless for hunting. The large bore guns were useless as hunting guns because they lacked the velocity to give adequate penetration on Asian and African heavy game. So the belted ball was adopted. The British Army adopted the belted ball for their service rifle and it was almost useless. The flintlock Baker service rifle with its slow twist gave good service (it was adopted in 1800 and shot a 20 to 22 to the pound RB). The faster twist belted ball percussion "Brunswick" was not very effective. And fast twist or not it shot a BALL with a belt not a bullet. It was nearly impossible to load. One comment from the "Select Committee on Small Arms 1852" was that it required so much force to load that it must "render any mans hand unsteady for accurate shooting". It had a 30" barrel with one turn in the length of the barrel BTW. Just like some Jaegers and English rifles.
In Small Arms of the World pg 32 we find " In the year 1789 on J. Wilkinson in English description No. 1694 described a barrel rifled with 2 spiral grooves, the missiles to have belts or wings..." I have not idea he describes elongated bullets or not.
If the conical was so well known why, in the 1820s, was Delvigne using a round ball to develop a fast loading military rifle? He was pounding a round ball against a rebate in the breech to expand it to grip the rifling.
Further experiments in France produced the Thouvenin system (based on pounding a bullet on a post set in the breech this time) and finally the Minie.
The INTERESTING part is that Minie was granted 20000 pounds by the British Gov't. But W. Greener claims he had put the idea before the British Army 12 years before and was told it was unworkable. 13 years before this a Captain Norton had suggested the same thing. So what does this exactly mean to the "conical" in the 18th century theory? Greener finally was paid 1000 pounds. But who invented the Minie? Greener claimed Minie read his book... Greener may have learned from Norton. But the trail goes dead here it seems. But even with the 25 years mentioned here we are still well within the 19th century.
If they were shooting conical they had to make bullets. Where are the bullet moulds for these 18th century conicals? Where are the surviving conical bullets? Where is the descriptions of people using them?
There is an account in "Wah To Yah and the Taos Trail" by Garrard of a Hawken shooting a bullet an inch long.
If they were all that common why would be write of it?
Every known Hawken has a 48" twist and this twist, in theory, will shoot bullets 2 calibers long 1" or so in 50-54 calibers. My picket I shoot in the 48 twist 40 is about .750" long and weighs a 135 grains.
Bottom line. Rifling twist is not a marker for conical use. Now if you find an 1840s rifle turned at the muzzle with a twist of 36 to 48 “ or a gain ending between 30 and 48” then you have a picket rifle. The turned muzzle is a marker for picket use. A 36” twist will work well form most RB rifles under 50 caliber so its not “proof” that a conical was used.
Its not that conicals were unknown. In the 200 year or so since the rifle was devloped I am sure a lot of things were tried by 1740, its not that they could not cut the twist needed, or make a mould. Its that there is no evidence that they were in use before the early 19th century. The Britisb Army dismissed as useless the conical Greener showed them sometime about 1835 +-. This indicates it was unproven and did not work. The British had been looking for rifles for military service since about 1740. But there is no evidence I know of that indicates they were testing conicals and they did some testing before adopting the 62 caliber RB firing Baker. But there are no elongated bullets mentioned SFAIK.
Is there often confusion on terminology. Yes. Do we know everything about shooting in the 17th and 18th century? Of course not. But there are surviving rifles and bullet moulds proving the use of round balls. Even shot towers for making musket balls by the 1790s or so. I suspect that a lot of the musket balls fired in the Napoleonic wars were dropped not cast.
So show us a surviving bullet mould with a makers name predating 1790. Show us some surviving bullets with iron clad provenance. Show us some archaeological evidence of bullets or a mould dug from some site that was unused after 1780. Show us a drawing dated to 1776.
Show us something. All you have right now ranks as supposition.
For example. The electric car was invented in 1835 but there were no electric cars at Lincoln's inauguration. There were over 1000 in 1900. But they were not practical and even now are barely so. They died out with the coming of the Model T.
Just because someone wrote about it or even made some is not a indicator of practical use.
Dan
