Coning: Inaccurate?

[WadePatton]

...
My .69 stays as-is - it is a tack driver with what I call a normal radiused smooth muzzle crown.

Hope you are not sick of these pictures ...

No way can we complain of the same old pictures used to answer the same old questions (just a new crop of askers, and a new crop is a good thing). Those pics work perfectly with the explanations/application/experience.  Recent history isn't as appealing as frontier history eh?

Welcome home D.  Your thumbs are famous implements of the Sapergia Universal All-Purpose Crown (Radius  T)   

makes "coning" sound really plain by comparison.   

[J Henry]

  How is accuracy effected when you take a round/Three sided  file and "fancy" the groves at the muzzle,if the perfect muzzle crown is smooth all around??

[Long John]

Smokey,

You have gotten a lot of opinions so far.  So I don't expect you to lose any sleep over mine.

I am very skeptical about a lot of what is passed as definitive fact about what was done in the old days.  I have never seen any reference to a short starter in historical writings or surviving accoutrements.  But I don't think the old-time hunters loaded their rifles the way we do, nor did they use them the way we do.

The need for a short starter comes from the need for a tight load.  The need for a tight load comes from the need for accuracy out the rifle with a relatively fast twist.  John Getz made the barrel for my 54 with a 1 in 72 twist and radius grooves.  I shoot 85 grains of FFFg Goex a .520 ball and .024 denim patch.  I start the loads with my thumb.  I don't own a short starter.  The rifle shoots better than I can.  MY eyes have gotten "old" (no comments about the rest of my body, please) so sights and trigger are far more important for accuracy.  Off-hand I can hold 2.5 inches at 75 yards.  My preferred shot for deer is right behind the eye.

If you need to cone the barrel to get your load down the barrel then do it.  Odds are that you will not notice any loss of accuracy if you are shooting off-hand.  I certainly won't! 

Keep in mind that the old-timers lived in a different world than we do.  When a gunsmith had finished a rifle he went into the house, snatched a piece of the cloth his wife purchased from the itinerant peddler who passed by last week, went to the shop and started turning a cherry to make a mold.  When the lollipop of steel he was using for the cherry fit the bore of the gun while wrapped in some of that cloth he stopped turning it smaller, cut cutting edges on it and case hardened the cherry.  Then he made the mold. 

I don't think they used the tight loads we use nowadays.  Their powder burned more slowly so they could get by with the ball patch combination they had available.  They had their share of misses - but nobody bothered to record them.  I shared a camp with my friend, Greg, one fall.  While sitting around, he took his .22 pistol and started throwing a quarter into the air and shooting at it.  After I don't remember how many tries he hit the quarter.  I still have it!  Greg said that nobody very remembers how many time he missed, only the time he hit.  He is right!

Build your rifle.  Cone it if you want.  Enjoy it - life is too short.

Best Regards,

JMC
John Cholin

[jerrywh]

 1longjohn.
    In my opinion you are pretty close on your post. I don't think most of the hunters and indian fighters shot tight loads back then.  The most accurate rifle I ever had was a 40 cal. with a 1:48 twist. I shot loose loads in it and 65 grains of fff Dupont. Never used a starter. From the bench that gun shot two balls in the same hole at 100 yds twice.  The barrel was a douglas.

[Hungry Horse]

John, you are really cruisin’ for it. Hammering a ridiculously  tight load down the barrel, using every silly lube known to man, are holy ground in today’s muzzleloading scene. What the old timers used back when their live depended on it mean nothing. Be warned.

  Hungry Horse

[Frank]

Amen John

[Pukka Bundook]

John,

Now why didn't you just post that right at the start and save us all the trouble??

Seriously though, I believe you have it right!

[davec2]

John,

Brilliant !!!  Thanks for the clarity.  Life is WAY too short to worry about a lot of the things we get our knickers in a twist over !

[Herb]

J. Henry, my last Kit Carson copy I filed the lands and grooves at the muzzle just like you ask about.

You can see how this shoots in my post "Building Sights for a Hawken Deer Rifle" nearby.  I need a calm day with good light to shoot some proof targets with this rifle, but I believe it to be impressively accurate.  This is a .54 H&H 15/16" 1-66 twist barrel that I cut from 36 to 31 1/4 inches with a hacksaw then trued up the muzzle face and filed out the lands and grooves.

[Daryl]

Good luck, Herb. I trust it is more evenly filed than it appears to be.

[Pukka Bundook]

Daryl,

If it shoots very accurately, it doesn't matter if it is off a little.....

[Herb]

Daryl, you are right, it is not pretty enough.  I wanted to cone it back about 7/16" of an inch to remove the lands down to the grooves at the muzzle, then file the grooves back, but I ran out of time to do that and just filed the lands and grooves.  I still don't know how accurate this rifle is but if after testing I think it needs improvement, I will smooth up the muzzle filing.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

I just read this whole thread in its entirety.  Love it!!!

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

I've never coned a muzzle, since I don't find loading muzzleloaders at all difficult.  And having seen a couple, I don't see them being easier to load either.  My needs are for the best accuracy that I can achieve.  To this end, I have read references from some of the great muzzleloading shooters and gun builders of the 19th C (Pope, Werner, Billinghurst, et al) and have followed their advice.  The short starter was employed in that era without dispute, and I have no issue with using it to load my flint rifles/guns.  Accuracy is everything, to me.
Having said all that, I stepped out on the limb and filed the muzzle of my Chambers' Virginia .50 cal rifle. I don't think loading is any easier than it was prior, and accuracy hasn't diminished in the least.  I do not know if taking it a step further would change anything, but I'm not willing to take that leap.
Here's a turkey target I shot from 'the plank' at 60 yards during a competition, together with the muzzle of the rifle.  I didn't win that match...shot an inch low, but I was pleased with the accuracy of my rifle under those conditions.  I filed this muzzle 'cause I thought it would look funky.

[Smokey Plainsman]

The short starter was employed in that era without dispute

Not according to some...

[Elnathan]

The short starter was employed in that era without dispute

Not according to some...

He is talking about the 19th century. 18th century is where the dispute lies.

Big difference between what was done in 1780 and 1840. Gun culture in America looked pretty different back in 1958 from what it does today, after all...

[Smokey Plainsman]

The short starter was employed in that era without dispute

Not according to some...

He is talking about the 19th century. 18th century is where the dispute lies.

Big difference between what was done in 1780 and 1840. Gun culture in America looked pretty different back in 1958 from what it does today, after all...

Ahh, I see I see. Thank you!

[Craig Wilcox]

Taylor has an advantage over all of us - his brother invented "Darylizing" the muzzle!

[Daryl]

I actually invented nothing, but simply stumbled on what had been done since the 1700's, maybe even earlier.
Relieving the muzzle was a common gun building method of easing the loading of tight combinations in Europe - maybe not here, but likely it was.
I merely simplified the method for the non-gun-builder-file-wielder.
Taylor's muzzle picture is slightly non-typical of the filed muzzles on most ALL Jaeger Rifles, flint or percussion, but it does the same job and does not hinder close range accuracy at all.
If you look closely at the pictures of Jaeger rifle muzzles, you can see the relieving that was done to facilitate loading - 300 years ago.
Why people are hesitant to do this today, I have difficulty understanding.
We find out rifles easy to load- all day long while on a trail.
As I have said many times - if I was in a match where there was 5,10 or 15 minutes between my shots, I'd likely wipe between shots as well.
When shooting trail walks, shooting is more often than that and wiping is not necessary.
No one up here wipes nor has to wipe the bore before loading.

[hanshi]

I do like the job on that muzzle, Taylor.

[smallpatch]

Don Getz used to offer a Hiney Muzzle.
A u shaped groove was filed in the grooves, and a v groove in the lands.  Kinda looked like little butts surrounding the bore.
But first the muzzle was coned.  The rifling basically ended where the cone started, so the ball never touched the filed area.
Had several, and they all shot great.

[Scota4570]

If coning enhanced accuracy the modern bench rest boys would do so.  From a practical standpoint some sort of tapered crown is necessary to load the rifle.  IMHO all else being equal, less is better for accuracy.  More is better to load easy.  I make  a crown that is more taped than modern but not much , dead smooth, as as perfectly aligned as I can make it.  I use a lathe.  I would not make a long funnel.  My accuracy standards may be obsessive.  If your standard is minuet of deer at 50 yards, it does not matter.   

[Dan Fruth]

If you own a copy of the latest "Moravian gun" book, it describes most of the original Oerter rifles with "funneled" muzzles. i doubt this was the result of loading, but left the shop this way, or were done at a later date.