why was the round nose standard in revolvers

[buck]

.45 Colt, 44 Russian, Special, .38 Special

looks like they would have learned from the .44-40 that a flat point hits harder

eventually they did but not for decades

[J Miller]

Buck,

I can't honestly answer you. But the .45 Colt was not a round nose bullet exactly. It was more of a conical with a small flat tip on it.
The 44 W.C.F. (44-40) was designed with a large flat nose because it was a rifle cartridge intended for tubular magazines. I honestly don't think the benefit of the flat nose was apparent to the designers till much later.

Also all of the early bullets were made from very soft lead and in general would deform and create bad wounds because of that.

Anyway we can thank Elmer Keith and others for the vast improvement in bullet design. That's for sure.

Joe

[rigby]

I have wondered about that, do you think it might have to do with helping offset the less then perfect timing? Would the round nose be more forgiving passing through the forcing cone area?

[J Miller]

rigby,

I don't think it has anything to do with timing. If you look at the various designs of revolvers they all were designed to time up right. I think it was more an off shoot of the round nose cap and ball projectiles than anything else.

Joe

[buck]

Maybe it was faster to reload on horseback for the topbreak S&Ws of the day such as the Schofield, Russian, & No. 3.

Colt's are so slow to reload who would even care.

[J Miller]

Jun 12, 2010 14:22:06 GMT -5 buck said:

Maybe it was faster to reload on horseback for the topbreak S&Ws of the day such as the Schofield, Russian, & No. 3.

Colt's are so slow to reload who would even care.

Not if you practice with them. ;D

Joe

[COR]

I think it has more to do with starting with round balls and the natural progression of things, it just seemed right at the time and now we know just a little more. Maybe because of lever guns to, it is a good question.

[Frank V]

It may be just a old design? I do know for me a RNFP is way faster to load than a SWC. The SWC will tend to hang up on the chamber & not go in as smoothly as a RNFP.
Frank

[timothy]

I think its because of the popularity of da 38 revolvers and early autoloaders that we think of it being standard. Is always been closer to 50/50 I'd say. By 1935 the mfgs had caught on. Prior to that the 32,38,44 wcf, 41 colt, 41 rimfire, 45colt, and colts police 32&38 cartridges were all of a non round nose design.

[buck]

32,38,44 wcf were flat because of tubular magazine safety in long guns period

it should have been easy to deduce more blunt trauma from a flat nose than a round (or damn near round) nose

[CraigC]

Jun 13, 2010 10:04:37 GMT -5 buck said:

it should have been easy to deduce more blunt trauma from a flat nose than a round (or damn near round) nose

Right on the tail end of the roundball era? I don't think so. Remember that all lead projectiles in that time frame were very soft. Roundball is terribly effective on flesh, within its effective range. The .54cal roundball I recovered from the buck I killed two years ago was flattened to an inch in diameter. Muzzle velocity is around 1850fps. So you can imagine the effect on critters, two and four legged. It wasn't until we needed more and more velocity that we saw the need for flat noses. Because we had to use harder alloys the need arose to produce a broad wound channel with little or no expansion.

Obviously high velocity rifle cartridges are another matter entirely.

[Otony]

Round nose ammunition can be amazingly accurate. I am going to bet that had a lot to do with it.

[perterra]

Round nose worked.