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BBB:I think I read in Rosa's Gunfighters that Hickok used a lot of combustible cartridges for target practice and the town fathers had to foot the bill and were getting pretty tired of the expensive. That said, from what I've seen on a Navy 36- like Hickok carried, the combustibles carried a 17 grain charge whereas with powder-ball-grease you can cram in about 25 grains fffg if you really try. What's more, the balls back then still had a sprue- today we use perfectly round balls but that flat sprue- if loaded forward- was sort of like a semi-wadcutter and hit harder than the conical bullets. The conical bullets in the combustible cartridges were also poorly shaped with hardly any base- so they could twist out of line while being ramrod into the chamber- not good for accuracy. In any event, from what I could learn, any gunfighter loaded from a flask and used balls and carried a packet of the combustible ammo for emergency back up shots if needed.
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