I disagree with you Phil on your belief of the roundball as being an inferior projectile. Also the use of large conicals I personally think is much more prevalent today then it was back in yesteryear. It was my understand that;

In 1848, a French army Captain Claude F. Minie designed and developed the projectile we commonly call the Minnie Ball or Minnie. It was named after him. This projectile had nothing to do with hunting. All this was developed for was to enable soldiers in the field to load faster and shoot further, without cleaningtheir weapon as often, there by giving them the opportunity of better killing or injuring their fellow man.

Prior to the development of the Minnie.. early settlers in the east depended on very small bore rifles .32 -.45 caliber were very common. Most of the common arms one would have encountered were muskets and shotgun to take game. Rifles were all hand made and very expensive.

The introduction of large bore muskets for instance the .69-.75 calibers were again an introduction by military to better wipe out their fellow man. Granted some of these muskets made it into civilian hands. Many large bore muskets even appearedin the Civil War. There are records of .69 caliber muskets and later rifles in common use. Civil War General for the Confederacy "Stone Wall" Jackson was rumored to have been shot (which later lead to his death)by his own troops in the night with a .69 caliber smoothbore musket. Which by the way normally fired a large roundball.

The Civil War did help lead to the development and popularity of large bore rifles such as the .54 caliber and the .58 caliber, as well as some of the modern cartridge rifles we know today. Such rifles as the Creedmore, and Sharps. Even lever action and cylinder action rifles started to make an appearance towards the end of the war.

As early white settlers and explorersmoved west, they encountered many animals much larger and more ferocious then accustomed to in the east. The plains herds demanded larger caliber rifles. Mountain men in their exploration of the Rocky Mountain regions saw the immediate advantage of calibers of .50 and larger when they encounters the great bears and some of the larger deer and plains species like bison and elk. Most of the time the projectile used was the simple patched roundball. It was not until the introduction of the Creedmore and Sharps among others, that the modern projectile was seen being used. Then of course with the advancement of the lever action and cylinder revolver came the cartridge development which we know today.

Roundballs have been killing and dispatching game and man for hundred of years. Granted I will not argue that they have the same ballistics as a sabot projectile, but anyone knows.. put a 1/2 inch or larger roundball through the vital organs of an animal and that animal will die. Sooner or later it will cause the death of that animal. I have hunted for many years with roundball and will vouch for their ability to cleanly and humanly take game animals when used in a responsibile manner.

Sabots were a recent improvement to the muzzleloading market. It was discovered that a projectile of smaller dimensions, through their use, could be shot from a muzzleloader accurate and with better ballistics which increased the effective range of the muzzleloader. Which is all sabots actually do, increase the effective range of the weapon.

The large conicals we see today,I really can not find any reference to their development in early years. I wonder if they were not some kind of adaptation of the minnie or other smaller conicals. Ball-et are also a recent invention.

What it all boils down to is, the sabot allows the muzzleloader with the correct rifle to shoot a projectile at a longer distance and still have acceptable accuracy and energy to dispatch game. When the roundball is used in the ranges it was originally intended to be used is still as deadly today as it was three hundred years ago.

Most of the long distance shooting the common muzzleloader shooter does today would not be as easy as it is if it were not for the use of optics. In my case, take the scope off the rifle and a roundball is as deadly as a sabot because I can not or will not shoot any further with either projectile.

As for the powerbelt, I have often wondered what was the original intention of the inventor. Do you feel that perhaps the material used and the design of the powerbelt could be responsible for the fragmentation we hear about today from their users?