The reason most times, patches are not used on conicals are conicals are bore size. For instance a .50 roundball is actually a .490 diameter. A conical on the other hand is .503 or bigger. The patch would add to the diameter of the conceal and make it almost impossible to load. Now I have wondered what if a conical was say a .490 anda patch was used. Would this be the same as the paper patching that used to be used in some of the old conicals and Minnie ball rifles?

The conical is meant to engage the rifling of the bore to get the correct spin. Whether going down or on the rider out.Do to the large chunk of lead, this might be necessary for extended accuracy ranges with them. Otherwise what you would have would be comparable to a shotgun slug. Even now some of the siugs are made to try and get them to spin for additional accuracy so I was told. Its been a long time since I shot any modern rifles or projectiles.