I use just a standard wooden ball starter to get them going. If they are pure lead they will slip in somewhat hard at first.. it takes a good strike with the flat of the hand, but I have never had to use a chunk of wood. Normally the bottom two ridges can be pushed in the crown with your thumb. Then I just line that short starter ball up and hit it with my hand. And like you said, about three to four inches in, they have the rifling engraved, and then they spin down the bore pretty easy.

I use a homemade lube, but for years I have used bore butter. Friends and I hunted deer for years with REAL conical bullets. In fact one friend of mine that shoots a T/C .54 caliber Hawkins shoots the 300 grains I cast with 70 grains of powder. It is all he will hunt deer with and he's flattened some nice bucks with it. One other guy that got to be a problem ... he hunted with an old .54 caliber CVA inline. He couldn't get nothing to shoot out of it, so I gave him some REAL conical bullets in 380 grain and he was shocked at how accurate they were. He got to be a pain because he kept hitting me up for more conical bullets. I finally told him to get his own mold.

When I got the mold, did you see the instructions for the recommended powder charges.. 50-70 grains of powder. You don't have to push these things hard for a deer at moderate ranges. One thing I have discovered. After about 75 yards, the accuracy falls off. But I attribute that more to open sights and my eyes. Where I hunt 50 yards is a long shot. You place that REAL behind the shoulder, 99% of the time you get a full pass through, and a excellent wound channel. Just be sure they are made of pure lead. If they are made of pure lead, you can scratch them with a fingernail normally.

Some people get scrap lead. I know I do. I have found that all scrap lead is not equal. Right now I lucked out because a person that works for the city road crew had to replace old water lines.. the water lines had lead knuckle joints. So he collected all of them and gave them to me, in return for casting rights with my molds.