Lead For Smooth Bore Balls

I cast my own balls and use pure soft lead for my rifles. I was thinking that because the lands are not there to press in to the ball it seems to me that most any lead should work well for a smooth bore. Any thoughts?

You can, and many people do use harder lead... BUT I prefer pure or soft lead for all muzzleloading applications.

Again, this has been discussed a bunch with no conclusive reports documented.

Personally I think it is the gun barrel, the knowledge of the shooter, experience of the shooter, wind and a bunch of durn luck at 100 yards.

I really do not think lead purity is an issue at 100 yards in smooth bore shooting.

I have used wheel weights off and on for smoothbores for years with out seeing any differences. :2

I personally use as pure of lead as I can get for my rifles. For the smoothbore I use any lead I can get! :idunno:

I use ATM lead...Anything That Melts. The only thing you need to be aware of is hard lead does not shrink, in the mould, as much as pure lead, so the balls will be a few thou larger. Sometimes larger than a few thou, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

I still have a whole heap of WW from back when I use to cast pistol bullets. I use soft lead in my rifles but prefer WW ball in my smoothbore. WW ball will cast up about .005"/6" larger (in a 20 ga) which can mean a thinner or no patch. Lead for a smoothie is not the least bit fussy.

hanshi; x2

For accuracy or target shooting I don't think it will matter much if you are not using pure lead to cast your RB. However, when hunting I'm going to want to use the softest, purest lead I can get.

History channel ran a show on an 18th century french werewolf, killed of corse with a sivler bullet. They cast a silver bullet and shot it out of a modern rifle to show that silver was to soft to function as a bullet. How ever pure lead aint much better in a high powered suppository gun.
This post got me thinking.
Smoothies dont seem a fussy about what they eat.The Mexicans shot a lot of copper balls. I've got a good store of soft lead for running ball. Hanshi says he dosn't see difference with wheel wt balls. How about it has any body tried copper in thier smooties,or very hard lead? Of corse it would be hard to run your own copper at home.By the by I could buy a story about an insane person being shot and killed by a smooth bore fired silver ball.

Welp,

I used a Saeco tester to determine that the lead ball I am running in my NWG is about a 5 on the Saeco scale which works out to about BHN 8, provided you can trust the numbers. Either way it is not soft lead as I really have to work to score the surface of the ball with a thumb nail.

I just need to figure out the combination of materials needed to duplicate that mix as I am most pleased with the results.

In the 17th century muskets were the most common gun in Europe so chances are that the majority of "werewolves" were shot with smoothbores. Whether they wanted to waste silver on them is another matter.

Yes I had to laugh at shooting the silver in a modern gun and comparing it to a ml. History channel oft time made that sort of mistake. I would think a silver ball would do well in the range of a smoothy, although a might expensive. I never got a chance to hunt werewolf as they are a protected mamal in the ozarks and don't know if lead will work as well as sivler or not. :haha:

I highly doubt any silver balls were fired from muskets back in the way back when.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to cast a silver bullet and have it come out of the mold true?
You can not use standard issue casting equipment. All the tools for the project are going to have to be specialized to the task.

Don't waste your money buying silver bullets for werewolves even if they do open a season on them. The meat is tough and stringy and has a terrible taste. :haha:

But, to seriously address your question, wheel weights work just fine so long as you take into account that the balls will be a tiny bit larger than the ones cast from the same mould using soft lead. Just use a thinner patch if the ball seems too tight.

But, if you are casting silver balls for hunting werewolves, you have a more serious problem than getting perfectly cast balls. Don'tcha think? :haha:

just get a cane with a silver handle

That is what was used to kill the first werewolf.
:grin:

A crossbow with a silver tipped broadhead would work for those pesky werewolves I bet. ff

Where are all our P.C./H.C. police about the correctness of werewolves in 18th century Colonial America? :stir:

Werewolf?

There wolf !

:grin: