Thoughts and Opinion

I have a .62 rifled barrel with a slow twist. All my casting has been with soft lead in the smaller calibers. Being that lead seems to be getting more and more scarce and expensive around here I was thinking the following. .62 is large and expansion really isn't going to be an issue maybe I should cast with wheel weights since I can get a whole lot of that. Leave the soft lead for the RB's and Conicals that I need to expand.

Am I missing something in this? :hmm:

The only thing I see is you may have to change your patch material and or thickness a little. Might even have to use overpowder patch or wad. They will load harder unless you adjust one of all of the above. Accuracy may lose 10 percent but with a .62 like you mentioned it won't make much difference on the receiving end.
I would try it can't hurt and may make it easier to find lead for bullets.
Fox :thumbsup:

Questions:

1. What is the price difference between pure
lead and wheel weights, actual cost per ball
down the barrel?
2. How many shots do you shoot each year out of
the rifle?

To balance the cost difference between pure lead and wheel weights, I have a feeling you would have to shoot a pickup truck full of pure lead to make a much of a difference in your discretionary spending.

I have a roofer that I know. His roofers save the lead from the vents on the houses they roof each week. They know that on Friday evening that there is an ice chest with adult beverages for them behind my barn, they drop of the lead, empty the ice chest of it’s contents, put the ice chest inside the lean- too. I have plenty of lead and so do those whom I shoot with.

I have to go with the real thing, pure lead.

Happy roofers and happy shooters.


RDE

gmww said:

I have a .62 rifled barrel with a slow twist. All my casting has been with soft lead in the smaller calibers. Being that lead seems to be getting more and more scarce and expensive around here I was thinking the following. .62 is large and expansion really isn't going to be an issue maybe I should cast with wheel weights since I can get a whole lot of that. Leave the soft lead for the RB's and Conicals that I need to expand.

Am I missing something in this? :hmm:

Click to expand...

I am no authority on this.
That said, IMO it makes sense to me and is something that I'd also see myself doing...and to be honest about it, I think most ML balls are so much larger than modern bullets anyway that a well placed heart lung shot really doesn't need any expansion...ie: a .50cal anything through the H/L area of a deer is a dead deer...and a .62cal even more so.

Now...if you shoot a lot and are looking for an accurate substitute just for practice, at a penny apiece, 9/16" solid marbles give outstanding accuracy in the .58 & .62cals.

Thanks all. I really like the marbles idea for practice. As far as cost, I have an old neighbor who is a manager at a tire store so I can probably get all the wheel weights I can possible want. Free is good. :thumbsup:

I figured a real tight patch on a hardcast RB might be good to try. I want to save the soft lead for the smaller calibers that need the expansion.

I'd have no qualms about using wheelweights for hunting RBs, especially in larger calibers. I've shot way too many deer and a few elk and moose with revolvers using hard cast to be the least bit concerned about lack of expansion. And none of them were larger than 45 caliber!!

On the question of cheap shooting, you can't beat hanging your target onto a 5-gallon bucket of sand for shoots, then screening the sand to recover the lead. Round Ball suggested it, and after trying it I'm hooked. I've easily recovered 10 pounds of lead now from only a few shoots, and when the tally hits 20 I'm going to recycle the scrap lead back into round balls. The system works so well I've been thinking of mining the backstop in my shooting range. There's got to be over 100 pounds of lead lurking there.

" a .50cal anything through the H/L area of a deer is a dead deer...'

I would agree and even take it further in saying that there is realy no need for expansion on any RB put in the right place at the right range, I have put .40 balls thru a deer and .62 balls as well, expansion is not going to make a whole lot of difference if the shot is a good one, the expansion mindset is a carryover from the modern bullet performance the we have come to accept as "better", PRBs is a different world, not looking for massive shock and trauma and shrapnel like bullet expansion..just a simple hole in the right place...

One aspect of soft lead for rifles that has not been touched upon in this topic is the necessity of the projectile oburdating or expanding in the barrel from the initial detonation of the powder charge to force the patch into the rifling and thus making a tight gas seal.
I have this spring been learning how to make the rifled musket shoot where I want it to shoot using Minie projectiles. Soft lead is a necessity to make sure the bullet base expands into the rifling with Minies. I also find I get better accurracy for shooting ground squirrels with soft lead .50 patched RB.

On the opposite side of the hard/soft lead issue are smoothbores. In 20 years experience I have had much better results shooting hard lead balls-made of wheelweights or range lead- out of my smoothbores.
In reference to terminal performance in big game, I have had better results-quick kills- with well placed shots that went through and through the game and made a .60 or .75 hole or even a .50 cal hole.

-----to make it work they must be able to hit a 5 gal bucket most shots----- :rotf: :rotf: :rotf: :rotf: :rotf:

Hamkiller said:

One aspect of soft lead for rifles that has not been touched upon in this topic is the necessity of the projectile oburdating or expanding in the barrel from the initial detonation of the powder charge to force the patch into the rifling and thus making a tight gas seal.

Click to expand...

Not taking issue with you personally, just this comment which I've seen posted from time to time...in all the lead balls I've fired and recovered, whether from jugs of water, a dirt bank, or a deer, I've never seen any evidence that this routinely happens...no fabric weave imprints in the lead, etc...and I use max/near max powder charges for deer hunting loads.

Plus, more recently I've been using 100% hard solid glass marbles in some experiments, they certainly can't expand at all yet a 5 shot group at 25yds can be covered up by a quarter.

I can see the thin long skirt of a minnie being expanded of course...and that's from the pressure of the expanding gases...but I'm not convinced that lead round balls routinely expand at ignition time...but that's just me

I think you are righy Roundball, the obturation thing is pretty overrated as to being a big factor with PRB, I have not seen any real data gathered from controlled testing to support the theory.When you push down a snug combo the ball will spin as it leaves the barrel, I have heard of stripping the bore with shallow rifled guns and heavy loads but I am not really sold on the whole concept myself.I am sure there will be a swarm on both sides of this issue, the ballistical/mathmatical driven guys and the poor lost souls who just shoot the guns like they used to do...I just dont see that you are going to change the shape of the ball enough to force the patch tightly into the rifleing.

That pretty well reflects my experience, too. I've recovered a few from game and a whole lot from my R2B2, and I'm yet to see the fabric marks on the ball in any caliber. And those were all pure lead balls with patches tight enough to require a smack of my hand on the short starter to get them into the bore. Eight different makes of barrels in 5 different calibers.

The only time I've seen the fabric marks was on balls recovered from a friend's 50. He wanted to see what all the hullaballoo was about from the match shooters using really tight patches and a mallet to start the ball down the bore. Got the fabric marks on those balls, but not the ones when he went back to his normal patch.

That tells me that in his rifle at least, the fabric marks were caused by seating a tight ball and patch combo, rather than as a result of obturation on firing.

Maybe I'm just not shooting hot enough loads, which also might be a factor in obturation of PRBs.

Odd. I see the patch material imprint on the perimeter of the ball. I have pulled a couple, so clearly the act of firing them has had no bearing there, but I can see the weave imprint.

If you pulled the balls with a ball puller jag, the force of the wood screw driving into the ball pushes the lead into the patch and leaves the weave marks.

You have to pull them out the muzzle, by grabbing hold of the patch, just after seating the ball, or blow them out with those CO2 gadgets, or shoot them out with a small charge of powder into water to get a fair reading.

If there is any impression of the cloth left on the balls, its very faint, and you need very good light and a magnifying glass to see them. Even when a very sharp-edged shoulder on the lands can be seen imprinted on the ball, you don't easily see the weave of the Patch in the " groove " on the ball. I have not looked at a ball under a microscope, and cannot say what you might find with greater magnification.

I am suspecting that the " give " in the fabric is the reason why there is no visible imprint during normal shooting. And, gas is not only pushing against the lead ball to make it " upset", but at the same time is also pushing around the PRB through the grooves trying to escape. With that high speed gas passing between the grooves and the Patching, I don't see how you would get enough compression of the cloth to leave an impression of the weave. If you instead use a OP wad, or filler, as a gas seal, the cushioning effect of the wad or filler will prevent the ball from upsetting enough to imprint the weave. Remember, the patch is either lubed with spit, or oil, or grease, allowing it to slide and move over the steel lands and grooves. The fabric may not move, but the lubes surely will do so.

If you hammer an oversized ball( such as a .457" ball into a .451" bore) using a dry, oversized patch, large enough( or off a strip) so that once seated in the muzzle you can pull it back out, you might see weave patterns on the ball. :hmm:

I think that Hamkiller was talking about Minnies for the most part. I have found, like him, that my 12 bore seems to like wheelweight roundball better than soft lead. Wonder why? I would love to try the marble trick for my 12 bore, what size marble would that take?

The guys who use slip fit conicals in Whites sure think the bullet upsets to fill the rifling.

Below are some selected passages from Wikipedia.

Obturate means to block or obstruct.

In conventional English usage, obturation refers specifically to the condition of being obstructed or occluded or the action of blocking, stopping, or filling something up. The mechanism by which an undersized soft metal projectile enlarges to fill the barrel is, for hollow-base bullets, due to expansion from gas pressure within the base cavity and, for solid-base bullets, upsetting - the combined shortening and thickening that occurs when a malleable metal object (e.g. a rivet) is struck forcibly at one end.

The formula used to calculate the pressure required for solid base bullets is:

Bullet's BHN x 1422 = Pounds per square inch
The constant 1422 is an empirically determined factor used throughout the ammunition and reloading industry; it is specifically tailored for calculating the pressure required for expansions that occur in internal ballistics and should not be used for other purposes.

Below is a chart containing various bullet alloys, the BHN, and the PSI required to expand a bullet to the bore:

Material...........BHN..........Pressure (psi)
Pure lead............5...........7,110
1:20 tin/lead.......10..........14,200
1:10 tin/lead.......11.5........16,400
Pure copper.........40..........56,900

Click to expand...

Semisane said:

The guys who use slip fit conicals in Whites sure think the bullet upsets to fill the rifling.

Click to expand...

I don't doubt it, because I get the same thing all the time with lead bullets in my cartridge guns. But what kinds of pressures are the inlines operating at? Compared to sidelocks I bet it's way up there with my cartridge guns. RBs would opturate at those pressures too, provided my gun held together. Aint an issue cuzz I aint pushing my sidelocks that hard. No need.

Well, a cartridge gun is a little different in that the bullet is usually already equal to or larger than bore groove diameter, and is swagged into the bore regardless of obturation or lack thereof.

If the Wikipedia article is correct that pure lead obturates at 7,110 psi, it would seem that a lead ball or flatbase conical must do so in just about every muzzle loader. I'm sure even my 85 grain load of GOEX in a .54 flintlock is pushing 13,000 psi. Some of the 100+ grain sub loads like triple seven are probably over 25,000 psi. Anybody out ther with a Lyman BP Handbook? They probably have pressure data.

Yup. Got the Lyman Manual, and they're quoting 5,900 for my 58 cal hunting load and 7k for my 54.

Wow! A lot lower than I would have thought. Do they show a pressure for a .54 ball over 85 or 90 grains FFb black?