lead ball hardness

[Percy]

I want to start casting lead balls for my fowler. I've got 30 pounds of lead ingots, I was told it is approximately 95% lead and 5% antimony. It is from a shooting range, no wheel weights. I can scratch the ingots with my fingernail but I don't know the hardness. Will the balls be too hard? If so can I just mix some pure lead with it to soften it up?

Percy

 

[Rifleman1776]

In a smoothie shoot whatcha got. That is one of the beauties of a smoothbore. I have cast up several hundred of what I thought was hard lead. But is much harder, likely zinc. They are also lighter but will still shoot fine.

 

[Coot]

Lead recovered from a shooting range could easily contain wheelweights - who knows what different shooters put into the backstop. A little bit of antimony will harden quite a bit of lead so trying to "dilute" hard lead by adding soft lead is a losing proposition. On the other hand, smoothbores are not at all fussy about how hard or soft the lead they shoot happens to be. If in doubt about a given batch of lead being on the hard side, save it for use in a smoothbore & shoot it in good health.

 

[tenngun]

Smoothies don't care, but if your lead is soft enough to scratch with a finger nail your find smooth or rifled.

 

[Idaho Ron]

I want to start casting lead balls for my fowler. I've got 30 pounds of lead ingots, I was told it is approximately 95% lead and 5% antimony. It is from a shooting range, no wheel weights. I can scratch the ingots with my fingernail but I don't know the hardness. Will the balls be too hard? If so can I just mix some pure lead with it to soften it up?

Percy

You could pour up some and send be a few and I will test them for you. I have done it for several people here.