Need Help Casting Round Balls

[Slamfire]

I melted sown some wheel weights today an poured the alloy into a 6 muffin tin. One ingots is a bit light. I figured to cast some roundballs for my .56 Smoothbore. Wheelweight alloy souldn't be too hard for use in that. :surrender:

 

[paulvallandigham]

Actually, Wheel weights are pretty hard, and brittle, as they have both tin and some antimony in the mix. I suspect your cast balls will be smaller in diameter than those made of pure lead, and they will be lighter. How they will shoot will depend on how much less in diameter they are compared to your standard lead balls, and the patch and ball combination you reach for those hard balls.

No, they won't hurt the gun, as the cloth patch will keep the lead from touching the bore of a smoothie, or rifle. However, You will need to weight them, and sort them by weight, if you want to do any accurate shooting at small targets. Depending on what variations you get in the diameters of these balls, you may have to sort the balls you use by diameter, too.

The reason to stick with pure lead is to avoid all these problems. Its one thing to cast a hard ball for a specific hunt, but quite another to cast them up just because!

Pee on the electric fence if you really insist....

 

[DNICK]

I'ts real slow at work right now so I told our manager if we did'nt have so many rules and regulations there I would bring in my casting stuff and cast a few round balls well he said go ahead while I was casting I was also whinning about running low on lead again one of the other guys said his dad had a pile of lead bars in the garage he brought them to work the next day they were soft enought easly scratch with a fingernail so I asked what he wanted for them he called a salvage yard to see what they pay for soft lead and I ended up paying .15 cents a pound he had eight twenty five pound bars so with two hundred pounds of lead for thirty bucks I'm set for a while

 

[spottedpony]

i'm new here but i'll toss in my nickles worth.
As previously stated, the aluminum molds do heat up and cool quickly and i've found sticking my mold into the molten lead until no lead sticks to it when withdrawn brings the mold up to a working temp. I get the best results when it takes the spru 10 or 15 seconds to solidify.
I dont use a thermometer, & try to keep my pure lead at a temp. it just starts to get that yellow/blue cast of color on the surface (and flux sparingly with a bit of beeswax) & by keeping my mold hot enouth the spru sets a little slower as discribed, i have very few rejects and the few times i weigh balls they will come out all within 1 grain.

i use a coleman stove with a cast iron pot (small dutch oven kind of pot) and ladle into my lee single cav. mold, with the theory potential size differences in different mold chambers is minimized.

This is what works best for me, but in general, hot lead, and a hot mold makes good castings.