Author Topic: wheel weights for round balls? (Read 1597 times)

Flinch · « **on:** January 10, 2004, 02:27:16 PM »

I was just wondering if anyone has used wheel weight lead to make round balls? I know that comercially bought round balls are pretty soft, maybe pure lead. Would bad things happen to my muzzle loader if I used a harder alloy like W/W? Also, if pure lead is needed what is a good place to get it?

Bob/FLA · « **Reply #1 on:** January 10, 2004, 02:48:56 PM »

You can use them if you are shooting a smoothbore. Otherwise, you will meet with varying levels of frustration trying to shoot WW.

Pure lead is like gold...it's where you find it. I used to have a small but steady supply form my dentist, they wrap the film in small lead foil. I would get a 5ld box 2x a year. I now get mine at a salvage yard. Bought 100# when I saw it. I got it at $.25 per pound, so it was a good buy. Since then, I have been shooting my smoothrifle more than anything else and have a good tradin supply.

Hope this helps!

Robert · « **Reply #2 on:** January 10, 2004, 03:46:59 PM »

Bob...that probably went over most people's heads. Are you GPAA?

Robert · « **Reply #3 on:** January 10, 2004, 03:54:06 PM »

I have read people's post saying that W/W rip the rifling out of thier nice vintage guns. The other concern is that hard lead does not 'upset'. I am sure they will work, but ....
A good source of soft lead is from old cast iron plumbing. If you see an old house being remodeled or torn down, ask them if there are any old sewer pipes being removed. You can bust it up with a regular hammer. Be careful though, old doo-doo can get you sick.

waksupi · « **Reply #4 on:** January 10, 2004, 04:16:18 PM »

I've been shooting both pure lead, and wheel weights in my rifles for 30+ years. Both seem to work equally as well. At least, I usually finish in the top shooters at the matches. For bench rest work, the pure MAY win out by a very small margin. The WW round balls will give somewhat better penetration on game, as the expansion is somewhat more controlled. They will not hurt your bore. The patch protects it. I don't worry about obduration. If you have a good fit of patch-ball-bore, they will do you well.

Orygun Mark · « **Reply #5 on:** January 10, 2004, 05:21:08 PM »

I agree with waksupi that the patch is important if shooting WW round balls. I have shot many out of 45 and 50 cal rifles without any adverse effects. Accuract doesn't suffer and penetration is awesome. Stem to stern on a blacktail deer. Mark

Bob/FLA · « **Reply #6 on:** January 10, 2004, 06:47:00 PM »

Robert,
Used to be GPAA when I lived in WY.. Did some panning in the mountains...ahhh those beautiful days!

Looked over my last post. Looks like a crack addict was typing. Dang son, I should use spell check sometimes. :?

Anyway, I think I got the point across. I'm happy to see some folks had better results than most I've heard about. Usually I hear about WW shooters suffering with accuracy issues. After reading the previous posts...now I wonder :roll:

Have a good night folks!

Robert · « **Reply #7 on:** January 10, 2004, 07:14:39 PM »

I am just a newbie for sure....just passing on what someone else told me. I have made both pure, and WW., but I wouldn't know what difference they make. Now Minnie Balls...that is another story. If you put a couple of Minnie balls in your hand made from W/W, they ring like bells. Pure lead just goes 'thunk'. I have never had my balls ring though.
Hey Bob...I went with a friend last summer and he taught me how to dredge. I spent an entire day underwater in a cold mountain stream, the cold has a numbing effect so I didn't realize that I was past my limit. The next morning I could hardly move my arms and they were painful for weeks. I want to try some more this upcoming summer. I got all my pans, I know how to get down to black sand, but there just aint no Gold here. HEY..maybe a prospecting forum on here.....

Bob/FLA · « **Reply #8 on:** January 11, 2004, 03:32:21 AM »

The only gold you see in Florida is hanging on people, and you do see a LOT of people with pans outstretched down here...argh...I wish for the good old days. :cry:

jgalar · « **Reply #9 on:** January 11, 2004, 04:00:01 AM »

I have shot ww cast balls in 50 cal rifles and 36 and 44 revolvers. Accuracy is about on par with pure lead. The balls are too hard to swage into the revolver cylinders and I will not use ww again for them. They were also much tougher to seat in the rifles than pure lead. I will stick with pure lead.

You can't cast lead hard enough to damage your rifling.

waksupi · « **Reply #10 on:** January 11, 2004, 04:31:27 AM »

Can you please explain how, and why, you believe it is harder to seat a WW round ball? That doesn't make sense.

Cat Whisperer · « **Reply #11 on:** January 11, 2004, 06:51:51 AM »

Quote from: Bob/FLA

Robert,

Looked over my last post. Looks like a crack addict was typing. Dang son, I should use spell check sometimes. :?

There is nothing like SPELLCHECK to convince you that there is a direct correlation between the amount of beer consumed and eye-hand coordination. I tried typing a 3 page paper while drinking a beer or two. When I ran the spell check the red marks increased profusely towards the middle of the 2nd page! (And continued to get worse from there!)

Ahhh technology!

Good comments on the variability of leading - hard/soft lead, lubrication, fit to the throat/forcing cone etc etc.

Flinch · « **Reply #12 on:** January 11, 2004, 07:29:52 AM »

Thanks for the replies. I guess I will give it a try and see how it goes. It makes sense that the bore would be protected by the patch. If accuracy is good then I have a winner. Im shooting a 54 cal Hawken rifle. I have ample supply of wheel weights but pure lead is more difficult to find. I can by the round balls pretty cheap and just not cast those, but im new to casting and untill the newness wears off I just have to cast everything. Thanks again.......Flinch

Flinch · « **Reply #13 on:** January 11, 2004, 07:31:58 AM »

Guess I need spellcheck too.

Cat Whisperer · « **Reply #14 on:** January 11, 2004, 07:36:10 AM »

Spellcheck or less beer! It's a tough choice!

A friend, who shoots much more black powder that I do, mentioned that the issue with harder lead and round balls was that of getting the lead to engrave in the rifling. His solution was either to use soft lead (his preference) and thin patches or harder lead with thicker patches and HOPE that the rifling would still spin the ball.

jgalar · « **Reply #15 on:** January 11, 2004, 08:12:19 AM »

1) a bullet cast from ww will be oversized from one cast of pure lead

2) pure lead is easier swaged into a revolver cylinder or a bore with a tight fitting patch

savageT · « **Reply #16 on:** January 11, 2004, 08:23:40 AM »

Question: If one were to mix wheel-weight alloy say 50/50 by weight with pure lead would you then get soft enough balls that would grab the rifling? Might be worth trying to see if you can find a doable formulation.

Jim

jgalar · « **Reply #17 on:** January 11, 2004, 08:42:38 AM »

avageT: I don't have a problem with accuracy shooting ww ball, its getting the darn things down the hole. On my revolvers I was afraid that I would break the loading lever getting them in. On the muzzleloaders it took 2 hands to force the ball to seat. So engaging the rifling isn't the problem.

The least amount of non-lead metal in the alloy will make the ball shrink more and the weight will be up. So mixing ww with pure lead will be better than straight ww. However it is still an alloy.

From the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook:
Pure Lead = 5.0 BHN
WW = 8.9 BHN
WW heat treated = 27.1 BHN
Linotype = 21.8 BHN

Also from the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook:
There is a chart listing weights and sizes of bullets cast from the same mold using differnet alloys...here is one of the samples a 45 acp bullet;

1st number will be weight in grains the second the diameter

Lead 235/.4515", WW 232/.4523", #2 alloy 225/.4530", Lino 218/.4535"

So you can see there is quite an increase in diameter and reduction of weight with the increase in hardness of the lead.

savageT · « **Reply #18 on:** January 11, 2004, 08:56:49 AM »

You are aware that plumbing solder is traditionally 50% lead 50% tin for wiping? If this is what is used in sewage line couplings, or is it shreaded/poured pure lead? How does one easily determine the hardness of unknown lead....just by fingernail scratching?

Jim

jgalar · « **Reply #19 on:** January 11, 2004, 09:14:57 AM »

If using old lead pipe for muzzleloading bullets - don't use the soldered joints. Scratching the lead to test for hardness is about as good as anything else for testing lead without resorting to a Brinell tester. You can also cast ball from known pure lead and WW - weigh and measure the critters and it will give you a baseline for unknown lead. The lighter your bullets are from an unknown lead the more nonlead metals are in them.

One thing the Lyman book shows is how hard a heat treated WW bullet is. Harder than Linotype. At least on the surface of the bullet. No need to buy expensive Linotype for blending, just put your cast and sized bullet in the oven for 1/2 - 1 hour then dump em into cold water. Since it is only cased hardened it has more of the cohesiveness of the softer alloys and more likely to expand and not shatter than harder alloys.

I use WW for all my smokeless loads without problems, I just don't like it for muzzleloaders. :-)

waksupi · « **Reply #20 on:** January 11, 2004, 11:02:32 AM »

"A friend, who shoots much more black powder that I do, mentioned that the issue with harder lead and round balls was that of getting the lead to engrave in the rifling. His solution was either to use soft lead (his preference) and thin patches or harder lead with thicker patches and HOPE that the rifling would still spin the ball."

There is another one that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. WW balls will show the pattern of the fabric weave when started. If you are having trouble starting them, your ball is too large. The ball is not, or should not, be engraving the rifling. That is the job of the patch, to hold the grooves. You'll never see a short starter in an old original bag, nor any in the accouterments of anyone who has shot a long time.

When developing a load for a round ball rifle, the patching should always be selected before the ball diameter. The striped pillow ticking has been the standard for many decades. The precut, prelubed patches available are usually too thin, with a low thread count. Not what you want. They're a sucker product.

The rifleing will spin the ball, regardless of the alloy or straight lead. As the mass of the projectile starts up the bore incline, it is supported by the patch riding in the grooves, and there is no way the ball is going to spin at a different rate than the patch. If a ball is recovered showing any marked signs of obduration from a rifle, I strongly suspect the ball is not being seated correctly on the charge.

jgalar · « **Reply #21 on:** January 11, 2004, 11:31:48 AM »

you are right waksupi, the ww balls are too big for the bore. My mold casts nice sized pure lead though. I use .015 thick pillow ticking that I buy by the yard. If I tried a smaller mold or used a thinner patch I would be able to load easier, but what I have works well with pure lead so I will stick with it. The WW balls do shoot OK, but to much of a pain to load. The problem I have with WW balls in my muzzleloaders is the size.

I still would not use them on the revolvers, like I said the loading levers feel like they are about to break pushing the balls into the chamber. Being oversized is not an issue here as larger sized pure lead will just trim off a thicker ring while loading. The problem with the revolvers is the hardness.

It doesn't hurt to try them, if they don't work for you just melt em down and make smokeless bullets out of them. I have 8 guns that I have tried them in and they don't work for me. I wish they did, I have gobs of WW lead.

Black Jaque Janaviac · « **Reply #22 on:** January 12, 2004, 06:06:23 AM »

I've been beat several times by guys shooting WW roundballs.

I have noticed the difference in trying to seat WW ball vs. pure Pb. In addition to the slight difference in diameter, the hardness may play a part. Try to squish a WW ball in a channel lock pliers. Unless you're a gorilla, you'll merely mar the surface with the teeth marks. Put a pure Pb ball in the same pliers. Any normal man can squish a pure Pb ball completely out of round.

I've tried this experiment on several other lead sources. Telephone cable sheathing is soft, but substantially harder than sewer lead. The sewer lead is almost like butter.

Punching paper is not what I'm pursuing as much as I am looking for good roundball performance on game. Since shooting a batch of Pb balls made from sewer lead, I've had less pass-throughs, and done less tracking.

I don't buy into the rifling engraving stuff entirely. Just as a .45 JHP will spin with the rifling when fired from a .50 ML using a plastic sabot, a .490 WW ball will spin in a .50 using a patch.

Getting the ball to obturate may have other effects. You may get less blow-by, thereby preserving patch integrity/accuracy. But as I've said, I've been beaten by a number of folks who shoot WW cast balls.

X-man · « **Reply #23 on:** March 18, 2004, 01:14:11 PM »

I've found that pure lead is the only way to go when casting round balls for use in blackpowder revolvers. WW are just too hard on the user, trying to seat them, and the gun. Pure lead balls are the exact opposite. Softer metal directly translates into a much easier task of seating the ball. I haven't tried this in rifles, as yet, so will refrain from comment. X-man...

Longcruise · « **Reply #24 on:** March 18, 2004, 04:27:00 PM »

I had difficulty loading (tight patch and fit) AND lousy accuracy with hard balls. I'm sure others have had better results though.

One thing to consider is that the hardness of whell weight castings will change. They start off at around 8+ bhn when cast and when left to age at room temp they will migrate to as high as 12bhn.

Badnews Bob · « **Reply #25 on:** March 18, 2004, 09:22:44 PM »

The locale ace hardware here sell pure lead 5lb ingots, they usually have 6 or 7 onhand, about 5 dollars apiece, alittle steep but there very clean and already in a managable ingot.

Tom W. · « **Reply #26 on:** March 20, 2004, 06:21:50 PM »

I've tried, like others, W/W roundballs and a few maxiballs. I can live with the hard roundballs in the rifle, but not the maxi's. I also tried to load some W/W balls into a revolver, and it didn't take but one ball to make me decide to recast them as bullets for the .357 I owned at the time. I now save some pure lead for my smokepole, and alloy the rest with babbitt for casting for my .44, .45's, .480 and .30 caliber. I am blessed, however. In Troy, Alabama is Sanders Lead Company. I have a friend who owns a business that deals with the company I work for, and he will get me a 60 lb. ingot of pure lead whenever I want one at no charge. :lol:

drummerboy · « **Reply #27 on:** April 06, 2004, 02:28:56 PM »

The one common denominator that everyone has mentioned is the difficulty in seating the WW balls, you may have the tendency to damage the rifling at the crown if your not careful, having to push harder. If you know any builders, not just old plumbing pipe, but lead shower pans are great too! Plumber supply houses sell pure lead also. Good luck man! P.S. did you think you would get this many responses? Nice to know you have friends!!!!!