WHAT U Going to DO ?

[Birddog 1]

For all you boys & girls that live in the condor range country what are you going to shoot? You going to go bye a 1/28 barrel and put it on your Hawkens and look like a traditionalest and shoot the Barnes bullets or you just going to say screw it and use a PRB? I went with the diffrent barrel  because I am a law abiding American citizen that will not vote for that Kennedy K.A. Arnold EVER.

Nim

[coyotejoe]

If I were you I'd get the heck out of the People's Republic of Kalifornia! As an FFL holder I just received notice that before I ship a gun to an FFL in the PRK I must first obtain a letter from the state insuring that said FFL holder is authorized to receive said firearm! I have no idea how difficult that may be but I also have no desire to find out, I simply will not sell a firearm to anyone in the PRK!   Remember the Eagle's song "They Called it Paradise"? 

[captchee]

 well lets see . i dont live in that area but there are a couple of substatues that have  no lead and thus would pass the  fine print .
they cast like lead . wieght is alittle diffrent but  that just  means working up a new load .
 no need for a new barrel  or for bying  a dozen  projectiles for 20 bucks eather .

 the real question is what are those folks who dont shoot muzzleloaders going to do their amou price will go through the roof 
 

[Buckskins & Black Powder]

Ah think ah will just wrap a tight patch around my ramrod'N shoot'em with that

[yooper]

Ah think ah will just wrap a tight patch around my ramrod'N shoot'em with that

  Just make sure yore ramrod doesn't say "this product has been proven to cause cancer in the state of Kalfornia"...

[Ladobe]

  Just make sure yore ramrod doesn't say "this product has been proven to cause cancer in the state of Kalfornia"...

The PRK is a cancer to the rest of the country - an undeniable fact.   I saw the error of my ways and got out in 1976.   But if I still lived in Carmel in Monterey County (the main real range of the condor), I'd shoot PRB.

[Victor3]

 I'm going to continue to shoot lead bullets for the most part, just like I have for the past 40 years in the Condor range (I can do so legally since I generally shoot at paper and only hunt occasionally).

 When I do hunt, a few rounds are all I need. I don't want to pay for lead-free ammo, but what can you do? Maybe they will start an ammo voucher program, but I'm not holding my breath waiting. I'll 'bite the bullet' and pay up.

 Stupid law. I think after all is said and done, they'll find out that them big buzzards are eating wheel weights stuck in road kill...

[coyotejoe]

well lets see . i dont live in that area but there are a couple of substatues that have  no lead and thus would pass the  fine print .
they cast like lead . wieght is alittle diffrent but  that just  means working up a new load .
 no need for a new barrel  or for bying  a dozen  projectiles for 20 bucks eather .

 the real question is what are those folks who dont shoot muzzleloaders going to do their amou price will go through the roof 
 

For centerfire rifles there are solid copper or brass bullets that have been available for years and have a good reputation on game. Something like that might also be useable from a sabot for hunting.  For the shooter of patched round balls there is no substitute for lead. Tin and pewter (which is mostly tin) can be cast but are about half the density of lead and four times the hardness, not at all acceptable for a ball. When you consider the poor ballistic properties of a lead ball you can imagine how useless a tin ball might be. A fellow on another site has been playing around with glass marbles and hard rubber balls as a low cost option for practice and plinking but they would have no application for hunting beyond maybe a short range load for small game. For round balls there is just no substitute for lead and I can't imagine there ever will be.

[captchee]

 there ARE  alloys that are as soft as lead or near to it  , cast like lead , and have atomic numbers comparable to lead   yet carry 0 lead .
also as to the hardness .and what’s suitable .
This depends on what you want .
 If your after expansion on target then  a soft projectile is what your after . However if penetration is what your after then you want something that is harder .
 I have hunted for years with case rb made fro WW . They work great . I also have used brass RB . The work well to  but  take special equipment to cast
 The round ball is a very good projectile , within its effective range .  When folks exceed that range , that’s where you run into problems

as said .  depending on what your doing  or whating , lead is the best . however  if thats not an option there are other items that will work . just be sure to look at the fine print of this law . you vertualy have to have  no lead in your projectile at all

[longcaribiner]

A guy I used to compete against experimented years ago with shooting patched round plastic balls of different plastics.  Now his purpose was so he could shoot indoors.   He had a tiny hobby style injection machine and cast plastic from melted down old deteregent bottles into his Lee molds.  With some of the new high density plastics, there may be some way to come up with a ball that is all dense plastic, composite material or add plastic around a dense metal core. 

[coyotejoe]

there ARE  alloys that are as soft as lead or near to it  , cast like lead , and have atomic numbers comparable to lead   yet carry 0 lead .
also as to the hardness .and what’s suitable .

Just exactly WHAT alloys might those be?  Gold wouldn't be very practical, people are already chaffing over the cost of lead. If any one of these mysterious alloys of which you speak could actually be practically applied I should think they would have long been loaded into lead-free shotgun shells.
  The requirement of a soft metal is not about expansion on impact, but about accuracy. The ball must be soft enough to take the imprint of the lands or accuracy goes out the window. I know some people do cast balls of wheel weights but they also admit they don't get fine accuracy with hard balls, they use them for plinking only.

[captchee]

 Gold isn’t an alloy .
 yes they have and are being used . however as  when used in projectiles that exceed 2200 FPS” actually little higher  but I rounded it off “ it must be jacketed  just  as lead must be  or it comes apart .
 Now some folks would point to lead free pewter’s . But these very greatly in weight .
Also  they don’t meet the 1%  writing of the California bann .
 This same thing goes for Babbitt  which depending on the mix , has 30 -70% lead .
 
 Now bistmith  isn’t really an option either like it is for shot . The reason is that its very brittle  and for a projectile the size of a rb  it just doesn’t hold together like  it does with shot .
 So basicly what your left with is the Cerro blends .

 But  you have to be very careful about which ones . even these while being low on lead  are to high to meet this   law .

Cerrobend Tin 13.3%, Bismuth 50%, Lead 26.7% Cadmium 10%
Cerrosafe Tin 11.3%, Bismuth 42.5% Lead 37.7% Cadmium 8.5%
Cerrolow 136 Tin 12% Bismuth 49% Lead 18% Indium 21%
Cerrolow 117 Tin 8% Bismuth 4.7% Lead 22.6% Cadmium 5.3% Indium 19.1% (source Birchon's Dictionary of Metallurgy London 1965)

 now the following alloy’s contain no lead however their cost is also up there at 15-19 a lb .
 I have however seen it at 10 .
  Butstill  not as much as buying a new barrel and then paying out the hind end for a dozen bullets  or struggling with bullets that are not designed to be fired I your barrel .

 they are  Low 281 and low 281-338  and you can melt it in you lee pot
.
 now 281 is about the closes to lead  though it is harder . but again this is only a  problem depending on what  side of the projectile issue you fall on , IE expansion or penetration
Personally I prefer  less expansion and more penetration. But that’s just my preference 
 
Antimony, Bismuth ,Cadmium ,Lead ,Tin cost 1-9 lb 10-49 lb 50 + lb
Low 281 /0% 58% 0% 0% 42% 19.99 17.99 15.99
Low 281-338 /0% 40% 0% 0% 60% 19.99 17.99 15.99

again as i stated  some time back . this law was suported by more then a few bullet manufactures .

 the reason is that  most home casters dont know about all the different alloy's available  and some of these alloys simply cant be cast  in a simple pot . thus it cuts out the home caster . thus forcing folks to purchase thier over priced  products

 but for about 400.00 you can by a home foundry that will  melt  to liquid  anything  with a fluid  melting point of under 2300 Deg F .
 thus with steal moulds you can cast your own brass projectiles  if  a person takes the time to learn what brass alloy is used .
  if a person wants to be a dandy and cast silver and gold , NP .
 Copper , NP . glass  NP .
  in fact  you can do  all these right at home off of a propane bottle
 but you have to LEARN or you will hurt yourself
 the problem is a whole lot of folks simply dont want to LEARN

[coyotejoe]

Ridiculous!

[Bear Rider]

Vote with your feet.

Which would you rather wake up to?

This:


Or This:


There are houses within 15 minutes of that beach starting at less than $50,000. It's a big world outside of the People's Republic.

[captchee]

Ridiculous!

whats ridiculous  coyote ?
 i have cast from all the above . i also have cast  brass as well as copper and yes even  silver ' silver for event awards , i have nevrs shot it LOL .
 but i have shot   and cast all the caro blends i showed you above

[coyotejoe]

To even bother with copper, brass, tin or any material of lesser density than lead is ridiculous. Lead itself is just barely dense enough to make a round ball effective to 100 yards. Copper balls would maybe make a 25 yard load, if you could keep them on target, which I doubt. As I explained before, lead needs to be soft to be shootable. To obtain accuracy with a patched round ball it needs to be engraved by the lands and soft enough to be started and rammed downbore by hand, only pure lead is soft enough to shoot accurately from a muzzleloading rifle.
 If there were any "practical" alternative to lead, soft, dense, affordable and easily formed, it would have been used in shotshells for the past thirty years.

[tn_junk]

Back 20 years or so ago, when I was working as a design engineer for a second tier weapons system supplier, we worked on a tungsten powder mixed with epoxy and other fillers. Was cast into a standard bullet mould. Acted pretty much like a lead bullet.
It is doable, for about $4-$6 per bullet.

alan

[captchee]

To even bother with copper, brass, tin or any material of lesser density than lead is ridiculous. Lead itself is just barely dense enough to make a round ball effective to 100 yards. Copper balls would maybe make a 25 yard load, if you could keep them on target, which I doubt. As I explained before, lead needs to be soft to be shootable. To obtain accuracy with a patched round ball it needs to be engraved by the lands and soft enough to be started and rammed downbore by hand, only pure lead is soft enough to shoot accurately from a muzzleloading rifle.
 If there were any "practical" alternative to lead, soft, dense, affordable and easily formed, it would have been used in shotshells for the past thirty years.

Actually this is a miss conception  a round ball is not engraved by the  lands . It never touches the lands or groves  . if you remove the patch even a  solid Granite ball  , if of the same size will simply roll down you barrel .  you cant get any easier loading then that . what plays the biggest part in  dificulty in loading is the thickness  and material of your patch . its a give and take  issue concerning them . to thick and its hard to load even soft lead . to thin and they wont  seal  or they burn through .

 If you mike your bore , you will find that  the  ball is normally  5 to 10 thousandths   under bore size .
 The patch is what actually fills the rifling  .  The softer the lead  the better the patch grips. the rifling  this imparting spin to the ball as it goes down the bore .
To hard a ball and the patch will slip around the ball . Thus the spin is not completely imparted  to the ball .
 Now of course this  changes if you are shooting an un patched round ball of  true bore diameter.   These were call dumb dumbs   and were either  hammered to a spherical shape prior to loading  or  the shape was caused by the loading process .  These are mostly found in very limited an rear historical references

While I would agree that lead  is still the best  for the application , if an when these laws start to spread then we have to find another substitute.
 
 Part of finding that is  learning how to get that to work  like we want it .
 The problem with brass is  that  its so hard you cant get the  patch  to hold the ball .
  Now mind you for a smooth bore , it actually shoots very well   to well beyond the distances your  thinking .
 Now with a rifle , what  I found  was that if  the brass and copper ball  was imprinted “ same goes for some alloys , used  for wheel weights “. The patch could grab it  and hold it . Thus accuracy wasn’t lost once a load was worked up for it . Basically if you cant scratch the ball with you thumb nail , its best to imprint it
 Now expansion was about 0  when fired through a simi solid target .
 To imprint the brass what we would do is  lay the ball on a file . Using a board  we would press down on the ball and slowly roll it across the  file . What was left was  checkered ring  around the ball . The ball is then loaded with this imprinting  facing the patch .
   As to loading , I found the brass balls loaded no  harder in my rifle then a lead ball did
 Now that was using just a standard Red  or yellow brass  and copper that you can get at any plumbing store . Actually the yellow brass was from empty cartridge casings that I  picked up while at the range .

 But again this isn’t to say that  any of this is better then lead . Its not . Lead gives you  the best of all possible  out comes .. Its  easy and cheep  to cast  even the most in experienced person can learn to cast it quickly  to a reasonable result . It doesn’t take any special equipment to cast .
 It IMO is truly the best  hands down
 However  again if these laws start to spread , we have to find other  material to use  and then LEARN how to make them work  .
 What we will find is  that they will work and work well .
Anybody remember the Hornady  copper jacketed round ball that they used to market ?
 Part of the problem I found with them is they would slip the patch  and thus accuracy at distance suffered . But if you imprinted them , they shot just as good as any lead ball

[bioprof]

If the ball slipped in the patch, how would you know?   You can't look down the barrel while you're firing the round.    I'm not saying your wrong, just wondering how you would know?  Accuracy could be affected by other factors as well, so just because your accuracy fell off, you couldn't necessarily say that the ball was slipping.

[captchee]

well  basically its by the accuracy falling off .  But that’s just a hint and as you say , no real proof of anything . Anytime you change  the load or a component of that load , the accuracy will change to a degree . Sometimes just a little other times greatly 

but i you can also see it in the patch   when you pick them up  and check them . the center ring will be longer  and you also find the  weave distorted  or torn  in a nice circle  around the outer edge of the ball .
 you normally need to  also look at more then one patch and make compressions.
 When working up a load , you should be  reading your patches anyway .
 The patch  most always  will tell the tail  of what’s going on  .

other times its just a feeling of "I wonder ?"
 even with  hard lead balls  one can  quickly engrave around the circumference of 4 or 5 balls and try them  and see if it makes any difference in accuracy with the patch gripping better . If it does ,  and your patches read better , then it’s a pretty safe bet  you have slipping to some degree going on  .

 the other way is to actually pull a ball . with soft lead  the patch will actually leave a weave imprint on the ball . If there isn’t any imprint then  the ball can rotate slower then the patch .
 Now if you patch is extremely tight . It will impart the rotation  to the ball just by friction . B ut in most cases it still allows the ball to slip a little .

so its many things really  that are needed so as to draw that conclussion  .
loss of accuracy and in ability to find a load .
Poor patch condition with  tears or scuff marks in a circular pattern or  an overly extended pattern on the patch .
  Finding that engraving the  hard projectile tightens your group 

[Fred Ford]

Hard cast balls shoot quite well in smooth bores, even ballbearings work ok. What happens if you dryball your gun?
How are you going to get the ball out? GOOD LUCK!
With a rifled bore, a soft lead ball actually takes some of the rifleing imprint through the patch, on loading.
Futhermore, when the powder burns, pressure builds, the lead actually expands a little, gripping the rifleing even more, as the ball rotates down the bore.
An ideal ball would be the same diameter as the land to land measurement of the inside of the barrel, and the proper patch thickness would be depth of the rifleing.
That being the case, the patch would leave an impression on the ball,as it slides down the barrel, even prior to the powder burning.
That is why hard balls, will not shoot as well in rifled barrels.
Cartridge guns, the projectile is greater in diameter than the land diameter of the barrel. Try and shoot a hard steel bullet out of your favourite Weatherby.
F.F.

[captchee]

Pretty simple really , they blow out with a standard Co2 discharger or  with priming powder  just as with a soft ball . The only thing you have a problem with is a screw in puller  unless that  tip is equipped with a modified face like  a self taping screw .
 
While a round ball IMO does expand under pressure , it doesn’t engrave into the rifling unless it’s a very , very tight fit  in the first place . There are any number of slow speed photos  running about the net of round balls in flight . None that I know of show engraving .
 If you have some that do , please post them .
The subject as to how much or in fact if any a ball does expand is also a mater of some debate  and is really a case by case basis

Also as I said before , there are accounts of using oversized balls  that would be engraved  or hammered into the rifling  but these do not take patches .

 The point is fellas , a muzzleloader will shot just about anything  you put down the barrel .
 There are all kinds of historic accounts of items other then lead . IE  Wood , Brass , gravel , seeds ,even arrows .
 The trick isn’t to find something that will shoot out of the barrel but in learning whats needed to shoot that item accurately