newbie question...lead vs alloy

[Don Krag]

Being fairly new to the whole sport of muzzleloading, what are the pluses and minuses of pure lead vs alloyed lead? I've always been told that alloyed at least 10% is needed to avoid excess fouling and to help the balls hold their shape. However, I've been told several times that pure lead is pretty highly sought after. What are ya'lls thoughts on this?

[Snowshoe]

Pure lead is all that goes into my muzzleloader, balls or bullets.

[Slamfire]

Well 40 to one is only twice as hard as "pure" lead, and it sure fills a mold nice. Smoothbore don't care, wheel weights is plenty good enough for them. 

[jgalar]

Wheel weight balls may shoot Ok, but you will catch hell trying to seat them. The ball will be oversized compared to pure and a LOT harder to seat. I tried them in revolvers and thought I would break the loading lever getting them seated. In rifles they were a real bear to get down the barrel and seat.  I don't think its worth the effort even though I have buckets and buckets of ingots from wheel weights.

Pure lead is the way to go.

[Trapper-Jack]

I've always saved the softest lead for my muzzleloaders and the harder stuff for my cartridge guns.  I feel that the soft stuff will bump up a little into the riflings when it is seated onto the powder and make it shoot a little better. 

[captchee]

  The rule is soft lead ,

Now I been doing this along time , built many  a gun  and I cant tell you the why of the above .
 Its true soft lead loads easier. However drop the thinness of the patch or reduce the size of the mould and  alloys will load just as easy .

 Some say that alloys create leading in the barrel ?   
Well MMMM ? This would hold true if you   were using an over sized ball and no patch . If a person is checking their patches and  keeping the barrel up then they would find that  their patches are un torn. Thus there is no way that  material other then fabric  from the patch can be imparted to the rifling .

I to  use alloy in my smooth bore  and I find it imprints no different then with soft lead .

 Now penetration wise  I do  suspect the harder alloy would penetrate better then soft lead . However even that im not real sure of . I have taken more then a couple  ball from the off side of elk  and found that even after going through a shoulder and a rib they have not lost a whole lot of weight.

  Ok so here is what I do when making up  a batch of balls . I want my mix where I can maker  the ball with my thumbnail   if even in the slightest way . Even alloy “depending on what one “   I can leave a mark . But I prefer my RB to be just  a little softer.  “ really no good reason , I just like it that way “
  I  have a Lee ingot mould and thus I melt all my materials, to include brass and aluminum into  ingots .
 So for round balls I  go 50/ 50  one ingot of soft lead to 1 ingot of alloy ? Tier weight.

 Your Imo not going to hurt anything by shooting alloy just remember.  You may have to go to a smaller mould or reduce you patch size  depending on what alloy you use . The only real purpose int that is for easy of loading

[Slamfire]

Wheel weight balls may shoot Ok, but you will catch hell trying to seat them. The ball will be oversized compared to pure and a LOT harder to seat. I tried them in revolvers and thought I would break the loading lever getting them seated. In rifles they were a real bear to get down the barrel and seat.  I don't think its worth the effort even though I have buckets and buckets of ingots from wheel weights.

Pure lead is the way to go.

I reckon my .535 wheel weight balls will fit in my .56 Renegade smoothie ok. 

[Don Krag]

Well, everything I have is smoothbore. From what I've read on this thread and in several others, I'll stick with the pure lead. I have a pile of pure lead (~1200 lbs) for some other projects, that I was going to alloy a bit of for bullets/balls. I'll leave it as-is....seems easier that way as well!

[flintlock]

Soft lead for 3 reasons in a rifle...

1)When you load the ball, the soft lead will actually swage itself to the bore of the rifle, that's why it might be harder to load the first 6 inches or so, then slides down easier...Also, load a ball sometimes, push down to the breach and then pull the ball...You will notice the "hatch" pattern of the patch embedded into the ball, less so on the grooves than on the lands...

2)Upon firing a ball "squats"...It actually gets fatter because of the rapid increase in pressure, this helps to seal the gasses, giving better velocity...

3)When the ball hits the target (deer)....A pure lead ball tends to flatten faster than a harder ball, transferring energy faster to the animal...In addition, pure lead has a tendence to hold together better, so you retain more weight, increasing penetration...

[S.S.]

Flintlock is right on the mark.