Hornady hard ball

[Tad Houston]

Anybody try or heard of Hornady's hard balls? Just saw them in midway USA. They use some sort of plastic patch. They might be good for tough game like wild boar, but they sure are expensive-$6 for twenty.

[Snowshoe]

I have some of the plastic patches and tried them out once. I was not impressed at all. If you want more penitration just use a bigger bullet. Just my .02.

[Longcruise]

About ten years ago I tried shooting .433 round balls out of my GPR by loading them in a Hornady .54/44 sabot.  I gues I wasn't the only one doing it cause Hornady issued a warning NOT to do so :eek:

Long story short, they subsequently started selling the exact same thing only called it "hardball" because the ball was hard cast.  A nifty way to take an idea and turn it into a high profit item by using an unneccesary hard round ball.

In any case, the accuracy out of my gpr with the regular hornady sabot and regular home cast .433 balls was super!!  It's a handy way to turn your larger caliber guns into small caliber small game guns.

OTOH, I agree with snowshoe as far as the bigger ball theory goes.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Granted $6 for a box of 20 is expensive.  If you don't plan to shoot very many, $6 is a sight cheaper than any method of shooting a bigger ball.

As pointed out it's possible to use a sabot to make a larger bore shoot a smaller ball.  But I can't think of a cheap and easy way to make a smaller bore shoot a bigger ball.  Unless the twist rate is sufficient to stabilize conicals.

Therefore to increase penetration it makes sense to harden a ball.  Otherwise you're in for 100s of dollars for a whole new gun, or at least a new barrel.

For $20 you can get a Lee ball mold, cast from wheel-weight alloy and drop them from the mold into a bucket of cold water.

[whitecloud]

it makes since,but I am unfamilar with the patch you are talking about.My concern would be "how hard" and if the patch wont blow out.Against my advisement my buddy cast a bunch of conicals out of old type(printing press),wiped his bore in one season,nothing but keyholes after that. :cry:

[HWooldridge]

The British hunters in Africa and India in the last century often mention using hardened balls (and bullets) when taking on tough game.  I'm not sure we have anything on this continent other than maybe Alaskan grizzly that can't be taken with a pure lead ball in any of the normal big calibers of 54 or larger.  A 62 to 70 cal lead pill should kill most any thin skinned animal if the shot is placed right.

[Longcruise]

Well, if a .50 or .54 lead ball won't do the job then it's probably not all that advisable to hit a larger animal with a smaller ball and expect good results just because it's hardened.  There is a substantial reduction in ball size with their hardened ball.

Guess another bigger gun would cost more money, but then I've never been adverse to more guns.

Also, if a .50 or .54 round ball won't do the trick, a .50 or .54 conical should as long as it's short enough to stabilize with the twist of the barrel.

Hornadys hard ball looks like a product looking for a need.  Kinda like that thing that tc came out with a few years back that was used to score round balls to make them break into four pieces.  It seems to have dissapeared.