What's your go-to round ball?

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arcticap said:
I can understand the theory.
The balls can also obturate when fired.
Here's some balls that were fired from an ASM Colt Sheriff that was stored loaded and lubed for a long time that resulted in weak powder and which were basically like weak squib loads.
I recovered them after being fired through a paper target into foam target backing.
The portion of the balls that contacted the rifling seems to be fairly substantial.
I don't recall if this ASM's chambers were swagged or not.
Can you tell if the balls were cut or swagged when loaded?
I didn't load it but from the deep ramming rings on top of the balls they look like they were slightly over-sized.
Perhaps every gun or brand has slightly different barrel and chamber dimensions.

View attachment 886049 View attachment 886050 View attachment 886051
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I guess you’d need to check the diameters and compare it to the groove depth to see if they filled the bore or not, assuming the chambers are undersized.
 
I cast pure lead .451" from a Lyman iron single cavity mold that I have owned since 1972.
Much has been said about the need for using oversized .454", but in my old Euroarms Remington and my current Pietta Remington .451" swages down enough to fit tightly and shoot well.
 
Mr.Old stumpy..are ur chambers chamfered? U mentioned the balls swaging so it got me curious. And have u ever shot .454 and noticed a difference?
 
TheOutlawKid said:
Mr.Old stumpy..are ur chambers chamfered? U mentioned the balls swaging so it got me curious. And have u ever shot .454 and noticed a difference?
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1) "Mr." was my father. :)
2) Nope, the Pietta isn't noticeably chamfered, although the edge has been broken from the factory.
3) Euroarms was the same.
4) Never tried .454". Way back in 1972 the .451" RB was universally recommended and it works for me.
5) Owned a Ruger Old Army and used the recommended .457" cast from a Lee RB mold in this revolver only and these worked great.
6) You might need .454" in Uberti revolvers (larger chamber) and they might be more accurate in Pietta revolvers (more flat bearing surface).

Used a dial caliper on my balls (odd sensation o_O) and they do indeed measure out at .451" as cast.
The samples were cast of pure lead a few years ago and are still .451".
 
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Old Stumpy said:
1) "Mr." was my father. :)

Lol didnt mean to offend. I call everyone Mr or Ms./Mrs. out of respect and out of habbit...being also that im decades younger than most people especially in this forum ive assumed just about everyone is my elder. If you all saw me you wouldnt think i was a day over 22-24 or so...and im not much older than that either. Although i am young and born of recent times and considered a millenial...i do believe i was born atleast 170 years too late.
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Old Stumpy said:
1) "Mr." was my father. :)
".
Click to expand...

Lol didnt mean to offend. I call everyone Mr or Ms./Mrs. out of respect and out of habbit...being also that im decades younger than most people especially in this forum ive assumed just about everyone is my elder. If you all saw me you wouldnt think i was a day over 22-24 or so...and im not much older than that either. Although i am young and born of recent times and considered a millenial...i do believe i was born atleast 170 years too late.
 
Hornady LRBs for my rifles (.490"). My own cast LRBs from a Lyman RB mold....also at .490"
Hornady also for my .50 caliber pistols...same as for the rifles.
For the two revolvers, a .36 cal 1861 Army and a Pietta 1851 Yank .44 snub nose....again, it is Hornady.
For my 16 gauge Fowler I cast my own RBs at .654".
Pete
 
Like many here, I started out using .451 and .375 on Pietta revolvers - just cause. Eventually, I determined that .454 and .380 make a tighter pattern and work a lot better, overall. I was getting some serious bullet creep on a couple of .36's using .375 but with .380's that problem went away.
 
Mr.eyrie...piettas or ubertis? I know ubertis will have bullet creep if using .375 in their navies. But piettas can use .375 or .380 without the creep. After reaming my cylinders to .375 i use bullets/balls with a .380 size. Although i also usr kaido conicals that are .377 and they work fine with no creep but i think the wide band gripping the chamber helps.
 
I cast them myself. All my conicals/balls are self casted. I mainly shoot conicals though
 
I hear that the Buffallo Bullet Company makes pretty good bullets. They make all sorts of muzzleloader calibers. For .36 cal at .375, for .44 cal at .451, and .45 cal at .457 and some people swear by there performance...others not so much. I guess its just like with any other bullet... depends on building up a load for ur particular gun. I have my own custom conicals...its like a tapered R.E.A.L made for .36 navies, it has 3 bands and the top band that seals the chamber is .380 and i love it...very accurate and packs a punch. Im going to tweek my design and make the lube grooves not so deep to bump up the weight from 130 grains to maybe up to 140 grains. Although as is now it is one hard hitting accurate conical that keeps the gun lubed just like a "Big Lube" brand bullet that gets high praises. Heres my conical design next to a kaido conical. Kaidos are actually more accurate than round ball. Mike Belleview did a vid on it comparing round ball, kaido conicals, and pointed civil war type conicals.
20190126_105547.jpg
 
SlowFuse said:
Are there any commercially cast conicals worth looking at? Not familiar with these at all.
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Track does offer conicals for .44 percussion revolvers here. I have no experience with them.

Old South Firearms offers several different conicals for cap and ball revolvers as well. (No experience with them either.)

I am using .380 conicals cast from an "Eras Gone" mold. Both the mold and the bullets are perfect. I don't know of anyone offering the cast bullets for sale.
 
I only buy .454 and .457 balls. The .451s shoot OK in my Pietta Remington, but cost the same as .454s, which seem to shoot better with heavier charges. My Old Army will shoot .454s just fine if I keep the charge at 25 grains or so. Upward of that, .457 is better.

I never found any difference whatsoever between Speer and Hornady swaged balls, outside of price; Hornady is generally cheaper. I'd buy a box of Speers so I'd have the nice recloseable plastic box, and fill it with Hornady balls when the Speers all went downrange.
 
Reviving this thread instead of starting another one... along the same topic.

So i've been thinking of casting round balls. Many of replies here mentioned casting your own opposed to buying swaged.

I've read deep into it a few years ago when I wanted to do it, castboolits forum and some of Fryxells articles from lasc in .pdf form but never committed. So I get the gist of things. I bought lead bars/wire/ingots and whatever else I found a deal on then but most of it was the harder stuff like hardball or lyman blend for the type bullets I had an interest in. Also bought a couple molds, Alox (for Lee tumble type molds) etc. I got a small 10 lb pot from Barlows (a fishing company) that I realized would be just about useless. It's literally just the metal pot that you put over a heat source. By time I bought a camp stove and the propane to melt on I could just buy a Lee furnace melter.

Here's the question. When it comes to melting clean lead, what do you like? Or what have you found works best? I can use a dutch oven on a turkey fryer base for the dirty stuff if I ever want to melt scrap, but i'm content with buying cleaned alloys and pure ingots no more than I think I will be using this. So fluxing wheel weights, pipe and scrap in large qtys is not really in the equation right now.

I'm stuck deciding on bottom pour versus dipping. There's the Lee precision melter which seems too small at only 4 lb capacity. Then what looks like more reasonable 10 and 20lb pots Lyman big dipper and Lee magnum melter. The Lee Pro 4 and Lee Production pot look like the only options for bottom pour from what I see, not wanting to spend $150 or more on the RCBS and other models. I've heard that if i'm dipping to get one of the nicer ladles with a pour spout versus the open top cheap kind. So that justifies the bottom pour route as well since those ladles run $25-35, half the price of the dip style smelters just mentioned. I just hear about the Lee bottom pours having clogs, leaks etc so for the small amount I would be casting i'm torn on if ladle method is ok or not.
 
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Ladle method would work fine for what you want. It you need a clean lead source you can always buy lead flashing from Home Depot. It is pure lead, and it is easy to cut with tin snips into pieces to melt in your pot.
 
Go to a scrap yard and get lead roof flashing, u can buy it at home depot as stated above but its a whole lot cheaper at a scrap yard. Or buy pure from rotometals.com and my suggestion is a Lee bottom pour. I own one and i love it. Its a whole lot faster than laddle pouring. All you really need is the Lee 10 pound bottom pour pot, a cheap spoon with holes in it to help filter out the crud from your lead when you "skim" it, and your molds for bullets/balls. I recommend aluminum molds to start..Lee makes great quality molds for a very low price. And i use Frankford Arsenal Clean Lead Fluxing Compound. A little goes a very long way and cleans your lead way better than saw dust and bees wax etc. You can get all of this for less than 100 bucks. Its all i use to cast...other than the different molds i have purchased both stock and custom made. If you go custom i highly, super duper highly, recommend going through Tom from Accuratemolds.com. i will also admit...at first it was very intimidating...but you just gotta do it and you end up seeing how truely easy it is to cast...especially pure lead for muzzleloaders where u dont have to worry about certain calculations of mixes to get a specific hardness etc. But i cannot recommend anything more than Lees 10 pound bottom pour spout lead pot...its simple to use and easy to get a good rhythm going even for someone starting out. Oh....and watch out for the tinsel fairy! No wet lead or water anywhere near your melted lead! And wear long sleeves and pants of natural fibers....no polyester etc. Protect yourself and practice very good air circulation, dont eat or drink while casting etc.
 
SlowFuse said:
I've heard that if i'm dipping to get one of the nicer ladles with a pour spout versus the open top cheap kind. So that justifies the bottom pour route as well since those ladles run $25-35, half the price of the dip style smelters just mentioned. I just hear about the Lee bottom pours having clogs, leaks etc so for the small amount I would be casting i'm torn on if ladle method is ok or not.
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The Lyman style of egg dipper works great. I have one that I have been using for decades.
I used to use a Lyman cast iron pot and a Coleman Naphtha camp stove outdoors, but stopped doing that and refurbished it as a spare for camping. This style of pouring bullets works fine except for the limitations of handling and using Naphtha. The separate pot holds over 10 pounds of metal and the bail handle and pour spout makes it relatively easy to pour into ingot molds if you lift it with a homemade lifting hook and grasp the integral tab opposite the spout with pliers.

I now use a Lee bottom pour pot that no longer bottom pours. Try as I might I wasn't able to clear the debris that is plugging it. My fault for not using the cleanest alloy, but it should be designed to be able to clear. So I removed the valve mechanism and use it as a dipper pot.

I have always just used bits of plentiful household paraffin candles that can be liberated for free for fluxing, and an old soup spoon for skimming and stirring.

The thing is that I don't process large quantities of lead, so I don't have any need for a large smelting set-up, and I don't want to invest in one. Nor do I wish to try pouring 20 or 30 pounds of molten lead from an already heavy cast iron pan into ingot molds.
I bought the large 4" diameter Magnum Melter dipper pot from Lee and a spare ladle from Lyman, and intend to put this into operation soon. I can process scrap lead with it easy enough
 
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I have never had an issue with my bottom pour Lee pot getting clogged. But then again I only cast pure lead. Ill even leave the bottom 1/4 still filled with lead sometimes and let it cool and harden....then next time i use the pot i wait for the leftover lead to melt and it pours just fine. Maybe its the alloys that messes it up? Im sure the spout can be cleaned out or unplugged. I never let the flux and floaty junk get near the bottom towarss the spout either...keep enough lead inside the pot to keep the junk close to the top. You donr want that crud going down the spout. Ive yet ro have a problem with my 10 pound Lee bottom pour pot.
 
What @Old Stumpy said made me think of something. Even if the bottom pour isnt malfunctioning would it make any sense to get a bottom pour and just not use that feature if I wanted to ladel pour? Then I would have the option to do both. Sorry if that's a stupid question, I've never seen one in action to know how they work.

@TheOutlawKid swapping subjects here slightly but I made some "grease cookies/lube pills" whatever you like to call them. It was just a crisco and paraffin mix. Worked ok. I wanted to get more info on your paper towel discs if you didn't mind re-sharing. I couldn't find it earlier.

I'm going to be melting beeswax, tallow and parrafin and maybe olive oil in different consistencies tonight to try out. Will probably make the Gatofeo blend since it seems to be referenced so often. Just got the beeswax and tallow a couple days ago. These that I made a couple weeks ago were poured shallow into a plate and punched out. They were fragile so I'm hoping a version of the beeswax blend holds them together better.

Edit to add a picture, lube pills:
rps20200214_180759.jpg
 
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I make thin lube pills. They are made from a paper towel cut into a 4 x 8 sheet and placed to fit perfectly at the bottom of a bread pan. Place the metal bread pan , with the paper towl laying down in it , on top of the stoves metal coil on low or inbetween low and the "1" setting (DO NOT PLACE ON A HOT SETTING!! u only want it warm enough to melt wax)...then place 20 grams of your fave lube mix on top and let it melt on top of the paper towel until it soaks in completely. Once melted take the pan off of the stove and let it cool. You will have a thin wax lube sheet and you can cut out lube discs using a punch. I shoot .36 cals so i use a 3/8ths hollow punch from harbor freight. My fave mix is 1:5 tallow to wax. Its a stiff mix but it works great in all weather from cold to very hot and i use it in my paper cartridges. Its thin enough to disintegrate completely in the barrel. Gatofeo mix works great too. Ive even used emmerts lube mix. All you need are these thin discs for such a short barrel and it helps not waste any unecessary lube and also take up less precious limited powder space the way larger wool wads do etc.
 
Heres what they look like... ive introduced these to other people and everyone who has tried them has given me positive feedback. Most make it their permanent method.
20191009_100431.jpg
Heres what the lube sheets look like before punching out the discs.
20191009_100512.jpg 20191009_100626.jpg
 
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