Do you have to use pure lead for smoothbores?

[Maillemaker]

Can you use wheel weight alloy for round ball for smoothbore? Or is it still necessary/beneficial to use pure lead?

Steve

[Greg Ogdan 110th OVI]

Steve,

No, many of us use some sort of range lead. In fact, the current 50yd Smoothbore record holder uses range lead.

Greg

[Maillemaker]

No, many of us use some sort of range lead. In fact, the current 50yd Smoothbore record holder uses range lead.

Thanks, that's great to know. I've got a lot of wheel weight lead alloy. I'll save the pure stuff for my minies.

Steve

[John Bly]

Many people use harder lead in their smoothbores. Go pick up range lead at the fort and you'll find round balls so hard they look like they could just be reused. I use a mix of range lead, wheel weights and other unknown lead. I make it up in 40 to 60 lb batches so I have some consistency.

[Jim Brady Knap's Battery]

I like it soft and a close fit with soft musket lube thrice dipped in fact I have found mine at the home range backstop with a slight band around the middle where they upset into a bore riding fit. No bounding down the bore in my gun. I also send them downrange like I mean it with a 80 gr 2F GOEX charge. While I haven't shot an individual target for a year I broke a lot of birds this year and back when I was shooting paper did rather well with my method. I aint changing nuttin.


Jim Brady
2249V
Knap's Battery

[Jim Barber]

My SB shoots a heck of a lot better than I can aim it, and I use whatever crummy hard lead is available. All the reject lead that's no good for minies gets tossed in the pot. I have to wonder whether anyone who's tried both pure lead & an alloy in the same gun has noticed any accuracy difference, all other things being equal.

One nice thing about that "alloyed" lead: it fills out nice and pretty in the mould, very rarely have a reject (unlike my Minies).

Cheers
Jim B.
Grove City, OH

[Maillemaker]

One nice thing about that "alloyed" lead: it fills out nice and pretty in the mould, very rarely have a reject (unlike my Minies).

That would be nice.

One thing I finally just started doing, based on advice here, is tossing a tiny pea-sized piece of lead-free solder into the lead pot with each ingot I put in. It makes a big difference in fill-out and the bullets stay shiny after casting, but they are still very soft and I have not had any accuracy issues.

Steve

[jonk]

My SB shoots a heck of a lot better than I can aim it, and I use whatever crummy hard lead is available. All the reject lead that's no good for minies gets tossed in the pot. I have to wonder whether anyone who's tried both pure lead & an alloy in the same gun has noticed any accuracy difference, all other things being equal.

One nice thing about that "alloyed" lead: it fills out nice and pretty in the mould, very rarely have a reject (unlike my Minies).

Cheers
Jim B.
Grove City, OH

I have in my 42. No difference. But, Eric Schuessler has tried both in a couple of his guns, and found that his only like soft lead. So as with so many other things, each gun is different. I suspect that a lot of it has to do with how tight the ball fits to the bore, as pure will swell up a tad.

I personally don't hold with seating the ball at the case mouth and dipping in musket lube. I've had tubes come apart that way, especially with my Potsdam. I pour a little lube in an old cake pan, and roll balls in it until the lube has hardened. Then press the whole thing into the tube. For the Potsdam anyhow. For my 1816 and 1842, alox seems to work fine, but the Potsdam definitely became easier to load using musket lube.

[Maillemaker]

I got to do some load workups using wheel weight balls last week:

http://imgur.com/a/digRc

Things tightened up at 55 grains 3F Goex, and 70 was really good. I'm using double-dip in Alox. Will probably do 3 dips as recommended in the future; I just ran out of time this time.

I like using wheel weight lead as it's a lot cheaper than pure lead for me.

For kicks I tried dipping some balls in the period Ordnance Manual recipe of 3:1 beeswax:tallow, but it make it harder to get started in the muzzle (I had to thumb the ball) and it made it stickier going down the bore. But I only fired 3 shots so I can't say what it did for accuracy.

But I'm quite pleased with the 70 GR 3F Goex load with Alox, so that's what I'm going to skirmish with for now.

This was in an Armisport 1842 with bedded barrel.

Steve

[Muley Gil]

"(I had to thumb the ball)"

Now, that's a big no-no! :mad:

[fullertc]

I have a 36" Macon conversion from an Armi Sport using 55 gr of 3F Goex, a .678 soft lead ball, rasped and rolled in Alox. I hose 'em down at 25 yds but at 50 yds it goes out the window. Any ideas?

[R. McAuley 3014V]

I have a 36" Macon conversion from an Armi Sport using 55 gr of 3F Goex, a .678 soft lead ball, rasped and rolled in Alox. I hose 'em down at 25 yds but at 50 yds it goes out the window. Any ideas?

Have you tried increasing to 60 grains for 50 yard? For me, I seem to have more trouble keeping them in the black at 25 yards than at 50 yards. But I am also shooting the 24" Richmond version so have even a shorter sight radius. Keep in mind, if you use wheel weights or other lead alloy, the weight of the balls decreases. My Rapine .685 ball mould casts about 400 grain ball using lead alloy, so I don't need as much powder as I would shooting a 460 grain ball.

[Bruce Cobb 1723V]

Can you use wheel weight alloy for round ball for smoothbore? Or is it still necessary/beneficial to use pure lead?

Steve I don't know if everyone got what Jim Brady said. There is such a great pressure from the load going off that his soft lead undersized ball is deformed so much that it expanded and sealed itself in the bore. A hard ball will not expand like a soft one and will not seal into the bore. But , whatever works, works.

[Jim Barber]

I don't know if everyone got what Jim Brady said. There is such a great pressure from the load going off that his soft lead undersized ball is deformed so much that it expanded and sealed itself in the bore. A hard ball will not expand like a soft one and will not seal into the bore. But , whatever works, works.

Bruce, very good point-- I should clarify that along with my crappy/hard lead, I'm also running pretty tight tolerances. My RB, after shaking/dimpling them thoroughly in a can and aloxing very lightly, are a slip-fit in the barrel. I shoot 55g FFFg Old Eynesford. Goex cruds up pretty bad and makes more than 7 or 8 rounds difficult to load, but the OE is remarkably less foul-ey. Still, the ball to barrel clearance is very snug compared to a lot of skirmishers' SB loads. The gun shoots very tight groups with that formula-- though the shooter could use some work!

Cheers
Jim B.
110th OVI
Grove City, OH

[Eggman]

Back in the 70s a fellow named Sam Fadala did extensive round ball tests and concluded that soft lead balls '"obturate," or deform by expanding into the bore. He contended that a patch on a round ball functioned as an "antigasket" and did the opposite of sealing the bore. This turned the muzzleloading fraternity on its head. I'm still on my head. Luckily I avoid controversial submissions like this.

[jonk]

Back in the 70s a fellow named Sam Fadala did extensive round ball tests and concluded that soft lead balls '"obturate," or deform by expanding into the bore. He contended that a patch on a round ball functioned as an "antigasket" and did the opposite of sealing the bore. This turned the muzzleloading fraternity on its head. I'm still on my head. Luckily I avoid controversial submissions like this.

Maybe so, and it only makes sense that a patch with lots of holes in the fabric doesn't provide much in the way of sealing. However, it was always my belief that the purpose of the patch was to provide lube to keep the fouling soft and allow easier bullet seating.

[Maillemaker]

Well, if we're talking about Civil War-era .69 round ball ammo, the "patch" was just the outer cartridge wrapper and contained no lubricant.

I know a lot of non-N-SSA round ball shooters do shoot using a lubricated patch and in that case I would expect that it provides both lubrication and takes up windage in the barrel.

I don't doubt that windage could be obtained by obduration, too.

I know I'm very new to the smoothy game having just gotten one a few weeks ago but my guess is it all boils down to windage primarily and roundness/aerodynamics of the ball secondly. I think aluminum foil, "whiskers", Alox, obduration, and the like all serve to help reduce windage. You can probably use a combination of some or all of the above to achieve similar results.

I've not tried this thing at 50 yards yet but at 25 yards these wheel weight balls with Alox and 70 grains 3F Goex look pretty good to me:
http://i.imgur.com/eWsJsI9.png

Steve

[Jim Brady Knap's Battery]

I think you have a keyhole at 2 o'clock. Just sayin' ;)


Jim Brady
2249V Knap's Battery

[Maillemaker]

Finally a gun where I don't have to worry about keyholes! :)

Steve

[Eggman]

Maybe so, and it only makes sense that a patch with lots of holes in the fabric doesn't provide much in the way of sealing. However, it was always my belief that the purpose of the patch was to provide lube to keep the fouling soft and allow easier bullet seating.

Naaaaaaaaaaaw. The patch is there to grab hold of the rifling in the rifle////to stabilize the ball in the smoothbore. Feathering the ball eliminated the need in the latter.

[Chris Sweeney]

I thought rule 22.1.1 specifically prohibited any sort of patch other than aluminum foil . . .

[Lou Lou Lou]

It does.
Egg was referring to a patched round ball in a rifle

[Eggman]

Yeah that was a reference to the world of round ball shooting via Hawken, Kentucky, Plains Rifle etc. as used by the mountain men, pioneers etc. where the patched round ball is the norm. Didn't mean to infer that it has any application to the N-SSA.