For the LARGE bore shooters

[davec2]

I needed a source of 2.75 inch cannon balls for one of my "larger" bore firearms.  Iron is excellent, but hard to make and expensive to shoot.  Zinc is a good replacement, but it isn't easy to find a good mold in that size range.  So I made this one out of some heavy wall aluminum tube I had in the shop and heat shrunk the two aluminum mold shells around some graphite bar stock.  The mold cavity was then cut in the blocks with a form tool.  This is the first cast of the evening, so the ball is a little wrinkly. As the mold heats up, the casts have a perfectly smooth surface and are very bright, just like casting lead round ball.  The only draw back is that to cast 100 rounds takes all day, a hack saw to cut the sprues off,  and 300 pounds of zinc ingot !

[Leatherbelly]

  Nice mould! 2 and 3/4"?(srry) Nice size of bore.Pop and beer cans filled with what have you shoot also. Ever consider mining balls? They are the balls from a ball mill concentrater. Worn out ones look perfect for steel shot!

[Macon Due]

WOW!.......what cool bullet mould!
Macon

[FRJ]

Wow what a great looking mold!!!!!!Frank

[KennyC]

Nice work  if they don't work for cannon shot you could leave the sprue and sell the for door stops

[davec2]

Canvas,

I don't shoot anything but very close fitting round shot in the cannon I made this mold for.  Cans full of concrete don't fly very straight and if I am going to drop $10 a round in powder, I want to hit what I'm aiming at.  I like the idea of using ball mill iron balls, but they are harder to find than you might think, at least in just the right size.  And they are not as cheap, individually, as the zinc balls unless you buy them a few tons at a time.  (A ton of roughly 3 pound shot amounts to nearly 700 cannon balls...sort of a storage issue.  Even with a light load of 1/4 pound of powder, it would take about 175 pound of powder to shoot away 700 round shot.)

I usually paint these zinc balls with fluorescent orange or yellow paint and, depending on the back stop, can usually recover a good number of them.  If they are undamaged, they can be fired again.  If they are deformed, I re-cast new round shot out of them.

[Dr. Tim-Boone]

So how do they do against a std framed wall with wood siding??

[davec2]

Dr. Tim,

Haven't tried it against a frame wall, but have shot at old cars, a wall of oil drums filled with dirt, and an 8 inch cinder block wall filled with concrete.  The round shot went through all of those like they weren't even there.  I have also made bar shot and chain shot that make short work of whatever they hit.  I have to think a frame wall wouldn't stand much of a chance.

[trentOH]

So a frontier fort made of 8 inch logs wouldn't hold up too well against even light artillery. What would you guess to be an effective range against a wooden picket fort?

Yes, I was just reading about Martin's Station.

[davec2]

Against a wooden picket fort, I would use hot shot at 750 to 1000 yards.  Don't need pin point accuracy to hit a fort.  Direct strike on the walls or low point of aim (depending on terrain features) to bounce the red hot heated iron shot off the ground and hit the walls low.  The resulting fire would take down the fort walls rather quickly, if it isn't raining.