Round balls

[hugh]

I want to first say that I'm sorry if this has
Been discussed before but fairly new I am.
Why is it that somewhat hardened lead is
Said to not be used in rifle balls but OK for a
Fowling piece. Most barrels are made out of
Modern steel the same as cartridge guns and they
Shoot hardened lead, so why so damaging to
Round ball barrels?

[smokinbuck]

Hugh,
Your question has been asked before but it is not the first time nor will it be the last time that happens. When you have a question, ask it. It is not that hard lead will damage a rifle barrel, it just won't, or will be very hard to, engage the rifling and properly seal the load. In a smooth bore there is no rifling to engage and therefore the patched ball will seal against the "smooth" wall of the barrel.
Mark

[Maven]

Hugh, By "hardened lead" do you mean linotype?  wheelweight alloy?  1 part tin : 30 parts lead? 1:20? 1:16?  Although I prefer to use pure lead for roundballs in rifled bbls., I sometimes use wheelweights + 1% tin because I generally have more of the latter on hand.  What you're asking, however, is what difference does using a harder alloy make?  Keep in mind, the answer may depend on which alloy is used.  As I mentioned, I use wheelweights + a bit of tin and find .50cal. RB's (.490" in fact) to be a bit lighter (~173gr.) than those cast of lead (177gr.) and slightly larger (~.0005") diameter than the lead ones.  However, they are just as accurate and seal the bore just as well as those cast of pure lead even though they don't expand as well.  Ironically, my smoothbore shoots worse with the harder alloy than it does with softer lead balls.

[Roger Fisher]

Hugh,
Your question has been asked before but it is not the first time nor will it be the last time that happens. When you have a question, ask it. It is not that hard lead will damage a rifle barrel, it just won't, or will be very hard to, engage the rifling and properly seal the load. In a smooth bore there is no rifling to engage and therefore the patched ball will seal against the "smooth" wall of the barrel.
Mark

Loading fairly tight a hard ball will tear the patching and generally your accuracy goes to heck   Sooo, no rifling = no tearing the patch.

[Daryl]

Wait - you're both right!  A smaller ball will allow the use of hard lead and still shoot OK in a rifle.  This is the reason soem shoot .480's in a .50 or .433's in a .45. Maven says he shoots a .4905's - that's fine.  Will the smaller, harder ball shoot as well as the larger, tighter combination that Roger refers to - no - it cannot. That is generally why some people say not to shoot hardened balls from a rifle. they are more difficult to load due to the lead not moving from the pressure of the lands. With an undersized ball, and especially with shallow rifling, a hardened ball can be used quite well and a patch could seal just fine.

I can shoot a 15 bore VERY hard balls- up to even linotype, but they aren't as accurate as .684" or .690" pure lead balls  - that's the tradeoff to allow using scrap lead alloy metals. Cheap lead, but slightly poorer accuracy. They are still plenty accurate enough for hunting or even trail walks on steel plates.

Hardened balls usually shoot just fine in a smoothbore. Maven didn't find that in his, which is fine. At least he tested them both, whereas many people won't or haven't.

[hugh]

Thanks guys, I some how got the impression that they would some how harm the barrel. I have quite a bit of it around (wheel weights) and was thinking I might use it. I will now knowing that it will not harm my barrel.

[Dphariss]

Thanks guys, I some how got the impression that they would some how harm the barrel. I have quite a bit of it around (wheel weights) and was thinking I might use it. I will now knowing that it will not harm my barrel.

Barrels with narrow lands will load easier with hard lead.
The reason its said to not work in barrels with wide lands it can be hard to start since the wide lands require a lot of lead to be deformed if the patch is tight. Soft lead is much easier to deform.
Casting WW alloy will also produce a larger diameter ball than pure lead will.
I can shoot a .662 lead ball with a .018-.020 patch or a WW ball from the same mould with a .015 patch in my large bore rifle.
But the grooves are shallow and the lands narrow
It shoots WW at least as well as it does pure lead and to the same point of aim.

Dan

[omark]

hard balls will bend up steel gongs, etc that soft lead will not. so some clubs frown on using hard balls. hard balls also dont deform when hitting game so penetrate deeper so some people use them for deeper penetration on big game like moose or big bear.    mark

[mbokie5]

On this subject, I gave away some larger ingots of stereotype.

Would anyone know if this is harder or softer than linotype?

I will be getting wheel weights of the 1% tin variety in trade. Good deal?

[omark]

no idea about the hardness of stereotype (dont even know what it is).   

if you mean 1% tin and 99% lead, i would say you did good.    fwiw    mark

[mbokie5]

no idea about the hardness of stereotype (dont even know what it is).   

if you mean 1% tin and 99% lead, i would say you did good.    fwiw    mark

Yeah, it's 1% tin and is supposed to be 99% lead.

Stereotype was stamped on the belt of ingots that I traded.

[Kermit]

Narrow lands--we talking Forsyth rifling or nearly so?

[Daryl]

Lionotype - stereotype - monotype  22, 24 and 28 on the brinel scale, I think - for all new material.

Much linotype is 18 to 21 though, due to re-claiming loss of antimony during fluxing -  - read that somewhere - probably cast bullet forum.

[Dphariss]

Narrow lands--we talking Forsyth rifling or nearly so?

Green Mountain barrels feature land/groove ratios that are very Forsythe like.


Dan

[Daryl]

Narrow lands--we talking Forsyth rifling or nearly so?

 Not necessarily.  I've a Goodoien barrel with 48" twist with very narrow lands about .010" deep - Forsyth might have called them knife-edged comparred to what else was available back then or even here today, but that they were too deep. That Goodioen barrel would probably shoot a WW-alloy ball of .390" quite well, with an appropriate patch, but a .388" or .385" wold be easier to allow a thick enough patch to help seal.

[FL-Flintlock]

Stereotype
Sn 6-7%
Sb 14-15%
As 0%
Balance Pb
Bhn 22-23

When shooting hard PRB's you have to find a combination that works for your gun, good advice on using a smaller mold, makes things easier but the patch material must be capable of taking the slack and pressure.  In my experience with several different styles of rifling is that using a combination that's too-tight will often be less accurate than using a combo that's less tight than what you may be used to with a soft PRB - all you need for "tight" on a hard PRB is enough to maintain the gas seal.

[Daryl]

Maintaining or creating the gas seal is the problem. The smaller the calibre, the higher the pressure for any given load. The higher the pressure the tighter the combination must be.

The use of an extra wad or barrier between the patched ball and the powder can help with iffy combinations. then, a looser combination might be useable. Note in my .40 and .45 rifles that a barrier wad, produced a decrease in accuracy, but that the accuracy was still entirely good enough for hunting large or small game.

[FL-Flintlock]

IIRC, I use double cross twill weave, can't remember if that's the correct name but it's like a plain weave with a second weave crossing at a 45° angle, fairly thick and somewhat fluffy fabric but strong enough to make a good seal.  The biggest problem with going too-tight on the combo is that the patch gets deformed/shredded on loading if it's not strong enough.  Thin terricloth works good with undersize hardball.

If you're going to use a wad under a PRB, it's got to be soft and have sufficient total thickness but not be monolithic or it'll push the ball off course after it clears the muzzle.  I like 3/8" - 1/2" thick fiber wads split into 3-4 pieces.  Fiber with enough combined thickness will crush and fill the void around the ball while the bottom stays flat, a thin card or other wad that lacks sufficient thickness and deformability will usually still allow gas leakage  either in the bore or as the ball/wad clear the muzzle resulting in the ball being pushed in a random direction.

[Daryl]

I used RB's suggestion in both the .45 and .40- with oxyoke felt wads, 2 of them. I didn't use a different patch, only put the oxyokes down to protect the powder from liquid lube. The accuracy roughly doubled group size, which was still a mere inch to 1 1/2" at 50 yards, well withing min. of deer's heart.

In the paper ctgs. the waded up paper does this job very well. A smooth grown without sharp corners as-are left on a machine-cut crown helps to not cut the patch with hard balls and also helps loading paper ctgs.

[FL-Flintlock]

Yep, that's the problem you'll run into if there isn't enough wad thickness.  Those textile wads haven't impressed me at all, not even under flat-base conicals where a thin veggie fiber or nitro card can really be worth while.  Even with two textile wads under a PRB, they compress to almost nothing for thickness from the propellant pressure creating the random chance condition as to how they happen to get mashed into the void around the PRB.  Fiber cushion wads of sufficient thickness cannot completely compress which allows the front part to fill the void around the ball yet maintain enough bearing surface on the bore to keep it centered - because they can only be compressed a limited amount, the base of the wad remains square to the bore so the muzzle blast remains concentric as the wad clears the muzzle.  Using the fiber cushion wads, typical change is nothing more than a bit of rise in the POI, under hardball the wad provides the seal so you can get away with running a little looser patch/ball combo that's easier to load as long as it's not too-loose.  I shot a lot of ball from .32-.62 cast from WW alloy and as long as you get a good seal with the patch, a wad isn't a necessity.

[Daryl]

For example, I use a 15 bore ball, .677" in WW alloy with a .030" (caliper) denim patch (12oz). These run .025" with my mic. and .026" with Taylor's mic.- all measurements compressed of course, as that is what the lands do. I use this same patch with a .684" ball, a mite tighter than some people load - but it's amazingly accurate, shooting sub 1 1/2" groups at 100 meters off a rest.

For WW or hard alloy balls, I like the Jeff Tanner moulds. When I trim the sprues, I use wire strippers (plyers-type with the little cuttouts for different size wire) In cutting and twisting motion, the sprue is all but gone, and a single swipe with a wood rasp makes for a perfectly round ball, no sprue at all, so it can go in, any which way.

[Dphariss]

I think a lot of the gas seal problems are groove depth related.
My 16 bore rifle has shallow grooves and seems to seal well with almost any reasonable patch.

My 50 cal 70" twist GM will blow patches with the Schoultz method if I don't put a patch over the powder. This with FFF Swiss 100 gr or so.
The 50 cal McLemore with about the same land/groove ratio as GM and a .008" groove and a gain twist produces perfect patches with 104 gr of FF Swiss and the same lube no "gasket" patch over the powder. But its smoother and more uniform.
Will try 100 FF in the GM barrel in the am with tallow for lube  (its hunting season and I am behind in my Antelope hunting due to fixation on getting a rifle done) but where I am shooting I will not try the Schoultz lubed patches. Too dry to risk blown patches.

Round wads behind a RB must be significantly larger than the bore to allow them the wrap around the back to the ball and still contact the bore all the way around.
I have tried boot liner felt wads, 3/8 thick or a little more,  that were larger than the bore in the 16 bore and it did not like them at all.

Dan