62 smoothie

[olgreenhead]

Well i have one  but dont shoot it much. Any body use one for deer whats the size ball and load combo you all useing ?

[Longknife]

Olgreenhead, I have a .62 smoothie that I took a deer with last year. I was hunting in "the bottoms" and shots didn't exceed 50 yards. It would get dark there about 15 minutes before it would up "on top" of the hills. I was using a  .600 ball  (wheel weight lead) a .015 patch and 80 grains of FFF in th 42 inch oct/rnd barrel. If you are buying a mold or balls I would recommend a .590 and a thicker patch with more lube to keep it loading easy. It does have a rear sight I can keep all shots inside a playing card a 50 yards.....Use it-it WILL take 'em down....Ed

[Daryl]

I've been using Taylor's .60" Lee mould, but found it to cast .605" x .609" balls. So much for Lee moulds casting round balls. I've a number of them and none cast a perfectly round ball.  Yes - I make certain they are closed properly.

Currently cast up several hundred .595's from my new Tanner mould and they run .595" - 598". Since I was using a .020" patch (mattress ticking) with the larger ones from Taylor's mould, I'll use the same patch witt the smaller balls from the Tanner mould as the fit seems good with a milder 'flat' brushed spot around the ball, punched in then pulled out with the strip of patching to check fit.

 As to accuracy with the noted powder charge and patch/ball combination, my initial tests with this flinter off the bench showed 4" groups (with the odd fliers) at 50 yards off the bags using 3 drams (82r.2F).  Most of the balls struck inside 3".  It's an easy shooting combination that is very easy to load in my slightly choked barrel- 2 fingers on the rod down to the powder after short starting, yet the patches maintain their integrity.

I am hoping that further tests will tighten the groups somewhat. I'd like to hit the 3" consistant sized groups at 50 yards - no rear sight on this single short barreled fowler.

[FL-Flintlock]

I've been using Taylor's .60" Lee mould, but found it to cast .605" x .609" balls. So much for Lee moulds casting round balls.

That's not the mold, it's because you're casting in Canada.  When you get that far north, the combination of gravitational pull and spin of the earth causes the melt to slosh to one side of the mold.   

I've had a bunch of Lee molds, RB & conicals, only had out-of-round issues with two of them, both conicals and both promptly replaced by Lee.  Two things when casting with AL molds, you've got to keep them hot and you can't let them hang open any longer than it takes to dump the casting.  The problem is often uneven cooling where the thinner areas of the mold cool much quicker than thicker areas and the blocks will warp accordingly.  This problem is more common with double cavity and large single cavity conical molds dropping bullets over 400gr and the long skinny bullets like the 220-230gr in 0.310"  Couple of things you can do is to insulate/add mass to the thinner areas of the mold or remove mass from the thicker areas.   Sorry, shouldn't have hijacked this thread...

Closest I had in smoothie was a .58 that ran 0.565" ball & 0.018" patch with 80gr 2F.   

[Daryl]

I've been using Taylor's .60" Lee mould, but found it to cast .605" x .609" balls. So much for Lee moulds casting round balls.

That's not the mold, it's because you're casting in Canada.  When you get that far north, the combination of gravitational pull and spin of the earth causes the melt to slosh to one side of the mold.    

 
Closest I had in smoothie was a .58 that ran 0.565" ball & 0.018" patch with 80gr 2F.  

Don't think so - it's so cold here, we can't keep the lead hot enough, nor the moulds at casting temperatures - so our cast balls look like wadded up pieces of tinfoil or frightened lead.