Jim;
I used to do all that stuff 20 years ago. I quit one summer when I was running late getting ready to go to a primitive shoot in Coos Bay Oregon. I cast up a batch of round balls for my trade gun, using one of old Turners hair straightener molds without a sprue cutter. I cut the knobs off the top of the bullets with a pair of diagonal wire cutters, and threw them in a big old KC baking powder can from the local school lunch room. I threw the can in the back of the pickem'up truck, and headed out. When I arrived they had been rolling around back there for five hundred miles and looked like a cross between a golf ball, and a raindrop. As luck would have it, A known "expert" was holding court on about the second target on the trade gun trail walk. He had a half dozen pilgrims rounded up, and was going through the process required to make perfect round balls. He discussed casting, weighing, sprue removal, and rolling them over a sheet of glass to make sure they rolled straight. After he was done he shot and hit the target ( a big old apple nailed to a post). Being a person that loves to jerk an (experts) chain, I stepped up and showed them my ammo and explained how the dimples on the ball work just like a golf ball. And the teardrop shape allowed the bullet to snap around and fly straight just like a rifle ball. I shot and hit my apple. The "expert" almost exploded. He boiled over like a volcano, in fact I think I say a little lava boiling out of the corner of his mouth. I only missed beating him by one point, and he never forgave me, and I never rolled, weighed, or measured, another ball.
Hungry Horse
