Lead for casting

[Duncaninfrance]

My friend with the Mang and Le Page has decided to buy himself a new rifle and has sold his Tika and ordered a Perdesoli Hawken which will be delivered in April. He has decided to cast his own balls and so has also ordered all the bits to do it with. He is going to share the equipment with me as I have a .457 mold for my 1858.

Thinking about lead for the balls, what would be good raw material?
I thought of wheel balance weights but Alain thinks that the lead is not pure enough and will be too hard thus causing wear on the rifling and making it difficult to seat the ball.
He seems to think that lead water pipe is the best material with perhaps a very small ammount of wheel balance lead to stiffen it a little.

What do you guys think?
Cheers
Duncan

 

[Across The Pond]

Hi Duncan.. I use old roof flashing - father in law was a builder all his working life, and now he's retired, he 'donated' me a bucket full! Melts down lovely, casts pure, soft lead ball.

BTW, a word of caution on the water pipe thing.. Apparently they can retain water in cavities and folds for ages - and we all know what happens when H2O flash boils in molten lead......

Suggest you ensure that water pipe material is dry using a blowtorch or similar.

Cheers, Dave

 

[Steve499]

Wheel weights aren't hard enough to cause wear, I don't think, but can be a bear to load into a revolver if they are much over chamber diameter. In my younger years I shot everything out of a muzzle loader I could load in one, and wheel weight bullets were certainly well represented. If you have a source for lead pipe, you couldn't want anything any better. I wouldn't alloy it with anything. Dave's roof flashing is also pure lead as are the old flanges you sometimes find when you are out, as I'm sure we all regularly are, lifting up old ceramic toilet bowls. My Dentist saves quite a bit for me from the lead foil which has to be removed from each x-ray film plate he uses.

Enjoy scavenging lead and then shooting those free bullets. It makes me feel just like I do when I find money just blowing around on the ground.

Steve

 

[Derek]

No wheel weights!

Duncan,wheel weights are hardened with antimony which CAN crystalize out to the detriment of your bore. For any and all muzzle loaders, try to get pure lead. Your pipe is good stuff, close enough. It might have some solder in the joints [tin and lead], so keep those to a minimum.I used to work for Northern Electric in Toronto, [a Bell Telephone subsidiary]and when they changed from lead to plastic sheathing on the cables you could scrounge lots of lovely soft lead. Just one thing. We know about Notre Dame's roof being sheathed in lead, don't get caught doing a Quazimoto with a pair of tin-snips in your pocket!

 

[gmatov]

Use anything you want.

Your only drawback will be if it is too hard, you will have a bugger of a time loading with the rammer, with a harder alloy.

Duncan, I believe you have bought a bench loader. No problem, just a little more effort. You have swaged to chamber size, you are not trying to push a 10 thou over groove ball down the barrel.

If you want to use near pure lead, you can turn the heat up high on your melting pot, skim all the dross off it, it will be the tin and antimony. You will eventually approach near pure lead.

I just wonder if, at 1000 feet per second or so, pure lead, at least a couple thou under groove size, wouldn't strip the rifling off the bullet, the bullet would lose its grip on the grooves, be an undersized ball, all over again.

Cheers,

George

And, antimony in alloy ain't gonna "chrystalize out", I don't know what that means, bloom on the surface, become an abrasive (?) , it's softer than the steel is, what detriment can there be?

And, if you are salvaging old lead pipe, be assured the "solder" was also pure lead.

 

[sundance44s]

sundance44s

I do my bullet and ball casting with plumbers lead ... you can buy at any plumbers supply co .. price verys from time to time uasually around 1 buck 50 a lb. and its good soft lead .. i`ve tried the wheel weights and other harder leads and i almost bent the loading rod arm on my remmie . useing the more expencive plumbers lead bars i figure a 100 balls are still half price comparied to store bought ones . adds up if you do a lot of shooting .