Buffalo Hunters casting bullets? Fact or fiction.
Every now and then I come across an article in a book or magazine which states that the Buffalo (Bison) hunters of the 1880's used to sit around their campfire at night reloading their ammunition. Now that I can believe. BUT, when the article says they melted their lead in ladles in the campfire, I start to have my doubts.
Lead, as all who have cast their own bullets knows all to well, takes quite a bit of heat to melt it. So today we use gas burners or electric melting pots which we feed with small ingots, sprue's or various bits of lead we have lying around. Fine, no problem there.
However, I have to ask, how did the Buffalo Hunter do it? Well, not through using buffalo chips which I understand was just about the only fuel available on the open plains. Why? because I don't believe it could generate the necessary heat to melt the lead in sufficient volume to make casting a viable proposition..
Using a small ladle which might hold enough lead to cast two or three bullets of 350 - 500 grains, it may just be possible to melt that amount of lead after some considerable time. However, even pre-heated moulds need a number of bullets cast in them before coming up to operating temperature. So even with several ladels in the fire they would soon run out of molten lead. By the time more had been melted, the chances are the mould had cooled down again. To be frank, I don't think that producing bullets in this way can be done.
It is known that some hunters carried lead ingots with them. But I believe that these men would have gone into the nearest town, and had the lead melted and the bullets cast by using the local Blacksmiths forge. In a forge it would have been a simple process, as high temperatures could be obtained, and enough bullets could have been cast in a day to last them a month or more out on the plains.
Now I would like to experiment with Buffalo chips, but there haven't been any around my neck of the English Woods for some 10,000 years. It would be a very interesting experiment to have someone in say Montana, where these animals still exist, to collect a pile of chips and experiment with them. I don't think they'll have much success.
It is known that the Sharps Factory swaged such bullets by the thousand and they employed young women to paper patch them. So adept were these girls at their job, that some could patch upto 10,000 bullets a day.
Making that number wasn't done for fun, there must have been a large and constant demand for them. This couldn't simply have come from target shooters and I believe that a considerable part of the production would have gone to the professional Buffalo Hunter.
Sharps sold swaged and patched lead bullets for between $8.75 to $12.75 per thousand according to their 1874 catalogue, the price depending on calibre.
If a man had to reload say 100 cartridges in an evening using the relatively poor reloading equipment available in those years, he would have had little time for casting as well. Remember there were other duties, fleshing and staking out the skins, cooking ,guard duty in case of indians, etc.
In short, I genuinely believe that the casting of bullets around the campfire, using buffalo chips for fuel, is just another myth of the Old West.
The number of Sharps bullet moulds that survive is very small in comparison with the survival rate of the Sharps rifles. Admittedly, some will have been lost or separated from the weapon over time. But the very low survival rate does also tend to indicate, that not a great number of moulds were produced.
If someone can prove me wrong, by practical experiment using genuine Buffalo chips, I'll offer a full apology and I'll take my hat off to them.
Harry.
Dang I wish I knew wood wouldn't do it
All this time I have been smelting batches of lead, WWs or lino for ingots with limbs and scrap wood and now I find it won't get hot enough to melt lead and alloys.
I usually smelt in 200-400 pound batches and wood fire works fine. My melter is not pretty but for the price of FREE, meets my cheap quotient just fine. I do cover the melt with 2-3 inch blanket of sawdust to protect the tin. Batches this big are NOT for the faint of heart and one has to plan it as an all day project, preferably in the dead of winter and NO hint of rain in the forecast. FULL face shield and lots of clothes are my minimum safety consideration when dealing with batches of molten metal this big.
This also gives me a LOT of alloy of one type when I do cast ingots.
Made the mistake of putting an aluminium pan in the coals once and when I came back to cast the lead I had in it, I found most of the pan melted. This is a heavy quality pan too, not some flimsy wear.
If in doubt, plasce a piece of steel in coals and supply a bit of air flow (not a lot needed).