COWW for round balls???

[taco650]

Anybody have any experience casting round balls out of wheel weights? I was thinking about getting a mold for my 1860 Army .44 and casting my own so I don't have to buy factory made but the only "material" I have is coww. Thoughts? Comments? Experiences? Post pics if ya' gottem.:)

[LUCKYDAWG13]

i think they will shoot ok be nice if you had some stick on WW to mix in

[taco650]

i think they will shoot ok be nice if you had some stick on WW to mix in

I thought the stick-on ww were made of zinc. My concern is that coww will be too hard with out adding straight lead to the mix.

[Baron von Trollwhack]

The problem with hardened RB in the pistol you speak of is that if you wish to have the ball seating process cut a tiny sliver of lead ring for sealing the chamber when seating, the hardened ball may be too danged hard to seat reasonably by hand. The ww RB will perhaps be a thousandth larger than the pure lead ball too.
While you may gain penetration because of hardness, ease of loading is diminished. Even with a piece of pvc over the rammer it can be tough. The problem is aggravated with short rammer style guns too. Best make only a few to try first.

BvT

[LUCKYDAWG13]

stick on WW is soft lead i dont know if they use zink or not now
if you have some see if you can scratch it with your finger nail

[Nobade]

Yep, stick ons are about perfect. Not the hard ones or the iron ones, but the lead are very soft.

Normal wheelweights work too, though I use a loading press for them to reduce stress on the gun's loading lever. The ROA doesn't care but it is kind of rough on the Colt replicas.

-Nobade

[Combat Diver]

I use stick on wheelweights for my 51' Navy and 62' Pocket Police.


CD

[curator]

taco650,

If COWW is all you have, you can use it to make round balls for the .44 Cap & ball revolver if you keep in mind that they will be somewhat harder and more difficult to seat. When first cast (air cooled) they will be BHN 6 or so, soft and easy to seat even with the loading lever on the gun. After two weeks they will have "age-hardened" to BHN 12 which is four times harder. At this point, you may need a cylinder loading press rather than risk bending your gun's loading lever. You can also bake the hardened balls at 350-400 degrees for one hour and air cool to re-soften them the night before shooting them. Sometimes harder balls actually shoot more accurately, but this depends on the relationship between your chamber diameter and bore (groove) diameter.

[bob208]

i have repaired alot of pistols that ww were used in. the are very hard on the loading leavers and the arbor in the colt type pistols. in the 60 army i have even seen dents in the barrel from the loading leaver teeth.

[taco650]

i have repaired alot of pistols that ww were used in. the are very hard on the loading leavers and the arbor in the colt type pistols. in the 60 army i have even seen dents in the barrel from the loading leaver teeth.

I don't want to damage my pistol! The good thing is I haven't even bought a mold but if I do, I'll stick to soft lead and save the ww for the 44mag. Thanks for all the info folks!

[Rattus58]

Anybody have any experience casting round balls out of wheel weights? I was thinking about getting a mold for my 1860 Army .44 and casting my own so I don't have to buy factory made but the only "material" I have is coww. Thoughts? Comments? Experiences? Post pics if ya' gottem.:)When I first got into muzzleloading I brought home a bucket of wheel weights and melted them down. Not only was I surprised at seeing all the metal floating around in the pot, the landscape within the pot was just astonishing what with all the dirt and crumbs that surfaced every time I spooned the lead after sticking in some flux stuff...

My very first bullet was a 457121 that I had seen an article by Sam Fadala shooting it in a Volunteer, a rifle I had/have and thought wheeeeee. Those first bullets were beautiful. Some crisco and off we went to the range. I'm not going to bore you with the exercise, but I will say this to anyone thinking of not using a PATCHED round ball in a pistol... don't do it. You WILL break your pistol. I broke the sizer handle on my machine. That should have been the tip off.... don't do it unless its wrapped in a patch... and I'm not sure how that goes with a revolver.

Aloha... 8-)

[Good Cheer]

Another thought...
Depending on the make of revolver the chamber diameter can be in between the bore and groove diameter. Me thinks that no soft lead upsetting into the rifling can reduce the usefulness of the wheel weights. I've shot wheel weights in percussion revolvers but only found one that liked it, a Navy Arms 1861 with .375 chambers and .375 groove diameter. In a Uberti Walker it was not good.

[taco650]

When I first got into muzzleloading I brought home a bucket of wheel weights and melted them down. Not only was I surprised at seeing all the metal floating around in the pot, the landscape within the pot was just astonishing what with all the dirt and crumbs that surfaced every time I spooned the lead after sticking in some flux stuff...

I was surprised by this as well. Can't remember how many times I fluxed the batch before I thought it was clean enough.

[KCSO]

Here is where Waksupi and I differ. I have shot WW round balls but always got better groups with soft lead. All yo can do it try them in your gun and see how they shoot. Now in a revolver WW shoot better than soft lead. De Gustibus...

[waksupi]

I'm in the "You'll break your revolver if you use wheel weights", camp.

[KCSO]

Not if you drop down a little in ball size and the WW dont need to shave mcuh lead with the tougher balls. Also I shoot a steel frame remington when I stoop to a persuction gun.

[45 2.1]

Come on Ric... fess up. Your casting your balls out of WW, then putting them in the freezer until the match and shooting a smoothbore with patched WW RBs.

[taco650]

I'm not interested in damaging my old Uberti 1860 Army clone. I'll stick to straight lead if I get around to casting for it.

[Ohio Rusty]

I have shot them for target work out of my smoothbore and they work just fine. It is a .550 barrel and I used a .520 RB. Plenty of room for a patch as there will be no ball compression since it is alot harder. being I didn't have to worry about engaging any rifling, they shot just the same as a pure lead ball.
Ohio Rusty ><>

[Rattus58]

I was surprised by this as well. Can't remember how many times I fluxed the batch before I thought it was clean enough.

I agree... and anyone who doesn't think you have to continually flux and agitate the pot with "strange" lead or wheelweights if you want to get it as right as you can isn't going to have the best product that they could have, in my opinion.

Aloha... 8-)