Big round balls

[Hogtamer]

I'm a shotgun guy and out of place I guess, so here's the dumb question: is there such a thing as a swaged .678 lead round ball? I get great results from a swaged .570 RB out of a wad cup in 20 ga. and suspect I could get similar performance from my 12 ga. Cast balls balls are not perfectly round as they have a nipple or sprue. Any help? Thanks, Hogtamer

[DukeInFlorida]

My experience with shotguns is that the balls, no matter how round or smooth, tend to fly less accurately than, say, a bullet in a rifled barrel. They bounce around in the barrel, even with a sabot type wad, and leave the barrel somewhat haphazardly. You could have NASA design you some perfectly round lead balls, and I doubt that you would find any difference from a normal cast ball, with a cut off sprue.

Now, having said that..............

I spend some time, years ago, working with Mr. Warren Center at Thompson Center Arms, when they were in Rochester, NH..... We were working on developing a way to swage lead balls and maxi bullets for their rifles. The tooling required to produce a no flash edge (where the parting line is) was expensive. After two years of review, they determined that their in house casters (their commercially sold lead projectiles were all hand poured) would beat the cost of anything swaged. We were never able to mechanically swage a maxi ball (hollow end, with lube rings).

I think you are chasing a non-existent problem.