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Joey
08-28-2006, 08:23 PM
I just purchased a 1858 Remington .44 (Urberti). Have not shot it yet but is wondering if I could cast wheel weights instead of pure lead? What would happen?

Harpman
08-28-2006, 08:57 PM
I shot them in mine for a while, they work ok, but pure lead was easier to load and grouped better...same with my muzzle loader.

Boz330
08-28-2006, 09:00 PM
Probably nothing but you might find it hard to ram the ball home. My Walker Colt Uberti has very deep rifling and you need a soft ball to obturate and fill those grooves, otherwise you will get some blowby and probably leading as well.

Bob

floodgate
08-28-2006, 09:23 PM
Joey:

I have sheared the rammer link pin on an original Remingtion .44, and bent the loading lever on an original Colt 1860 (don't panic; that was back in the '50's when they could be had for $25.00 apiece in nice condition, and the replicas weren't even a gleam in Val Forgett's eye). Since then, I've always stuck with plumber's lead or better - via the thumbnail test. Your mileage may vary, but.....

floodgaet

Old Ironsights
08-28-2006, 09:31 PM
For any muzzlestuffer without a patch, bhn 5-6 (soft near pure) is a must. You can use harder for Patched Round Ball, bt even there accuracy will suffer because while the patch engages the lands, it also has to engage the ball.

Also, for a C&B to be safe you really should be shooting oversized balls anyway - .457 in a Ruger Old Army for example - so you shave a 360deg ring of lead off the ball (forming a nice gas-seal) when you ram it into the cylinder. Ducedly hard to do with WW balls - leading to undersizing and increasing flash-over risk.

Lead RB is easy enough to buy and cast or swage. Why mess with hard alloy?

Boz330
08-29-2006, 08:39 AM
Old Ironsights is right the swaged balls are cheap enough. I don't even cast those for my Walker. Besides the gun gets dirty pretty quick so you won't really shoot that many at a session anyway.

Bob

KCSO
08-29-2006, 11:00 AM
Wanting to streach my pure lead as far as possible i went to 1/2 and 1/2 pure to WW with no problems. This was in an 1858 Remington copy.

Old Ironsights
08-29-2006, 01:04 PM
Hmmm. May have to try that. I've only got 700lbs of Pure. Time to pick up WWs...

How do you think 50/50 would work with those CF 358-180s?

SharpsShooter
09-05-2006, 07:02 PM
I use a blend of 16 pounds of pure and 4 pounds of WW for all my Black Powder shooting. I do not have a hardness tester, but it works in everything I've shot it in. I'd guestimate it to be close to 30:1 or 40:1. Casting with this mix requires high temps , almost like pure lead.

SS

John Boy
09-07-2006, 09:34 PM
SS: Your 16# Pb and 4# WW's works out to be:

20# Batch
80% Pb
20% WW's

0.05 Sn
0.60 Sb
99.35 Pb
Bhn - 8.2 (1:40 is 8.5)

SharpsShooter
09-24-2006, 02:16 PM
SS: Your 16# Pb and 4# WW's works out to be:

20# Batch
80% Pb
20% WW's

0.05 Sn
0.60 Sb
99.35 Pb
Bhn - 8.2 (1:40 is 8.5)

I somehow missed this when you posted it John. Thanks for the homework. It seems my guestimation was fairly close. I do know it works super for 45-70 BP velocities.

SS