Wheel weight lead question

Rancocas said:

sigh. Again, I use wheel weight lead to cast round balls all the time. Sure, it is harder than pure lead. So what? A patched ball doesn't touch the rifling, and even if it did - it is still lead and not as hard as the steel gun barrel. Modern jacketed bullets are very hard especially when compared to wheel weight lead, yet they are made to imprint on the rifling. How much wear do they do to a gun barrel?
Sure, hard lead doesn't flatten out or mushroom on contact with a target, not much anyway, but a .44 hole, or a .49 hole, or a .53 hole, or whatever is still devastating on any target. Even a .32 hole in a squirrel is like a cannon ball through a cape buffalo. My .490 wheel weight round balls pass completely through a deer or wild hog. Some drop immediately. Some run for a few dozen yards.
I use any scrap lead that I can find. Mostly wheel weights, but almost anything will do.

Others may take the opposite view. Experiment and find out for yourself.

Click to expand...

awreis said:

Yes. Another one but I haven't been able to find an answer to my question. From what I have read, wheel weights lead is harder than pure lead and might be a couple thousandths oversized (instead of being .440, it might be .443) my question is, what does a harder lead do to the bore that makes it unusable for muzzleloaders? Possible make it wear more quickly? If it's a little big, could use a slightly thinner patch to compensate for this? I do know that it doesn't expand like pure lead when hunting but if all I am is shooting steel and paper, this won't matter for me.

Click to expand...