Any substute for lead?

[8 BORE]

Only shoot new cast ball or store your ball in mineral sprits tell everyone it’s silver bullets and hunting werewolves, I don’t think werewolves are a protected species.

OR YOU COULD BE THE
LONE RANGER

 

[8 BORE]

I have found galina in the wild in small amounts and just for fun smelted about 3/4 of a pound. Lots more work then making an order from Buffalo arms.
Copper was used extensively in Mexico and Spanish/Mexican south west. Copper melts at about double and a bit or so of lead I don’t know how easy it would be to work in your garage. I can cast lead at a fire in the back yard or at the kitchen stove but copper may not do that .
In terms of accuracy I don’t know how it would hold up in a rifle, but within normal smoothie hunting range a copper ball should preform on a par with a lead one.

There are enough tire shops in Republic, to get plenty of wheel weights

 

[Juice Jaws]

Only shoot new cast ball or store your ball in mineral sprits tell everyone it’s silver bullets and hunting werewolves, I don’t think werewolves are a protected species.

They are not protected but the problem is if you only wound one (very hard to kill) and it dies out in the brush then the condors comes along and eats the werewolf and falls over dead from lead poison. And that is how it all began. Born and raise in Ca and I have never seen a condor in the wild.

 

[Le Loup]

Can't seem to find a more perfect place to research than with you guys. Is there a more ecological substance than lead for casting ball that won't wear your barrel out?

Historically Paul many things have been used as a replacement for lead, but mostly in smoothbores. Providing some of the more (possibly) abrasive items are patched, there should be no problem. But there is not as far as I know anything as effective as lead except steel, & to use steel shot I believe you need a special barrel or barrel liner.
Certain tree nuts have been used in the past by the British military in their Brown Bess. Garden peas have been used for shot. You could mould pewter round ball, but it does not have the weight of lead so you would have to adjust your stalking distance accordingly. Survival wise arrows have been used, but I can't see this becoming popular ammunition. Beeswax is easily moulded in an emergency situation, but again it does not have the weight of lead.
Keith.

 

[Zonie]

Can't seem to find a more perfect place to research than with you guys. Is there a more ecological substance than lead for casting ball that won't wear your barrel out?

You didn't say what kind of gun you were planning to use it in and the answer is different for single shot muzzleloaders and Cap & Ball revolvers.

In a single shot muzzleloading pistol, the ball is always patched, usually with a cotton or linen patch.
Because the patch is between the ball and the bore, wear in the bore isn't a problem. One of our members used precision brass balls with good results.
If you could find them or want to cast your own, bismuth would also work in one of these pistols.

A Cap & Ball revolver is a different story.
They are never loaded with a patch and the ball (or bullet) must be a press fit into the cylinder chambers to prevent the ball from moving forward during recoil.
The press fit also prevents a multiple chamber discharge known as a chain fire from happening from the flames at front of the cylinder from getting to the powder in the adjacent chambers.

Because any non-lead ball/bullet you might want to load is harder than lead, pressing a ball made out of something like bismuth, tin or a tin based pewter would be nearly impossible with the loading lever on the gun. A separate loading press would be needed. Something like brass would be almost impossible to load even with a loading press and in all likelihood it would damage the chambers.

 

[Britsmoothy]

Iron.

 

[8 BORE]

Iron.

Shoot some steel balls out of your flintlock

 

[Black Hand]

Shoot some steel balls out of your flintlock

Some have, out of a smoothbore. They posted their experiences shooting ball-bearings, but it was a few years ago.

 

[Paul Aguayo]

I have found galina in the wild in small amounts and just for fun smelted about 3/4 of a pound. Lots more work then making an order from Buffalo arms.
Copper was used extensively in Mexico and Spanish/Mexican south west. Copper melts at about double and a bit or so of lead I don’t know how easy it would be to work in your garage. I can cast lead at a fire in the back yard or at the kitchen stove but copper may not do that .
In terms of accuracy I don’t know how it would hold up in a rifle, but within normal smoothie hunting range a copper ball should preform on a par with a lead one.

Checked out the copper alternative. Nope. Much too complicated a procedure for me, heck, I've yet to figure out the options on an ol school flip phone.

 

[Paul Aguayo]

You didn't say what kind of gun you were planning to use it in and the answer is different for single shot muzzleloaders and Cap & Ball revolvers.

In a single shot muzzleloading pistol, the ball is always patched, usually with a cotton or linen patch.
Because the patch is between the ball and the bore, wear in the bore isn't a problem. One of our members used precision brass balls with good results.
If you could find them or want to cast your own, bismuth would also work in one of these pistols.

A Cap & Ball revolver is a different story.
They are never loaded with a patch and the ball (or bullet) must be a press fit into the cylinder chambers to prevent the ball from moving forward during recoil.
The press fit also prevents a multiple chamber discharge known as a chain fire from happening from the flames at front of the cylinder from getting to the powder in the adjacent chambers.

Because any non-lead ball/bullet you might want to load is harder than lead, pressing a ball made out of something like bismuth, tin or a tin based pewter would be nearly impossible with the loading lever on the gun. A separate loading press would be needed. Something like brass would be almost impossible to load even with a loading press and in all likelihood it would damage the chambers.

Sorry Zonie, I was thinking Cap & Ball revolver when the question was posed, but bringing an in-line muzzleloader to this hog hunt also may be in the cards.

 

[Jack Ryan]

They are not protected but the problem is if you only wound one (very hard to kill) and it dies out in the brush then the condors comes along and eats the werewolf and falls over dead from lead poison. And that is how it all began. Born and raise in Ca and I have never seen a condor in the wild.

Condors and lead bullets have been in the wilds since the Spanish stole California from the Mayan. They would be extinct by now if any of those claims were are REAL worry.

 

[Dcrouch]

I haven't had a chance to range test as of yet, but I cast some 58's out of this material from roto metals. Little tricky to work with, but they came out uniform.
Lead Free Bullet Casting Alloy (88%-Bismuth, 12%-tin)

 

[8 BORE]

I haven't had a chance to range test as of yet, but I cast some 58's out of this material from roto metals. Little tricky to work with, but they came out uniform.
Lead Free Bullet Casting Alloy (88%-Bismuth, 12%-tin)

How much per pound $

 

[cullen1780]

I got some .75 steel balls for the 9ga but haven't tried them yet. They're even cheaper than lead balls from TOW.

https://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cfm?id=1423&step=2&top_cat=1

 

[Many Klatch]

If you shoot a smoothbore, ball bearings are shootable. I load them just like lead ball, same patching same powder. My .60 with a ball bearing seems to hold dead on at 200 yards. I find that they shoot a lot flatter and the wind doesn't seem to affect them as much. Just don't dryball. FWIW, here in Indiana we had a barrel maker who used to shoot ball bearings in his rifles all the time, after a couple of years he'd just put in a new barrel. After a match he would be seen at the backstop picking up his ball bearings. If you were to shoot using a thicker greased leather patch you might not bother your rifling at all. I have experimented using leather patching, and found that it would allow a .54 rifle to shoot .50 ball accurately. The nice thing about leather patching is that they are reusable. BTW, be VERY AWARE of ricochets with ball bearings don't shoot anything metal close up.

 

[RedFeather]

There is a thread here on shooting brass balls.

(Stand by for more jokes.)

 

[AZbpBurner]

There are enough tire shops in Republic, to get plenty of wheel weights

Beware wheelweights. The envirowhackos already beat you to the punch. Especially in Ecofornia, wheelweights are more likely zinc, which, when melted in your lead pot, will wreck lead or lead alloys. Of course, you could easily cast zinc balls for PRB use, but they would be too hard for C&B shooting.

Of course, living in Free Arizona, lead alloy wheelweights are still available, but in sorting, I ended up with about 1/3 of them being zinc.

 

[Britsmoothy]

We had zinc shot....for a while!
We have a lead shot ban for wild fowl but it's not policed.... Any way it ended up banned as it was classed as toxic too!

That aside could zinc be cast close to dead size for revolvers?

 

[Black Hand]

We had zinc shot....for a while!
We have a lead shot ban for wild fowl but it's not policed.... Any way it ended up banned as it was classed as toxic too!

That aside could zinc be cast close to dead size for revolvers?

Zinc is toxic too....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_toxicity
I guess it depends on whether you plan on eating the meat or eating the shot. I'll eat the meat.

 

[Zonie]

A problem with zinc is it and many of the alloys where it is the main ingredient are all very brittle.
You might recall all of the "pot metal" toy cars and things you had that cracked or broke when they were dropped? That "pot metal" was mainly zinc.

IMO, it is much too hard and brittle to use in a Cap & Ball gun and it isn't much good for hunting because rather than mushrooming it fragments into dozens of pieces.