Ball tumbling to remove imperfections

[jtmattison]

I know I read on here of folks tumbling their roundballs to get the sprues and other imperfections off them so I figured I'd give it a try.
I mold with Lee molds so they leave a flat spot on the ball instead of a raised nib.
My buddy loaned me his Lyman 1200 tumbler for the experiment.
I ran it with a few balls in it along with corn cobb media. It did nothing to the balls.
I removed the media and tumbled the balls alone and after about an hour all imperfections were gone.
The flat spot at the sprue are alomost completely rounded off and any visible lines from the mold are removed.
I will mic them tonight to see if it effected roundness of the ball.
I will shoot some as soon as I can and load without centering the sprue to see if they still shoot the same.
The point in all of this is to manufacture a roundball that I do not have to worry about centering the sprue on when I load.

Huntin

 

[musketman]

I removed the media and tumbled the balls alone and after about an hour all imperfections were gone.

Another way would be to put them in an empty coffee can and place them in the car's trunk or the bed of a truck and drive to work and back, it's the same action as the tumbler...

 

[roundball]

FYI...the commercial line of "Warren Spru-less Cast Balls" are manufactured that way with the use of tumblers as part of the process.

(and I think the tumblers used in their operation are the rotary type rock tumblers, not the vibrator type used to polish brass cases)

 

[CARBABY]

My dad used to mold balls with Lymun molds then
take a pocket knife in one hand and jersy glove on the other an cut the little lip off. After cutting a bunch of balls he would place them in a tin cookie can (10 or 12 inches round) and roll them around and around. Drive Everyone (With a Capital "E"} in the area nuts. He never worried where the sprue was after that on loading. I thought he was NUTS for going to the trouble. As far a punching 10X's with them.~ There's a lot of other things I'd worry about first. For a consistency test I weighed a bunch of balls I cast up once... I did notice a difference in weight. I used the ones in the center of the bell curve for target and the sides for beer cans. Might file this under "Muzzleloading Quirks"

 

[Swampman]

It's unecessary and a waste of time.

 

[Bob Riegl]

I couldn't agree more with Swampman---the minor imperfections on the outside only mask the imperfections on the inside of the ball. Casting often produces internal voids---all in all, what might be an ever so slightly more worth-while approach would be to weigh each and every ball and separate them in order of weight. However, this is Muzzloading and not Bench Rest shooting---we are looking for perfection where you will not find it. Stay Traditional and enjoy, rather than find more ways to make yourself miserable IMHO. The only place I see this being worthwhile are in slug gun matches. :hatsoff:

 

[roundball]

However, this is Muzzloading and not Bench Rest shooting---we are looking for perfection where you will not find it. Stay Traditional and enjoy, rather than find more ways to make yourself miserable IMHO.

I agree...case in point...at the end of most hunting seasons, I have a couple dozen 'pulled' balls that I save for plinking at the range.

As you know, a pulled ball gets terribly deformed by a ball puller...creates a huge void in them with a cone of lead pulled all up around the screw hole.

They center-shoot coke cans off the 50yd line just as good as a new Hornady out of the box.

 

[Stumpkiller]

If you're the kind of guy who outside turns the neck of your centerfire rifle cases before placing them in your micrometer adjustable bullet seating die, then pummeling the sprue edges into the ball may be for you. But, the lead is still there, so the weight or whatever is still causing the ball to be lopsided. It's just peened down flush.

I load sprue up and that's good enough for my needs. Most of my rammers have a cupped nose and that performs the same service by the time the ball is forced down the barrel.

 

[CrackStock]

I am with StumpKiller here.

I load sprue up and the cupped end of my loading rod does a half fast job of reshaping the sprue end. I think that tumbling solves a non-existant problem.
It is fun to see the result -- I did it a time or two, but I was then concerned about not being able to see where the sprue was. I then wondered if it mattered and the balls seemed to do okay, but I went back to shooting sprue up because it was easier to just find the sprue rather than wonder if the balls were really round this time or if the process was really working reliably.

The difference may well have been between my ears, but then that can be enough!

CS

 

[gmww]

I'm not sure where I read it. Basically it said best accuracy was achieved with the sprue side down towards the powder. If the ball isn't tumbling in flight then that would make sense as it would be the dead air area like the back of a bullet. This was based on field experiments of shooting RB with the sprue in different locations.

 

[gmww]

To address your title regarding imperfections. According to Lyman 2nd Ed., page 92-93, "...round balls with minor base damage didn't seem to fly way out of group while conicals with minor nose damage did not go terribly far astray. Obviously, maintaining round balls and conicals in perfect condition is ideal."

As I wrote earlier for sprue location it said that facing towards the powder or facing centerand strait up was good.

"We are told to load the sprue of the cast round ball (part that shows where the spure plate cut) outward and dead center to the bore. This is good advise, in spite of the fact that rifles tested with sprue loaded center, but facing the powder charge also proved accurate."

 

[jtmattison]

Well it looks like the majority votes for not tumbling the balls.
I like the way they turn out after tumbling.
I will shoot them by both facing the sprue (or what's left of it) up like I usually do and also by just loading and not minding where the sprue is.
We'll see what happens.
Thanks for all your input.

Huntin

 

[roundball]

And from another source for what it's worth...last year the "Bevel Brothers" column in Muzzleblasts published the results of their study / tests and stated that the spru position of a cast ball made no difference whatsoever.

 

[gmww]

Just a personal observation. It seems to me that you can have similar ML side by side and they will shoot differently with similar loads. Seems they have their own individual unique characteristics.

 

[Swampman]

Don't forget that tumbling lead turns your media into Hazardous Waste. :grin:

 

[rabbit03]

Well it is time to roll my two cents in now. As for being traditional or PC come on now, if anyone thinks that folks back then didn't do everything they could to improve accuracy including cutting the sprue off are being a little closed minded. The folks back then were the same as we are today and they thought the same especially when it came to accuaracy. And in case there are any misconceptions here there were probably a whole lot more shooting events that involved accuracy back then a muzzle loader than there is today.

I have to agree with cutting the sprue off and then rolling them together cause if'n you don't cut it off first then all you have done is relocate the heavy sprue to a little larger area but still leaving the ball lopsided so to speak.

There is a friend of mine that won the state championship though with cull balls, but he is an exceptional shot and he used a little english on the ball when shooting to make up the difference. Seriously though there is not alot of difference if your just out huntn' or plinking I suppose. Howver if your in a match and want all the help you can then anything and everything you can try to improve your chances can and should be used. I believe that way back then they did the same things as we do today to try and tweek the nipple, lock, powder load, or the ball. So when I see someone say that we should do this or that because we need to keep it PC, just remember that our ancestors did what they could to make theirs the best they could no matter what it may have been.

rabbit03

 

[davy]

Well it is time to roll my two cents in now. As for being traditional or PC come on now, if anyone thinks that folks back then didn't do everything they could to improve accuracy including cutting the sprue off are being a little closed minded. The folks back then were the same as we are today and they thought the same especially when it came to accuaracy. And in case there are any misconceptions here there were probably a whole lot more shooting events that involved accuracy back then a muzzle loader than there is today.

I have to agree with cutting the sprue off and then rolling them together cause if'n you don't cut it off first then all you have done is relocate the heavy sprue to a little larger area but still leaving the ball lopsided so to speak.

There is a friend of mine that won the state championship though with cull balls, but he is an exceptional shot and he used a little english on the ball when shooting to make up the difference. Seriously though there is not alot of difference if your just out huntn' or plinking I suppose. Howver if your in a match and want all the help you can then anything and everything you can try to improve your chances can and should be used. I believe that way back then they did the same things as we do today to try and tweek the nipple, lock, powder load, or the ball. So when I see someone say that we should do this or that because we need to keep it PC, just remember that our ancestors did what they could to make theirs the best they could no matter what it may have been.

rabbit03

Rite on Rabbit03! :hatsoff:

Course I figure them squirrels got a mite tired rollin them balls around in thar cages back then ... afore 'lectricity! :rotf:

Davy

 

[mmahlock]

Not necessarily so. I have a rifle and smoothbore that are both nominally the same caliber. One uses .610 and the other .600. Tumbling the .610 balls makes them easily identifiable for my rifle as opposed to the smoothbore which are just as they come out of the mould. Tumbling the .610 balls not only smooths out the sprue and any other imperfections, it also makes balls with voids easily identifiable since the come out of the tumber with dimples in them.

 

[gmww]

Dimples? Interesting. I'd like to hear how the dimpled round ball perform. Dimples reportedly help in the aerodynamics. That's why golf balls have them. Would you mind running a side by side shooting test for us?

 

[jtmattison]

Not necessarily so. I have a rifle and smoothbore that are both nominally the same caliber. One uses .610 and the other .600. Tumbling the .610 balls makes them easily identifiable for my rifle as opposed to the smoothbore which are just as they come out of the mould. Tumbling the .610 balls not only smooths out the sprue and any other imperfections, it also makes balls with voids easily identifiable since the come out of the tumber with dimples in them.

Funny you should mention the dimples in the imperfect balls.
I ran across some that had some significant dents in them. I never thought it was because of voids in the ball.
Thanks for the valuable input.

Huntin