early bullet and shot molds

[George]

I have a small booklet, A Brief History of Bullet Molds, by Codman Parkerson, 1974, and it has some interesting early molds.

This one is made with stone blocks in a wooden handle. It’s not soapstone, but marble or limestone. Wonder how the caviries were cut.



Another, similar one of stone, but makes 4 balls.



One of soapstone for multiple balls, open and closed. The two halves were apparently not attached or hinged, said to be held together by green wood strips while casting. Notice that the cavities are all lined up with gates between them in a row, so that you poured lead into the same hole for all, and it had to make its way through the whole row to reach the last one. Pretty hot lead, I’d guess.





A multi-cavity one for swan shot:



A multi-cavity one which casts 2 sizes of balls and uses wooden handles, closed and open:






A very complex one which throws balls of several sizes as well as molded shot, open and closed:





Gang molds were apparently common. In 1768, Baynton, Warton and Morgan received these:

"4 Brass Bullet Moulds in Chest No, 3 to run 30 bullets at once in each (moulds at 55 shillings a piece)"

In the Shane interviews a couple of interesting entries, late 18th century.

James Wade: “He ran all his bullets in a pair of moulds that had a knife in them to cut them off at the neck as they were run.”

It would seem moulds with cutoffs were not common in his experience.

Benjamin Allen:” We had brass moulds that ran 60 shot on one side and 78 on the other.”

Spence

 

[Patocazador]

Some of those look very unusual to me. One looks like a gar fish. :grin:

 

[Artificer]

GREAT Photos/Prints. Thank you.

"4 Brass Bullet Moulds in Chest No, 3 to run 30 bullets at once in each (moulds at 55 shillings a piece)"

Spence

WOW, were those EXPENSIVE!!! That would have been about a month's wages for lower ranking tradesmen, from what I have read.

Gus

 

[George]

Yes. The other part of the notation makes that obvious.

"10 Chests each containing 30 French guns with neat blue & Gilt Barrels & List cases is 300 Guns (at 32 shillings a piece) "

Mold more expensive than the guns, apparently.

Spence

 

[coloradoclyde]

Amazing!...... :applause: :thumbsup: :hatsoff:

 

[Khufu]

really good history lesson, I was under the impression that the gun maker supplied a mold with each gun as the bore was slightly different on each gun, ie ,525, .515, ,520 all being 52 cal.
I had no idea they had 30 ball molds. good info!

 

[Zonie]

I'm bettin' that stone multi-cavity mold with the several cavities connected by the groove would have been heated in a fire before it was assembled and used.

Pre-heated to 650 or more degrees F would allow the lead to flow thru all of the cavities.

If the user did not pre-heat the blocks there is no way the lead would get all the way to the bottom cavity before it cooled and solidified.

 

[Khufu]

my lee 00 buck mold casts 9 pellets, 3 connected x3. it has to be really hot to work, and reheated every few casts to get the lead to flow to all 3 pellets deep, I hope stone holds heat better than aluminum, or they would need to reheat them occationally and that would not be fun to remove and replace hot.

 

[George]

I was under the impression that the gun maker supplied a mold with each gun as the bore was slightly different on each gun, ie ,525, .515, ,520 all being 52 cal.
I had no idea they had 30 ball molds. good info!

It is certainly true that molds were sometimes furnished with each gun, and there are references to that being so.

1774 "FOUND by a ***** Fellow on the Road from the Quarter-house to Charlestown, A NEW FOWLING PIECE with a Bullet-mould tied to the Lock:"

1776 "...also a number of the best kind of RIFLES , with bullet moulds"

1764 "BEST Dutch rifles, with moulds and wipers"

1825 "and each Gun must have Wipers to screw-on to the thimblerods, and a good Ball mould. "

Just like today, though, the situation was much more complex than that. There are many, many advertisements for molds for sale, and also for balls. Just like today, they could choose to buy either a mold or pre-made balls of the proper size to fit their gun.

1767 "bullet and swan shot moulds"

1771 Inventory of the store of Armistead Lightfoot, Yorktown, Va. 1 Gun vice & Anville, 2 Gun chargers, 1 Gun Screw, 1 Gun Screw driver, 1 Gun Hammer and eight pairs of bullet moulds.

1753 "shot and bullet Moulds"

1734 "Lately Imported....drop shot, bullets, Carolina guns , gun-powder"

1753 "B & NEYLE, have just imported....F and FF Gun powder, all sorts of Shot and Bullets,"

1776 " musket and pistol cartridges, bullets and formers, of all sizes;"

The only item describing quality of bullets I've found in the 18th century is the designation of some as "Indian trading bullets", and for shot "smallest size round trimmed swan shot".

Spence

 

[Artificer]

Spence,

Those ads (and others) make me wonder if it was only common/usual for rifles to have the correct size bullet molds provided with them and not the smoothbore "Guns made for the Trade/Trade Guns" and fowling pieces?

This thread also got me thinking a combination bullet mold that would cast a ball each for .76 cal. muskets, .66 cal. carbines and .56 cal. pistols would have been very useful for British Soldiers. A bullet mold that cast a ball for each .76 cal. muskets, .69 cal. muskets, and two or three buck shot would have been very handy for the American Army in the AWI.

Gus

 

[George]

That would seem a reasonable supposition.

I have seen more than one item about the British army being supplied with balls. An interesting one shows that a bit of an arms race was going on, the British trying to match the practices of the Americans. They were not happy with the use of buck and ball, but if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

THE VIRGINIA GAZETTE
Date: December 9, 1775
Title: LONDON, August 26.
The plumbers at the tower are now casting great quantities of buck shot in imitation of those used by the Americans.

But that wasn't mentioned in this blurb from three years later:

The Pennsylvania Gazette
April 11, 1778
LONDON, December 24, 25.
Dec. 26, 27. We are informed the reason so many brave men and officers were lost under Gen. Burgoyne was, the American musquet cartridges were made up with one ball and two buck shot , which killed our men outright, or left them cripples forever, by being wounded in two or three different places at one shot."

Interesting that the men casting balls were called plumbers. Latin for lead was Plumbum, and an old definition of plumber was anyone who works with lead.

Spence

 

[Len Graves]

Very interesting, thanks. I think we tend to forget how hard it was to make bullets. Not the actual casting (although not that simple), but the making of the molds or forms. I have pondered the making of the cherry, or cavity cutter. I have done a little black smithing and making a sphere is difficult, making that sphere to a close dimension even harder. So all in all a difficult time consuming, but necessary task. I understand that soapstone while soft would be easy to cut a cavity, but when heated to red hot and cooled will be as hard as glass. Correct me if this is incorrect.

 

[19 16 6]

All I can see coming out of moulds like that are poor quality balls that most of us would reject & re melt.
Obviously those fellows used the balls from them moulds, double sprue & all. So, how good did they shoot ? & how good is good enough ?
I might get one of those multi cavity fishing sinker moulds & try shooting what they cast.
O.

 

[George]

All I can see coming out of moulds like that are poor quality balls that most of us would reject & re melt.

I think you make a good point, and it gives us another small window into what life was like for those old boys. I can't believe those gang molds throwing 30-75 balls could throw consistent, high quality ones. But, they served them, and apparently served them well. One of the toughest things for me in doing my little bit of reenacting is to get into the mind of the people, and from many, many discussions on these boards I believe it's tough for a lot of us. They didn't go about shooting their guns as we do. It's very rare to find a reference to the size of their guns described with any precision. I can only think of one, a statement that the best size smooth bore for shooting flying was 5/8-inch. Otherwise they spoke of balls to the pound or ounces per ball. They did mention windage, but never in quantitative terms that I've found, just too much or too little. As seen in the item about making molds of lead in another thread, they found a marble which sorta fit their bore, by feel and eyeball, and used that to make their mold, and I think that is typical of their general approach.

Our way of thinking about this is hard to let go. I've tinkered more than most with bare ball and a dozen types of historic waddings, killed a lot of game with those methods, but even when I'm loaded with bare ball and shredded cedar bark after deer, I know my clearances, weights, gauges and they inform my shooting. Can't help it. It seems important for us to be aware of that difference if we ever expect to understand their thinking.

Spence