Has anybody found an advantage in Speer round balls compared to Hornaday? The first source that I checked showed Speer as more expensive. The few Hornaday that I measured were a little out-of-round.
I've used many, many Hornady products during many years of reloading and always found them to be very high quality, so I also went with Hornady round balls when I got into muzzleloading.
Yes, Speers always seem to be mroe expensive...and I actually think Speers are harder than Hornady's.
And I've tried Speer RB's in .45/.50/.54/.58 calibers over the years, and while I didn't run any scientific bench tests with rifles locked in vises or anything, I couldn't tell any difference in my normal range practice.
Measuring / weighing balls made by the top two premier lead ball manufacturers is something I personally won't waste my time doing...besides...IMO, measuring something out of the barrel, then wedging it into the bore with force, then having it experience "setback" at ignition time has no relevance to the roundness of the ball after it's gone through all that anyway.
With Hornady and Speer being the best in the industry, their quality control is good enough for me...I doubt I'll ever live long enough to shoot a couple round balls and be able to say, "that second one must have weighed 2grns more than the first one, or was .002" out of round compared to the first one, etc, etc...not when we essentially use a tablespoon to measure powder for our muzzleloaders.
Example, I save all the balls I pull with a ball puller, and shoot them at the range...with a big hole in it, and lead extruded up in a spiral from the ball puller screw, they still shoot coke cans off the 50 yard line as if they were new out of the box...so I don't even think about something being off a couple grains or thousandths.
Remember...the reason we're going back in time is to get away from the practices we use with high power centerfire, bullseye hand loads, measuring powder to 1/10th of a grain, etc.
I'll buy Speers (or anything) if I stumble across a good deal at a gun show table or something, just to get low cost balls for range shooting, otherwise, Hornady is my first choice...never let me down deer hunting, so "if it ain't broke, I ain't gonna fix it".
:imo: :m2c: :redthumb:
