Non-Toxic Prb Alternative - Solid Brass Ball Testing

[hanshi]

Thanks for your experiments, rb. Basically all it does is put muzzleloaders into the cf rifle cartridge price range. Hope the day never comes but it's good to have a possible alternative.

 

[roundball]

I am thinking that those near .50 caliber ones would be worth looking into if you can get more information from the company you emailed.

Here you go:
http://www.precisionballs.com/cata...id=CJC3847VkLECFYio4AodGGIHgg&sort=4a&page=12

 

[roundball]

Well done. Wish they were a little less expensive though. Thanks again for your efforts. Now if I can get them for my .54 I'd be thrilled. :hmm:

Check here:
http://www.precisionballs.com/cata...id=CJC3847VkLECFYio4AodGGIHgg&sort=4a&page=12

 

[roundball]

That's great, now advocates of a lead ban can prove that we have a substitute that will work making it that much easier to push a ban through the political machine. I am sure lots of companies will jump on the bandwagon to produce much more expensive alternatives and will become good friends with the politicians. :thumbsup:

I mean no disrespect to your testing which was very interesting, but I find the whole subject distasteful to say the least.

You're running years behind the times...non-toxic projectile development and marketing have been underway for years and the anti-lead folks are well aware of it.
Not only has non-toxic 'shot' been around for years and years, the ITX non-toxic .50cal ball for muzzleloaders has also been available for a few years.
So negative comments about additional non-toxic testing...which is what this thread is all about...are completely off the mark.

 

[cynthialee]

They have .4847, .4773 .4728 .4724 ect.....

Which are probably the best bet?

 

[gmww]

:hatsoff: book marked for later use that I hope never comes.

 

[roundball]

They have .4847, .4773 .4728 .4724 ect.....
Which are probably the best bet?

Not an expert...let's compare it to my approach with my .58cal.

As I've mentioned earlier, an absolute is that we can't risk getting a ball wedged in a bore.
In my situation with a .580" bore, I normally use a .010" under bore size lead ball...a 570".

But worried there might be manufacturing tolerance variations and/or out of round balls from the brass ball supplier, I went with with an even slightly smaller diameter .5625" brass ball.

As it turns out, the "Online Metals" brass ball manufacturing tolerances were very precise...(no out of round)...and the .5625" size works very well...just had to use a thicker patch.

Given that, instead of a .490" that you probably use in your .50cal, if it was me, I'd order the slightly smaller .4847" to have a bit more margin for manufacturing tolerance variations.

Suggest you still measure / test them thoroughly before daring to start one down bore.

 

[roundball]

Thanks for your experiments, rb. Basically all it does is put muzzleloaders into the cf rifle cartridge price range. Hope the day never comes but it's good to have a possible alternative.

You may want to double check current CF cartridge prices...they've gone through the roof over the past few years
:grin:
And remember, this search was for a non-toxic big game hunting PRB...after a few shots for sight in, shots take while big game hunting are very few...and at $12.88 for 20, they're only 64 cents each.

 

[BrownBear]

Good stuff, well researched and well conducted. We all owe you a debt of gratitude. I'd rather not use them, but it's good to know they can be made to work if worst comes to worst. I take it in the same light that I do my own shooting with subs. I'd rather not use them, but I wanna know how to do it when I have to.

I'm looking forward to your game reports. I expect great results there too, based on my own clean kills with no expansion (as far as I can tell) with larger caliber rb's.

 

[PaulN/KS]

A clear and complete report. :thumbsup:
Thanks for going to all the trouble on our behalf. Some folks might not like the "reason" but I am sure impressed with the results. Like it or not, this is good to know stuff... :hmm:
:hatsoff:

 

[cynthialee]

Ouch!!
I just looked at the prices of the site that has the balls that would fit the .50. The price of a single round is way prohibative even when you buy a couple hundred of them. $4.33 for a .485 equvilant and that is the cheapest ball they have!

There are some soft steel balls there that would be affordable. Like every ball they sell they are true sphere's within a few thousandths of an inch.
Would a steel ball be heavy enough?
As they are darn near perfect spheres it probably will fly true like any other round ball.

 

[David W.]

Until lead is outlawed, I'm not changing, and not worrying.

 

[roundball]

And it was satisfying...anytime you can dig into something, plan it out and end up with a worthwhile result is a good thing.
And since retiring at the first of the year, while I enjoy shooting at the range, going once or twice week every week for the past 6 months had started to become a little ho-hum.

This gave me a fresh focus and made the project enjoyable...all the more so for anyone who's interested to file it away for future reference, if and when they might want to go on a hunt somewhere only to find its been established as a lead free zone.

 

[cynthialee]

anytime you can dig into something, plan it out and end up with a worthwhile result is a good thing.
This gave me a fresh focus and made the project enjoyable...

Had to highlight and repete that as it says it all.

 

[gmww]

I've been wanting to do a hog hunt in Ca. So this is good info. for me. :thumbsup:

 

[roundball]

Good stuff, well researched and well conducted. We all owe you a debt of gratitude. I'd rather not use them, but it's good to know they can be made to work if worst comes to worst. I take it in the same light that I do my own shooting with subs. I'd rather not use them, but I wanna know how to do it when I have to.

I did take advantage of having all the stuff there and set to do some additional checking with my normal .58cal deer load.
When I rushed to get that new .58cal dialed in for the deer hunting opener 48 hours after it had arrived, I just jumped on a mid-range powder charge of 100grns 2F and went with that.
Today, for the first time I experimented with 120grn loads, and found it tightened up the large ragged hole a little bit more and has a nice more distinctive 'crack' to it, MV is 1450....so I got a new .58cal load out of the trip too.
spent whall my time f.had never chronographed it.

 

[Zonie]

Just playing with numbers and looking up material weights in my reference book it shows that brass weighs about 77 percent of the weight of pure lead.
Steel weighs about 70 percent of the weight of pure lead.

Using my roundball ballistics program says a .485 diameter lead ball weighs 171 grains.

That would make the weight of a brass .485 ball, 131.7 grains and the weight of a steel .485 ball, 120 grains.

The brass .485 balls weight is slightly more than a .440 cal lead ball (128 gr) and the steel .485 ball would be close to a .431 diameter lead ball.

IMO, balls of these weights would be effective on deer sized game but because of the lighter weight of the non lead balls they will have less energy and they will loose their velocity faster.

With a muzzle velocity of 1600 fps the following shows how much velocity and energy a .485 diameter ball will have 90 yards:

Lead at 90 yards = 978 fps & 365 ft/lbs
Brass at 90 yards = 900 fps & 239 ft/lbs
Steel at 90 yards = 871 fps & 203 ft/lbs

Since 100 yards seems to be the common distance folks use for a range estimate, the same balls fired at 1600 fps muzzle velocity would have numbers like these at 100 yards:

Lead at 100 yards = 948 fps & 343 ft/lbs
Brass at 100 yards = 867 fps & 221 ft/lbs
Steel at 100 yards = 836 fps & 187 ft/lbs

To each their own but if it were me and I was using steel balls I think I would limit my max range due to the lower energies remaining at 100 yards.

Yes, the lighter balls will probably have higher muzzle velocities with the same powder load but without data defining what these velocities are I cannot predict the velocities or energies of these non lead balls at longer ranges.

Oh. Just my thoughts about using a smaller diameter non lead ball:

Because these are much harder than a lead ball it is important to use thicker patches to protect the rifling.
Any sideways movement of the ball needs to be cushioned or they will very likely damage the rifling in our soft steel muzzleloading barrels.
That is why I used a .485 diameter ball in the above calculations.

 

[gmww]

If your a waterfowl hunter you know what happened when we switched from lead to steel shot. Your conclusions are what many of us experienced. We had a lot of wounded birds at the distances that were fatal using lead shot. The fix was to shoot at closer ranges and of course with a special cup to protect the barrel from the steel shot. Not sure if brass would need as hard on the barrel as steel. However a closer range would definitely be called for.

 

[roundball]

If your a waterfowl hunter you know what happened when we switched from lead to steel shot. Your conclusions are what many of us experienced. We had a lot of wounded birds at the distances that were fatal using lead shot. The fix was to shoot at closer ranges and of course with a special cup to protect the barrel from the steel shot. Not sure if brass would need as hard on the barrel as steel. However a closer range would definitely be called for.

With a steel shot replacement being much lighter, we also dropped down a couple shot sizes to get larger heavier pellets.
Same reason I qualified my references to substituting a brass ball for a lead one in a .58cal.
The lighter 201grn brass ball will be like shooting a ball between a .50 & .54cal weight instead of a heavier .58cal/279grn ball...but at my typical woods distances before any unusual slow down at long ranges, it'll get the job done just fine.
Bigger is almost always better: "Whompability"
:grin:

 

[Matt85]

i really like this test, thank you Roundball!

its nice to know that if i cant use a lead ball for any reason that i could use a brass ball as a backup.

i wonder about copper balls....