Non-Toxic Round Balls

[F.G. Ford]

Joe,
Don't you just wish, that the lady warden would do that....most likely with a cattle prod!
Old Ford

 

[Dphar]

Try casting some from lead free solder, but some of this is now 40 bucks a pound where I live. This being one of the old pewter formulas and contains silver and copper in very small amounts.
It will be lighter than lead but should work.
Still pretty hard though.
Narrow land barrels like Green Mountain work better with hard alloys.

You need to open a season on your politicians and tree huggers. These lead bans are complete BS.
I am surprised they have not banned Pyrodex. A friend tells me a byproduct of combustion is small amounts of cyanide.
BP surely causes acid rain.
Who knows what smokeless does.

Dan

 

[spudnut]

With all the lead in the ground around Gettysburg I'm surprised its not a wasteland.Its so silly,Leave a lead ball out in the weather for a month.It becomes encapsulated.

 

[BrownBear]

Go ahead and ask your local fish-cops what they plan on using if the need arises....

I did, one who is an avid bullet caster. He said if it came down to it, he'd do the thumbnail test. Anything harder that he suspected, he'd get your name etc and take a sample back to the post for further checks. He was "thinking" there was a test kit from Hach that could be used to detect even trace lead.

 

[Joel/Calgary]

I've wondered about melting Bismuth shot into r/balls but I'm not sure if it's still available.

Bismuth shot is available from Precision Reloading. However, ISTR a discussion of this subject that I cannot locate (may have been on another forum) where someone experimented with various Bi-Sn alloys and found that he had to use much more tin in the alloy (30%?? more??) for ball then the 5% (originally supposed to be 3%, but often imprecisely alloyed, sometimes as low as ~1%) used for shot. As the tin proportion increases, the alloy becomes less dense but more ductile. The imprecise alloying, often with impure bismuth, as it is actually a byproduct from some other metal, was part of the reason for the problem with early Bi-Sn shot fracturing.

Regards,
Joel

 

[russecv58]

Rotometals has some low melt alloy thats lead free, a mix of bismuth & tin. ive never tried it, but seems like a probable candidate. maybe?? :idunno:

 

[Pan]

We haven`t come across this problem in OZ (Australia) as yet, although there is talk of banning lead sinkers for fishing in the inland river system here.
There`s an Aussie mob making "Enviro-Sinkers"? I`m not sure of materials used, but I`ll check them out, and post back here if they have similar properties to lead and would make a viable substitute for ML`s.
Pan

 

[roundball]

Just contacted that company to see if I can buy a small quantity to try...they may only deal in commercial size lots of thousands or something...will post back.

Well, after Emails and inquiries, and waiting I finally got Email replies today from a steel ball company in Conn.
Yes, they'll sell small quantities of 50 to me.
$2.00 a ball for one sized .471" just to give an idea.

I like experimenting with things, and have spent no small amount of my own money over the years and shared the results back here with everyone.

But...at $2.00 a ball, I'm not going to spend that kind of money just to experiment with a couple different sizes...I'll let some of you independently wealthy folks take the lead and share back with us this time instead.
:wink:

 

[Larry Pletcher]

This may shed some more light on the topic.
http://www.blackpowdermag.com/featured-articles/nonlead-field-test.php[/quote]

Looks like Larry Pletcher already did some testing for us. He feels that the balls are a bit too big. When loading, the patch is easily cut. He does think they are accurate enuf for hunting.

We did the testing last summer, I think. I just reread it to remember what I wrote.

Dropping the belt diameter would help loading and make a think patch necessary. A dry ball is a bigger problem too. It is true that one can achieve hunting accuracy, handling the problems that comes with the harder ball. If you plan to try these, I'd recommend reading the article. BTW these balls are magnetic.

Regards,
Pletch

GW

 

[Kentuckywindage]

This may shed some more light on the topic.
http://www.blackpowdermag.com/featured-articles/nonlead-field-test.php[/quote]

Looks like Larry Pletcher already did some testing for us. He feels that the balls are a bit too big. When loading, the patch is easily cut. He does think they are accurate enuf for hunting.

We did the testing last summer, I think. I just reread it to remember what I wrote.

Dropping the belt diameter would help loading and make a think patch necessary. A dry ball is a bigger problem too. It is true that one can achieve hunting accuracy, handling the problems that comes with the harder ball. If you plan to try these, I'd recommend reading the article. BTW these balls are magnetic.

Regards,
Pletch

GW

Same problem i found when i tested them. Still have a bunch. A .010" patch with the .487?? ball was a bear to load into a cva hawken. The cabelas hawken did ok with a .015" patch but it still was a good push to get it down. They need to make them smaller DIA so you can actually load them with a good patch.

 

[Larry Pletcher]

We gave the vendor suggestions about reducing the diameter of the belt. I don't know if he took our advice.

Regards,
Pletch

 

[flaming canvas]

Ok, let me throw out a new one. Not saying its really practical, but its possible.

Werewolf bullets.

Silver is more expensive than the solder that was mentioned in some of the posts, but you could use a dirt backstop and recover the ones you shoot in practice. It has density 10.5 which is pretty close to the 11.2 for lead and its a lot softer than steel. Do most of your practice with lead and just a couple of Ag bullets to find out how much differently they fly. You would have to use a steel mold since it melts at 1762 degrees.

If you think about the cost of a hunt, spending a buck apiece for a few ball doesn't seem that bad. Non toxic shells for water fowl often run over a buck a round and you would be shooting a lot more of them on one morning in a blind than the couple of shoots on a deer hunt.

 

[mortimer]

I don't know about California game laws but is tin an acceptable alternative. If so it was added to lead to harden for years so i wouldn't think it would hurt your mold. The only problem would be the weight difference depending on your rifling twist you may have to experiment in order to find what load will stabilize and give you the best grouping. best of luck hopefully the lead free curse doesn't come to the rest of us. :hmm: :hmm: :hmm:

 

[GreyWhiskers]

someone experimented with various Bi-Sn alloys and found that he had to use much more tin in the alloy (30%?? more??) for ball As the tin proportion increases, the alloy becomes less dense but more ductile.

Bismuth is only 86% as dense as lead so a .490 r/ball would be approximately 153 grs. I wonder how much density we lose with a bismuth/tin alloy? GW

 

[Chris Hayes]

Now i don't know better, but what about a bizmuth RB? Think it would be too expensive?

 

[snubshooter]

Be very careful about using any steel or alternate lead substitute. MANY nice shotguns were badly damaged early on when "THEY" banned using lead shot for water-fowling.