Off Weight Balls and Their Effect

[Dr5x]

BALLS.
I have received a number of posts regarding my thoughts on the effect of an air bubble or lighter weight inclusion in a lead ball will cause it swerve away from its path to the target. Notably there is a much wider weight variation in the Swaged. or crushed. balls produced by Hornady or Speer.
I believe the effect is identical in the effect of a missing wheel weight from one of the tires on one's car or truck
I feel that on balls of .45 and above a weight variation of one grain or more will cause that breaking away much the same as the missing wheel weight.
Swaged balls will runs much as 23 out of a hundred off weight and possible Fliers.
Hand cast balls you make yourself may run as many as 5% or 5 out of a hundred

When you learn to eliminate the light weight balls you eliminate a lot of Fliers.
When you learn to be exact. shot after shot in both powder charge and degree of shooting patch lubriication you will probably have NO fliers at all.

Dutch Schoultz

 

[Frontier's]

4 - 6 grains +/- didn't make a darn bit of difference at 175 yards when I was shooting a .58 Hawken and testing this theory of +/- 1 grain

 

[Sun City]

In several test I've run over the years with a very accurate scale I have taken Hornady swaged round balls of .54 and .58 caliber and at random choose ten balls and weigh each one and then write down the weight of each for comparison. This WAS NOT just one test...but probably ten or more. Most times I NEVER have gotten over 2/10 grain variation on all ten! This is measuring in TENTHS....not grains!!

 

[SDSmlf]

Going with Dutch on this one. Here are photographs of the weigh in of two different balls from a single box of purchased balls. Found nearly 10 grains of weigh variation, less than .0005” in diameter variation. Have seen worse, but don’t have photographic evidence. Personally have found that when everything is perfect and using weighed balls will have groups in the one inch range at 100 yards. Mix in the known goofballs from the same box and in the 3-4” range.

 

[Grimord]

I weigh all of the lead balls I cast. 45 caliber and under has to be within +/- .5 grains,. 50 caliber and larger +/- 1.0 grain. I have found that lighter balls tend to drift high and right and open up my groups.

 

[Dr5x]

WELL TWO AGREE WITH MY THINKING AND TWO DON'T

I HAVE TO ASK IF THE WEIGHERS AND THE NON-WEIGHERS EVER HAVE Fliers/

Dutch Schoultz

 

[Griz44Mag]

I weigh every ball of every batch. Anything .5% or more from the standard gets culled.
Since I cast a very wide variety of balls, the percentage method is fair and applicable across the board.
Casting your own makes this a pretty painless process. Nothing is wasted.
Since doing this, my bench shot flyers are all on me, and I knew before I looked that I pulled the shot.
Otherwise - no flyers.

 

[Greasecookie]

Checked some balls in my range box, 10 balls were measured of each type.

Speer 0.490
Average 176.7 gr
Standard deviation (sd) 0.48 gr
Extreme spread (es) 1.2 gr

Hornady 0.440gr
Ave 128.0
Sd 0.33
Es 1.1

Cast Lee 2 cavity mold 0.380
Ave 82.6
Sd 0.39
Es 1.1

Hornady 0.457
Ave 143.4
Sd 0.23
Es 0.6

Your mileage may vary.

 

[hanshi]

I use any cast ball that has no visual defects. I never weigh or sort anything I cast and have always had fine accuracy. Nowadays with really bad eyes I can't shoot well enough to tell any kind of difference even if indeed there is.

 

[Bassdog1]

My casting keeps improving and the ones I shot last weekend were weighed after bad ones sorted out. Only a few out of 300 cast that were off by more than half a grain. The last batch I shot was 30 rounds and not a single flyer.