Round ball issue........

[Blackfoot]

I noticed that the round balls that are oxidized load very hard and the smooth polished looking ones load easy.

So how does one remove the oxidation from the lead balls?

Will alchohol fix thisn issue without hurting the lead balls?

 

[BrownBear]

I ran a couple of hundred through my vibrating case cleaner for cartridges. Plain walnut shell medium. did the trick in about ten minutes.

 

[roundball]

I noticed that the round balls that are oxidized load very hard and the smooth polished looking ones load easy.

So how does one remove the oxidation from the lead balls?

Will alchohol fix thisn issue without hurting the lead balls?

When I first encountered a couple old boxes of balls with the oxidation, I laid an old towel on the work bench, poured the balls out, sprayed them down with WD40 and just rolled them around on the towel...seems to dissolve the white stuff immediately...never saw where the white stuff had any practical effect on accuracy but they look prettier with it removed :grin:

 

[playfarmers]

Same as Roundball. Works great

 

[bob1961]

I noticed that the round balls that are oxidized load very hard and the smooth polished looking ones load easy.

silly question here, how would the oxidation make a ball hard to load when wrapped in a patch, unless it adds thickness to the ball and if so how oxidized are ya round balls getting that instead of .490 size are they more like .495 or bigger :hmm: :v ...............bob

 

[Blackfoot]

I noticed that the round balls that are oxidized load very hard and the smooth polished looking ones load easy.

silly question here, how would the oxidation make a ball hard to load when wrapped in a patch, unless it adds thickness to the ball and if so how oxidized are ya round balls getting that instead of .490 size are they more like .495 or bigger :hmm: :v ...............bob

Exactly they are a little thicker with this oxidizing on them and it males it a bear to push down the barrel, I found this out in a hunting situation on Saturday and it really pi$$ed me off because I could have used another shot as another deer came to the buck that I just shot and hung around for a while and by the time I got that bullet down the barrel it was just out of range.

 

[roundball]

"...they are a little thicker with this oxidizing on them and it males it a bear to push down the barrel..."

Shot a few boxes of them and never noticed that...heck, you're from Minnesota...that's probably just frost or ice you're seeing!
:grin:

 

[boar]

I keep my cast bullets in a air tight jar. I find that if they are oxidized they are harder.A friend of mine had hunted deer 7yrs and had not got one, I told him to bring gun down and I would see what I could do. He had a TC Hawken and soon as I saw his bullets I figured what it might be, the were white and the lube was hard. We reran the max-balls and he killed a deer the next 3 years till his health got bad. Has since passed on. The white balls in a patch probably not as bad as a max-ball they just might not grip the rifling as good. If mine get to hard I just rerun them. Usualy just before season I get the softest lead I got and run 10 rounds. Dilly

 

[renovato]

Ballistol will wipe it right off. I've had a few boxes get fuzzy on me too. The oxidation is a lot like rust on steel, in that it's larger than the tiny amount of metal that actually oxidized. It's always good to remove lead oxide before shooting. You don't want to be breathing that dust in!

 

I think that this is it exactly. I noticed that when i unloaded a quantity of PRB from a block loader that the grease had become hard and was very dificault to remove from the rounds. When I loaded them it was not easy because the grease added a dimetion to the balls. I would think that the white oxidation would do the same.

 

[jimeckersley]

If you have the round balls sitting around for awhile you can prevent the oxidation in the first place. Put the new balls on a cloth (as Round ball suggested to do with the oxidized balls) and roll them around with some automatic transmission fluid. A thin coating of the ATF will keep them shiny for a long time.

 

[Swamp Buck]

Out of the two boxes of Hornaday .530 RB's I had, one had smooth shiney RB's and the other had RB's with oxidation on them.

I had thought about running them through my reloading cartridge case tumber but didn't want the lead oxide contaminating the tumbling media. I waited for my wife to go shopping and treated the oxidized RB's with olive oil from the kitchen. Worked great. The ones that I have left in the box show no signs of oxidation even after 6 months.

 

[roundball]

Timing of this thread is really interesting...I've been hunting all season with a new .62cal Flint smoothbore, took some deer with it, decided today to switch to a .58cal Flintlock rifle for the last few weeks.

Setting everything up for the .58cal just now, I opened a half box of Hornady .570s and sure enough, there was oxidation on most of them...poured them out on an old towel, sprayed them with WD-40, rolled them around on the towel for 30 seconds...no more oxidation.