Round Balls other than Lead?

[musketman]

At the risk of sticking my neck out and getting it lopped off by the more wiser than I, here goes nothing....


Let's say you have a Smoothbore musket (uses .625 round balls)

One of the jobs of the patch is to keep the round ball from touching the barrel, right?

So, couldn't anything that was .625 and round be patched up and loaded in the musket and shot...

Could said musket, shoot a .625 solid copper round ball safely? I think it could...

Or, shoot a .625 steel ball bearing, as long as it was patched and not scraping the barrel, shouldn't it work?

I don't think the base of the lead ball flattens out in the barrel apon shooting, but the patch will fill in the gap between the ball and barrel, that's one of it's jobs.

I know the weights of the balls will be different, and powder charges should be adjusted accordingly.

Tell why you think this would, or would not work.

Just a thought for an non-lead musket ball...
With the big taboo on lead, this might be an idea worth looking into.

 

[musketman]

This was just something to provoke thought, I have never done this with a firearm...

I am however, aware that smoothbore have been loaded with nails, rock salt, rocks, glass and various other types of "shot" throughout history.

I was just thinking of an alternative to using lead balls.