My experience has been that consistent weight can make a slight difference but sprue does not.
-
Friends, our 2nd Amendment rights are always under attack and the NRA has been a constant for decades in helping fight that fight.
We have partnered with the NRA to offer you a discount on membership and Muzzleloading Forum gets a small percentage too of each membership, so you are supporting both the NRA and us.
Use this link to sign up please; https://membership.nra.org/recruiters/join/XR045103
Tumbling round ball to smooth sprue cut
- Thread starter Buckskinquin
- Start date
Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:
Hey Toot, swaged balls are sprueless, what do you mean it can’t be done? If you got the right tools you can put a man on the moon… or a few!!! LOL
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2017
- Messages
- 100
- Reaction score
- 111
Tried tumbled round ball made no difference in accuracy. Just wondering if doing do reduces the diameter of the ball after tumbling
Nope, lead does not compress......
The mass will be redistributed, but that is all. All it can contribute to is the balls becoming a little out of round. It may not hurt anything as the shape of the ball will change as you seat it. It will change again as it is being fired, being soft lead.
I have some Lee aluminum roundball molds and they produce about 99% sprueless ball. I still prefer the traditional bag molds.
My Lee aluminum .526 roundball mold produces a 99% spue less roundball if one is really worried about it, Lee molds are a fantastic inexpensive option for casting numerous ball. I still prefer using a traditional bag mold but the Lee works wonders.
TOUSHE! you got me. mabie. I was refering pouring them into a mold, not swagging them. I thought the post was about balls with a sprue on them, no?
99 % is not a 100 %. it is just faint, but still a sprue.
The post is about balls with sprue. It's casting not swagging them and the easiest way to not have to deal with sprue's is to CAST them without.
hanshi
Cannon
I've always cast every round ball I fired. Mostly I cast from Lee molds which leaves no sprue. But I have other molds that are active and sprue size varies widely among them. If the mold drops a ball with a really large sprue I sometimes tumble the balls (only) which reduces the size. Those with smaller sprues are fired as-is with the sprue forward. I don't ever weigh ball, I just do a quick visual check and shoot them. I've never noticed any accuracy difference between the weighed vs the eyeballed ones.
