Billnpatti
Cannon
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2008
- Messages
- 7,340
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If you have the choice, pure lead is always your best bet. However, like most of us, we have found pure lead to be pretty pricy even from scrap metal dealers. You might save a bit if you can find a roofer or plumber that has some scrap that they will sell you. Wheel weights are a pretty hard alloy and some wheel weights are not even lead. They are some kind of alloy but not lead. Various alloys will have different expansion coefficients. This means that balls or conicals cast from the same mold will have different diameters depending on the alloy used to make them. But, if wheel weights are your only choice, they will work for patched round balls but not so well for conicals. Conicals need to be soft because they do not use a patch and must be able to engrave into the rifling inside the barrel. Wheel weight alloy is too hard for this to work well and you would have to use some kind of mallet to drive them into the muzzle. Even then, they may not fit well enough for them to contain the hot expanding gasses when you fire your gun. An improper seal results in varying chamber pressures and this causes varying muzzle velocities with a resultant varying of your POI. Simply stated, accuracy goes to hell.
Having said all of that, let's assume that you need conicals and your only choice of lead is wheel weights, there is a way to get the best possible accuracy from wheel weight conicals. Use wads on top of your powder charge. These wads can be made of pure wool felt (Duro-Felt), leather or other materials such as even wasp nest. You can buy a custom sized punch (very reasonably priced) for your rifle from a man who uses the name Ohio Ramrod on this forum. Then punch out felt or leather wads, lube them and load them on top of your powder before seating your conical. An alternative to wads is something like corn meal, grits, Cream of Wheat, etc. Just use your powder measure to measure out a volume equal to about 10 to 15 grains and pour this into your bore on top of your powder. This may sound strange but it is a common practice and works pretty darned well.
Lastly, I must add this caveat, if you are shooting conicals with an expanding skirt, you must use pure lead only. The skirt must be soft enough to expand when hit by the hot gasses. Also, you cannot use any kind of wad or cornmeal, etc. on top of your powder. The use of these seals will prevent the skirt of the bullet from expanding into the rifling.
Having said all of that, let's assume that you need conicals and your only choice of lead is wheel weights, there is a way to get the best possible accuracy from wheel weight conicals. Use wads on top of your powder charge. These wads can be made of pure wool felt (Duro-Felt), leather or other materials such as even wasp nest. You can buy a custom sized punch (very reasonably priced) for your rifle from a man who uses the name Ohio Ramrod on this forum. Then punch out felt or leather wads, lube them and load them on top of your powder before seating your conical. An alternative to wads is something like corn meal, grits, Cream of Wheat, etc. Just use your powder measure to measure out a volume equal to about 10 to 15 grains and pour this into your bore on top of your powder. This may sound strange but it is a common practice and works pretty darned well.
Lastly, I must add this caveat, if you are shooting conicals with an expanding skirt, you must use pure lead only. The skirt must be soft enough to expand when hit by the hot gasses. Also, you cannot use any kind of wad or cornmeal, etc. on top of your powder. The use of these seals will prevent the skirt of the bullet from expanding into the rifling.
