Quote:
Originally Posted by id10t
Still how they make shot today, and you can even do it at home from what I understand.
The shot drop method only works with small shot though. A decently sized round ball for a revolver or ML rifle would still be cast in a mold, or swaged.
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Yup. All of my shot is "drop shot". I don't reload shotgun shells, but I do use a lot of it out of my muzzle loading 10 gauge. 7 1/2's for clay bird and grouse shooting, 6's for pheasant (where still legal to use lead shot). Still the most common way to make it, as far as I know.
And yes, the bigger stuff, round balls for rifles, are swaged or cast. I like just buying the swaged ones when I can. They are readily available for all of the common calibers, and are actually cheaper than buying the same weight in lead, which would then have to be cast. The swaged round balls are superior in that there is no sprue spud on them. Here are the ones I shoot, .457" for my Ruger Old Army cap and ball revolver, .490" for my Dixie Tennessee Mountain Rifle flinter, .530" for my T/C Hawken and the Hawken I built a couple of years ago. The only one I cast is for my .72 caliber double rifle, with no swaged examples available. You can see the sprue mark on top. That's the mold I use sitting behind it:
The two bullets are both for the .54's. They have a marginally fast enough twist to stabilize them (1:48"), where the dedicated round ball shooters go much slower. The .50 has a 1:66" and the .72 is 1:144". They would never stabilize a bullet.
I've hunted mostly with the bullets. They are just so superior ballistically. Both .54 bullets weight about 450 grains, where that size round ball is only 230, like a standard .45 ACP bullet. And even starting out a 2,000 fps, it's down to .45 ACP velocity by about 100 yards. The lowest ballistic coefficient possible for any projectile, the poor old round ball. No wonder we worked so hard to come up with something better. This year, though, the new Hawken will be taken to the field, traditional round ball and all. I've hunted deer with the flinter, and it does kill them, but boy is it marginal with its 180 grain ball. The .54 should be a little better...