YouTube offers some videos on the process of melting down the lead and pouring into the molds. It definitely looks like a fun addition to my Muzzleloading hobby, especially if it can improve the accuracy of my shooting.
I haven’t taken the leap into casting my own round balls yet, but I’m considering it. This week I had a discussion with a fellow club member on the subject and he shared a good recommendations.
So this was the recommendation: when you have a full pot of melted lead and are pouring the molds, at some point you will want to add more lead to the pot. He recommended not adding any more lead until the batch of balls are completed. All the balls are weighted to see if there were any light ones with an air bubble and then recast those or use them for the fowling shot. All the rest are within 1 grain of each other.
If on the other hand you add more lead to the pot while casting a batch of balls, he found that the weight of the balls could vary by 3 or 4 grains. The reason for this is that the lead is coming from various sources and may not be the same purity. All the lead that he uses is recycled from various sources and there must be either impurities or other metals mixed with the lead causing the differences in weight.
I would assume that if you took a single piece of lead and cut it into small chunks, you could probably add those smaller pieces to the melting pot without this problem. But if the lead is from different sources it would be best not to add more lead to the pot during a batch pour.
If you have seen similar results I would love to hear from you. Happy casting!
