✅ SOLVED musket ball or fishin weight?

Pelegzer

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Dec 19, 2019
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Your profile doesn't say where you are from. Did you get it way inland? Did you get it panning for gold? Details, Details. Surely a musket ball expert will chime in on this one.
 

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Welcome to TreasureNet Pelegzer.
 

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Could well be a musket/rifle/pistol ball. Not uncommon for them to have a sprue left after casting.

Not all molds had sprue cutters and you did the best you could.

VAFO1788shotmoldshot_exb.jpg
 

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A fishing weight would be a soft lead you should be able to tell looks like a fishing weight to me
 

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Squeeze it with pliers if a lead fishing weight it will squish some if a musket ball you wont even hurt it.
 

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Without precise measurements, and weight it’s hard to tell, but I can say that at least 60% of all unfired pistol rounds I find are crudely made, and in an area with lots of camp lead. The sprue is still left on lots of them, either due to them not liking the outcome of their forge or lack of time to cut it, or file it off.
 

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Squeeze it with pliers if a lead fishing weight it will squish some if a musket ball you wont even hurt it.

I respectfully disagree.

I use as soft a lead as I can manage for cast round balls. ESPECIALLY rifle balls for cloth patching. Hard lead is near impossible to load without excess force on the rammer. Soft lead expands and makes larger wounds. It wasn't until breech-loaders that alloys of antimony and zinc were used for hardness because of increased velocity and barrel leading problems.

Fishing jig heads are better hard because the paint won't chip off if they get deformed. Lots of guys use Linotype lead and wheel-weight lead (now they're some zinc alloy) because it was cheap and hard.
 

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I respectfully disagree.

I use as soft a lead as I can manage for cast round balls. ESPECIALLY rifle balls for cloth patching. Hard lead is near impossible to load without excess force on the rammer. Soft lead expands and makes larger wounds. It wasn't until breech-loaders that alloys of antimony and zinc were used for hardness.

Same here. I use softer due to the fact the bullet has a harder time getting down the bore if it’s too hard. Lots of CW bullets I find are the size of that one he found and if I took pliers to them they would still squash some even after 150+ years underground.
 

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