Anyone know where a cheap place is to get Ball Molds ?

Also anyone got any tips on making your own round balls?

I haven't done balls but I do do a lot of sinkers and it is very important to keep the mold hot and the lead hot way past the melt point. That is when i am burning my hand through a fireplace glove holding the handle the temp seems about right. Keep the dross off the top of the molten lead. Any stuff on top will ruin the ball by becoming an inclusion. Phil

Midway USA is a good place to get a round ball mold. Since your starting out, get a LEE mold. For a .50 caliber the .490 is the perferred mold. For the .54 caliber I use a .530. Also do yourself a favor and spend the extra couple bucks and get a double ball mold. It goes a lot faster.

I use a turkey cooker as my smelter. I bought a Lyman lead pot and dipper. I put PURE lead (no wheel weights or other stuff you find.) and run it at high temps. Midway USA also sells 99% pure lead ignots if you need good lead.

If your using old lead you have around, after it is melts, put some candle wax or bees wax (a little goes a long way) into the melt pot. Then run a long nose lighter over it and burn off the impure stuff. I then use a wooden stick and scrape the crud that forms on the lead. This is all the dirt and other stuff that you have collected with your lead. After you have scraped it it should almost shine.

Get yourself some stuff called Rapine mold lube. It is a black liquid substance. And a small craft paint brush. Open the mold and hold the open parts of the mold over a candle flame to blacken (carbon up) the inside of the mold. When they are all carboned up, then paint the inside of the mold with the Rapine Mold lube.

Put on a good quality pair of gloves. Then take the mold and dip the corner of the mold into the lead. Hold that mold there and count slow to 30. This will heat the mold for you. When you shake it, the lead should fall off if the mold if it is hot enough and the lead is hot enough.

When you pour, make sure your spur cutter on the mold is closed. Pour molten lead with the dipper until you see that both holes are filled. It will over flow and run off over the mold back into the lead pot. I then keep pouring a little more (holding all this over the lead pot the entire time) over the mold holes. This will make sure that the lead is hot, the mold is hot, and all the air pockets are gone.

Now move the mold away from the lead to the dump site. I usually have a chunk of leather I dump onto. Wool will also work well. Do not dump them into a liquid like water. It will not only cause lots of steam but will harden the lead. Pure lead has a BHN of 5.5 approx. You want them to air cool to keep it that way. Hold the mold close to the material you want to dump them onto (something to break the fall so they do not get flat spots.), and strike the spur cutter sharply with a wooden handle (I use a old hammer handle). This will cut the spur nice and clean. Now open the mold and tap the place where the handles meet with the wooden handle. Never tap the molds themselves. The casted ball will fall out of the mold onto the leather or wool or what ever your using. Caution, these things are hot and will be for a long time so don't grab one to admire your work just yet.

You will find that the LEE does a good job and does not leave much of a spur on the ball. If the lead was hot enough, the casted balls should almost shine.

When your done casting, pour one last set of balls in the mold, and leave them there to cool with the mold. This will keep the mold from turning and twisting as it cools and make the mold cool more uniform and do less damage to the mold.

After the balls have cooled, look them over for defects. Many casters will put them on a scale and weigh them. They want to keep only the ones that are within a grain or two of each other. The ones that do not meet the test will later be remelted. If you see a defect just remelt.

It really is not that hard to do. A word of caution, this is not the time for children, pets and bystanders to be around you. Have the work area clean and clear. You do not want to fall into this stuff. Also if you sweat a lot, wear a hat or sweat band. You do not want sweat to fall into the lead melt pot. It can explode from the water. Also wear a long sleeve heavy shirt when you do this. Eye protection is a must. And do this in a well vented area. Make sure you have lots of air moving through the place. If you start to feel light headed or dizzy, get out of there. Go to fresh air.

I have been casting for years. I cast a number of different projectiles and you will find the more you do it the easier it is to do it right.... Good luck. I hope this helped.

What he said...

Order a Lee mold if they make one for your gun , the one I have works great .Put the flat up or down not on the side.

Dixie moulds from Dixie Gun Works are pretty cheap! But they have no sprue cutter, so you have to cut the sprue off by hand. I use a set of nail-nippers, but some people use their hunting knife, just like the Mounain Men did!

Lee RB moulds are inexpensive and make good balls.

Get the mould very hot so there are no "wrinkles" in the exterior surface of the ball. The biggest plroblem is with voids in the casting. Keep the ladle spout on the pouring hole for several seconds (length of time depends on the size of the ball) as the cooling casting is shrinking to let molten lead flow into the potential internal voids. I have had as good accuracy with cast balls as with swaged ones, if cast well.

ALSO, for balls and ML bullets, use ONLY PURE, DEAD SOFT LEAD! Using any other, harder alloy will make it difficult or impossible to load the rifle, particularly after the bore picks up some fouling.

Thank you all.

I'm going to try to get one this month or next so I can get some made up to target shoot with and to hunt with.

If you want to try some before you get the mold and see if they work, then I would go to;

BlackJack's

He sells a 100 of them and ships them to you for around $10.00 and he also has some excellent prices on R.E.A.L.s which are a lot of fun to shoot. Some rifles do real well with them.

Cayugad gives good advice. I use a turkey cooker burner for melting lead also and lean the mold on the outter edge of the burner frame to keep it hot. I use about a 20 lb pot and there is plenty of room.

Striper Phil.. look around for an old burner grate off the top of a gas stove (range). It will cover the top of the cooker part right where the flame is. I then used some small steel U clamps and basically clamped the grate to the turkey cooker. With that lead pot directly over the burner I can get that lead melted and brought up to temperature a lot faster, and adjust the heat setting on the burner once there to melt for a long time. I got my cooker on sale at Menard's (big lumber/home supply stores around here) for $19.95. Best $20.00 smelter I ever owned, plus I can cook turkey in the big pot....